Since having a stroke a couple years ago, my mind and body has been dogged by a lot of new conditions and idiosyncrasies. This week, I identified another one and have been reflecting on what causes it and what it might mean. It has to do with my eyes.
The eyes are the window to the soul.
He has shifty eyes.
What does that last statement mean to you? When someone has shifty eyes, what does it indicate? What have you been told it indicates?
Positive, or negative?
If you ask someone to remember something from their childhood, they will nearly always look up and to a side, as their brain starts to access the information. Ask them to remember a time they did the wrong thing, they will likely look downward, again accessing information. Our eyes tend to be a physical tool of our memory.
However, when someone's eyes are darting around, we have been told that they are "shifty", being dishonest, and probably lying. And now, I have realized that I have become shifty. This didn't happen pre-stroke, but post-stroke, me eyes are moving far more than they used to and if I try to keep them locked, it takes a lot of effort and I am not listening. So, I was thinking about why this might be.
As I have mentioned in the past, my brain no longer creates spontaneous images based on what is being said and instead, I have to manually build scenes. This is laborious, time consuming and energy draining, but it has to be done in order to build any useful understanding. However, in order to do this, it means that I have to first take what I hear, convert each word into its visualized form, piece them together into a coherent story, and then review to see if it makes sense and is representative of what has been said.
The time it takes to do this automatically is near instantaneous and on-the-fly, but for me, it takes longer than I have and by the time I "understand" internally, the conversation has moved on, with many more sentences missed, making full understanding near impossible. This makes what I have learned tenuous and reduces my ability to predict and plan, or advise.
While I have been "noticing" the eye movement in myself for a long time, it didn't really click as to what is happening, but while I was talking with my supervisor, it dawned on me. I think that since my brain is no longer able to automatically create those images, it is constantly searching for the pieces it needs, which triggers my eyes to move to gain access in different parts of my history. It is searching "wildly" and without control, because it isn't even getting the first rough image used to narrow the range.
After a couple days reflecting, I decided to google and came across these types of headlines based on a 2012 study into eye movement and lying. The basic finding was that the eyes aren't indicative of lying, but are indicative of accessing memories. This is a bias confirming headline for sure! But it does make sense to me as I came to the same conclusion observationally and combined with other known brain traits I have now.
However, when people have been socially conditioned to believe that a certain trait indicates an intention or result, it doesn't really make a difference. This means that to the casual observer, I am likely now seen as a liar. At the very least, the eye movement away from the speaker as my brain is trying to process, would imply that I am not really paying attention to them, even if I am.
For me to be able to actively listen to what they are saying, I have to be able to interpret what is said into something my brain understands. We normally do this naturally, unless not listening. Yet, since I have to do this process manually, it isn't going to look like I am trying to make sense of their words, it looks like I am trying to form a response. When we are forming a response to what is being said, we aren't listening.
So, I am an inattentive listener, even though I have intention to listen.
All behaviors impact on our results, even if they are blind to us or unintentional. Our idiosyncrasies give an impression about us, especially when the trait is seen as culturally negative, as we are very quick to judge the information we receive. So, regardless of what is actually happening, the people observing me might reach conclusions based on my behavior, that is not actually representative of what is happening, which can affect my outcomes in life.
What happens when you get the sense someone can't be trusted?
Even if here is other evidence to the contrary, you are more wary, aren't you? You will back your feeling, your intuition, which as I have said before, is based on experience, not fact. And the experience is also social biases, including not trusting some people over others, because of what might be arbitrary traits, like eye movement.
There is not much I can do about my eye movement itself, and most of the time there is not much I can do about the way people read my behaviors, so I just have to live with it as another hurdle to overcome. However, the process of reflecting on it has been useful and also indicates how blind we might be to how we actually behave, as well as how we are perceived by others.
He's so shifty.
We should promote him!!
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
