The Value of Eye Contact
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24934303/
I'd never considered that it took so long for a visual image to be processed by the brain. Anyone know if touch and proprioception are translation more quickly?
Douglas
cool topic doug-- and really cool article-- i dont know the answer to your question - my intuition says that touch and proprioception are faster but probably not by a whole lot -- then again - i am often wrong -- i look forward to finding out more about this --you might try posting this question and link on the wider kg forum as well -- thanks for theintersting article--nick
Great topic. I don't know enough about either to say. It does make me think this is one of the reasons eye contact is important. As I've heard many times, where the head goes the body follows. I think the sensitivity in your hand gives you an indication if the direction is going to change. Which is important because if your brain gives you a false prediction you might end up in a bad spot.
Doug
touch is faster than sight, peripheral vision is faster than central vision. Both the sense of touch and peripheral vision are linked directly to the limbic reactive nervous system while the central vision goes through an intellectual process that is much slower and less reactive and more analytical...The Chinese martial arts discuss this as soft eyes that don't focus on anything in particular and uses peripheral vision to view your opponent so that your reaction time would take advantage of this neural pathway.In fact some of the Chinese arts instruct you to look to the side of your opponent to develop this peripheral vision ability.There are several nice examples of this phenomenon or neural reaction that we can do in the dojo ...
Right, right... Something Ueshiba termed "gazing upon the mountains" wasn't it? It comes in handy with multiple attackers, I've noticed. Not looking at one after another, but gazing into the distance, I can see everybody that's coming at me (except for behind, of course). I'm not only less surprised, but I even have more time, it seems, to figure out what order I need to deal with them in.
I also noticed that it helps with dodgeball 😄 I was playing a while ago with a bunch of kids and I noticed that when there were two kids on the other team, both with a ball and waiting to tag me out, if I looked at one and then the other, the first kid's throw I could dodge, but the second kid would always hit me. However, when I stopped looking at either one and just gazed into the distance, I could "see" both of them, and could see both throws and dodge them both.
In all the self defense books and seminars and dvd's that I have participated and studied the issue of eye contact has been addressed in several ways. Most important is to not have eye to eye contact because your eyes will give you away especially if you are planning or looking for an escape or attack. This is true particularly when you want to give your attacker a sense of compliance and non resistance so that you can get them to let their guard down before you make your move be it escape- run or attack and run.Our communication is 90 percent nonverbal-body language and in a hostile confrontation we want any edge we can get and deception is most critical here...The eyes never lie!!!!!!
What John's saying makes sense to me. It just never seemed natural to me to look at uke DIRECTLY in the eyes. In judo we tend to look at the man's chest so we can see their feet in our periphery (because of the closer distance due to the grips, we can't see the feet if we look at the eyes). Consequently, in Aikido, I find myself still looking at chest level...
the challenge is to make eye to eye contact without sending signals-- takes practice
Indeed Nick.
Reminds me of the "Jedi Mind Trick" Karl talked about at a clinic ten years (or more!) ago. You can look people in the eye, smile your biggest smile, and think nasty thoughts and they get the message. Their brain sees all the smiling, but deep down their lizard brain recognizes a threat.
worse yet -- the blank slate gaze-- no signal is most difficult to adjust to
The empty gaze, completely devoid of all emotional data is quite unnerving to say the least. For some reason it reminds me of shark week on the Discovery Channel.
No doubt that an empty stare can chill the hell out of a predator in circumstances that you feel you have a chance or you need to bluff to protect yourself. The New York subway is a great learning environment where eye contact is very much a tool of evaluation and deception . The look can chill some nasty folks out but sometimes the look can fire them up especially if they are in a gang and want to hurt someone for fun or money for drugs....
How you use your eyes can greatly effect the way people perceive you (in reference to how you project yourself). This was addressed in some of the posts above. Controlling this is definitely important, because you need to project yourself appropriately in any given situation. Going into a very friendly and welcoming place with the "Death Stare" is definitely an inappropriate use of eye contact. In the same regard, grinning like an idiot when you're looking down the barrel of a gun would probably not be the wisest decision either. Gauging the situation and the company your in can better help you understand what is appropriate. Appearing angry and stand-offish will repel alot of nice people, but we cant deny the effectiveness of an appropriate stare in a fighting situation. Having a mental edge over your opponent can definitely help prevent unnecessary violence, which we can all appreciate. I am a pacifist myself, so avoiding a violent confrontation is always a good thing.