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There's a number of ways you can read the eyes. Blink rate is really important to me.
I think blink rate, in terms of baseline behaviors, blink rates are a really effective way to
measure certain people's behavior. So, I mean, people can blink for a wide range of reasons.
People can blink because of the light. People always say, oh what does it mean? Maybe their
contacts are dry. Yeah, but if their contacts were dry, they'd be blinking that way all
the time. Go watch presidential debates, right? Go watch Mr. Mitt Romney and watch when they
talk about his finances. His blinking goes through the roof. The guy blinks like crazy
because he's anxious. He's trying to answer a question. He's anxious. Like, look when
somebody is in a high anxiety situation. Blink rates are through the roof because it's emotionally
linked, right?
And the cool thing is is not just to see that people are blinking a lot, but to see essentially
at what point in the conversation do you see jumps or deviations in blink rates. So all
of a sudden, a guy's having a conversation with his girlfriend. They're having, you know,
everything's fine, they're having a nice conversation. Then all of a sudden she accuses him of cheating
and his blink rate goes through the roof. Doesn't mean he's cheating, but it means he
is, you know, emotional about that topic. Okay? So blink rate is very, very useful.
Something that's easy. All you have to do is look somebody in the eyes, count for ten
seconds, and see how many times they blink in ten seconds. And do that at several intervals
and you can figure out their average blink rate. It's not that complicated.
So maintaining proper amount of eye contact is very, very important. What's the proper
amount of eye contact? Around 70-ish percent. Somewhere around 60 to 80 percent. It really
depends. It's really hard to narrow it down, but you shouldn't be looking somebody in the
eyes over and over and over again. It's one of the big mistakes people make in interviews.
They tell them to make eye contact so they look at the person like this. Oh no! It's
like, yeah, you don't build an emotional connection that way because it's abnormal. People don't
make that much amount of eye contact.
Another cool thing with the eyes is staring. Men tend to stare a little bit too much. They
come off as creepy. If you've ever found a guy with like a creepy, scary stare you tend
to see two things. One is their blink rate is really low. It's a cool thing about blink
rates. We like low blink rates in women, but we don't like low blink rates in men. So low
blink rates in women have like this pulling in effect when they stare at you in this camera.
Welcome. When men do it it's creepy. So it's an interesting difference. Also with eyes
dilated. We like women's eyes dilated more than we like men's eyes dilated.