They say the “eyes are the windows to the soul,” but turns out they are also the windows to the heart. There have been many studies on how nonverbal cues from the eyes affect our behavior towards one another.
When it comes to finding love, apparently how you communicate with your eyes can make all the difference.
Prolonged eye contact can cause attraction
Eye contact is a powerful stimulator of affection. A study published in the Journal of Research and Personalityin which two opposite sex strangers were asked to gaze into each other’s eyes for two minutes found that this was enough in some cases to produce passionate feelings for each other. So much so that one of the couples even got married a year later!
The more dilated your pupils, the more attractive you seem
According to a study by Edinburgh University, women are attracted to the size of a man’s….pupils? The results revealed that women, during the fertile part of their cycle, found pictures of men with enlarged pupils more appealing. This is likely connected to the findingthat our pupils dilate when focused on someone we find attractive.
Eye contact makes us feel good and connects us
Prolonged eye contact has been thought to release phenylethylamine, a chemical responsible for feelings of attraction. It has also been thought to release oxytocin, the love chemical most closely associated with longer term bonding and commitment.
Looking at each other’s eyes is a sign of love
Studies by scientists from the University of Chicago’s Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology and the University of Geneva analyzed the visual pattern of college students looking at photos of attractive people. The study found that people tended to fixate on the faces of the images of people that elicited a feeling of romantic love and tended to fixate on the body of those that elicited sexual desire.
Eye contact indicates lasting love
A famous experimentby Harvard psychologist Zick Rubin found that couples who were deeply in love after several years looked at each other 75% of the time while talking versus the average 30-60% of the time.
So if you want to make this Valentine’s Day especially romantic, don’t just get chocolates and flowers but gaze into your partner’s eyes for a while. You may be surprised with a sudden passionate connection!
