Eye contact is not only polite in western conversations, it’s essential because we rely on body language as well as tone and words when we are talking. Depending on which business guru we listen to, at least half of all conversation is non-verbal. People working in phone rooms are encouraged to be aware of the way they sit, and to put a smile on their face while talking to customers by phone, because body language affects the way we sound.
When people don’t look us in the eye or meet our gaze we might form an impression they are shifty, dismissive, not paying attention, or just rude.
One thing we might notice if we watch American movies set in an era before the civil rights movement is that, in areas where segregation was at its worst, no black person would dare look a white person in the eye; they were expected to show ‘respect’. Direct eye contact was considered ‘uppity’ and a challenge of white authority.
This is precisely what sprang to mind when I was eating at an outdoor café in Alice Springs a few years ago and an older Aboriginal man came up to me hoping to sell a painting. I was completely unsettled by his unwillingness to look me in the eye, and embarrassed by the possibility it was meant to convey deference. I now understand I was unwittingly rude by staring him in the eye while discussing the painting; and he was just – by his own standards – being polite to me.
Traditionally, except in extremely intimate relationships, eye contact is considered by Aboriginals to be aggressive or disrespectful. This idea might have developed because body language can reveal a lot, and privacy would be a scarce commodity if people are spending 24 hours a day with each other in a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
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