How to read a person's eyes: discover their thoughts without words

read eyes

They have been around for 540 million years and most of us have a couple, but apart from giving ourselves sight, what can we say by looking at someone's eyes? People say that the eyes are a "window to the soul," that they can tell us a lot about a person just by looking at them. Since we cannot, for example, control the size of our pupils, experts in body language can deduce much of a person's state by factors related to the eyes. Interesting, right?

The eyes are part of our body language that we have practically no control over. In addition to adjusting the amount of light taken in the vision process (dilation: increase in pupil size; contraction: decrease in pupil size), Eckhard Hess (1975) found that the pupil dilates when we are interested in the person we are talking to or the object we are looking at.

As an indicator, check the size of a friend's pupil when you talk to them about something interesting, then change the subject to something less interesting and see how they contract. Apart from the brain, the eyes are the most complicated organ in the human body, and also very fascinating!

read eyes

The eyes like the mirror of the soul

Our eyes communicate something about us. They communicate something about our soul and character. Think about it:

  • When you are talking to someone, you can tell by their eyes whether or not they are really listening or if they are really engaged in what you are saying.
  • When you meet someone, you can almost tell what kind of person they are through their eyes. Are they friendly, intense, distant, tense, intimidating, welcoming, caring, or threatening?
  • When you look into their eyes, you can practically tell their mood. It can be sad, happy, ecstatic, hurt, irritating, serious, hateful, or loving.
  • When you are in deep conversation, you can tell if they are attentive, distracted, interested, or disinterested.
  • When you get older your eyes communicate deeper things. They tell friends and family if the same person is present or not; the same person they met twenty years or twenty days ago. We look them in the eye and we can see something different.
non-verbal language in a conversation
Related article:
Nonverbal Language Tricks You Should Use Every Day

To read someone's mind, look into their eyes

Eye contact

To establish contact and communicate with a person, effective eye contact is essential for our daily interaction with people, and also for those who want to be effective communicators in the public sphere:

Persistent eye contact

Look, don't stare. Excessive eye contact can make the recipient uncomfortable. Generally in western societies and in many other cultures, eye contact with a person is expected to be regular but not overly persistent. Constant eye contact is often considered an intimidation attempt, which makes the person who is the subject of the person's gaze feel overly studied and uncomfortable.

read eyes

Even between humans and non-humans, persistent eye contact is sometimes inadvisable: The New Zealand Medical Journal reported that one reason so many young children fall victim to dog attacks is their regular eye contact with pets, which makes them too powerful. Dogs feel threatened and have a defensive attitude.

Overly persistent eye contact is also a sign that the person is overly aware of the messages they are sending out. In the case of a person trying to deceive someone, they can distort their eye contact so as not to avoid it, a widely recognized indicator of lying.

Evasive eye contact

Why do we avoid looking at a person? It may be because we are embarrassed to look at them if we are being dishonest in trying to deceive them. However, the University of Stirling in Scotland found that, in a question-and-answer study among children, those who maintained eye contact were less likely to find the correct answer to a question than those who looked away to consider their answer.

Eye contact, As a socialization device, it can require a surprising amount of effort to maintain when this energy it could be spent on computation, rather than perceptual tasks.

Crying eyes

Humans are believed to be the only species on Earth that cries, although there is emerging evidence for this in elephants and gorillas (emotional crying). In most cultures around the world, crying is considered to be caused by an extreme experience of emotion; usually associated with sadness or pain, although often extreme experiences of happiness and, through humor, can make us cry.

Often forced crying to gain sympathy or fool others is referred to as "crocodile tears", an expression of the myths of crocodiles "crying" when catching prey.

read eyes

Blinking eyes

In addition to our instinctive need to blink, our emotions and feelings towards the person we are talking to can cause us to subconsciously alter our blink rate.

Blinking more than the average 6 to 10 times per minute can be a good indicator that a person is attracted by the person you are talking to and for this reason it is used as a sign of flirting.

Men and women blink at roughly the same rate as each other, 6-10 times per minute in a normal environment. Also, animals like turtles are known to blink at different times with each eye.

Wink the eye

In the West, we view winking as a cheeky form of flirting, something we do with people we know or are on good terms with. However, there are cross-cultural variations on the wink theme: some Asian cultures frown at the use of this form of facial expression.

Eye direction

What does the direction in which someone looks tell us what they think or feel? Well, probably just what they're seeing. The thing to watch out for is the direction someone's eyes look when they think. Looking to their left indicates that they are remembering or trying to remember something.

On the other hand, looking to your right indicates more creative thoughts, and this is often interpreted as a potential sign that someone may be being a liar in some situations, that is, creating a version of events that is not entirely real.  Note: If a person is left-handed, the direction indicators can be reversed.


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      Dario Jose Lozada Ramirez said

    This teaching seemed very good and I confirm that if you look to the left it is because you are trying to remember since my gaze is fixed perennially it is on the left side because I suffered a motorcycle accident in 1 and remained in a coma for 1993 months and I am determined in remembering everything, thank you for all your teachings.- Dario Lozada 4-11-01, 2020:9 am