I recently finished an improv class that touched on the importance of eye contact when portraying different levels of "status" while improvising a character. Eye contact was said to be a high-status behavior, and an easy trick to portray yourself as a person in a position of power was to make plenty of eye contact (among other body language hints). The opposite was true for low-status characters. Being comfortable holding eye-contact with someone was akin to seeing them as an equal, which could lead to them liking you more due to in-group bias. A hobby of mine now is to actively play with the level of eye contact I make with people and see how they react - holding eye contact with my boss for a long time, for example.
Meta question: The article is dated Jan 1, 2016. That's 4 days from now. Is it common for magazines to publish articles "in the future"? Do they do this so the electronic date matches the print date?
Does one deemed to be always percepted as an underdog, if he intentionally avoids any eye contact?<p>For example, even a glimpse into the interlocutor's eye while having a conversation (esp. a constructive/technical one) completely shatters my thought process, feels like my mental resources are drained towards some unconscious "computation". Almost the same effect with the facial features alone, yet not that strong. As a result, when I interact with someone, I do not look at that person, even when handshaking, just unconsciously focus on some static object: cup of coffee, crack on the wall, etc.<p>People who stoutly seeks an eye contact, despite all the avoidance, literaly derange me. Blood is just freaking boils in my veins, like I am going to punish it in its weasel face right now (never happend though, just state of mind).
On contrary, I have no such problem with babies (hard to estimate, but probably up to age of 6 or sth like that) or domestic animals.<p>Has anyone encountered something like that? Do you consider that a problem? As for me, I feel that such trait constrains my ability to effectively (eg. being treated as an equal) engage in communication in non-technical social environments.