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Opinion
Don't Click Until You See the #FFFFFF of Their Eyes
1/25/2007
So, I welcomed the results of some recent research that support the Cooperative Eyes Hypothesis. One study watched the reactions of nonhuman ape and human infant reactions to the head and eye movements of an experimenter. The chimp and gorilla infants tended to follow only whole head movements, while human infants followed head movements and movements of only the experimenter's eyes.
In other recent research, folks at UCLA discovered that people being asked to make charitable donations were more generous is they felt they were being watched, and that even the presence of a simplified line drawing on a computer screen of a pair of eyes looking at them was enough to boost their generosity.
Interestingly, some educators are working on ways to teach some very informal coping and learning mechanisms for children from low income families that includes teaching the children how to use their eyes and facial expressions to indicate interest when they are being addressed by an authority figure. If you're sitting in the back row, saying "uh-huh" every once in a while, or just nodding your head occasionally, are trumped by the teacher noticing that you are staring into his eyes, and wrinkling your brow a bit.
The folks at the Journal of Human Evolution are coming out soon with an entire issue on the evolution of the human eye, which I eagerly await. Meanwhile, perhaps we can think about some ways to use what little we think we know about this to see if we can change our students' behavior.
How about an add-on for Thunderbird for kids, a pair of eyes on the margin of the browser which stare out at the user in a benign way, but which grow increasingly agitated or disapproving-looking if the browser goes to questionable websites? I think I know some helicopter-parents-to-be who might pay for that one.
Or, maybe MySpace could just add a pair of eyes, realistically staring out at users, to some random selection of teenage sites and see if they could document safer, less risky behaviors from those pages?
Yeah, those are a little facetious, but something good is bound to happen in virtual space as we learn more and more about what happens in physical space that reinforces sharing and altruism and reduces risk behaviors.
Terry Calhoun is Director of Communications and Publications for the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP).
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