If in business, public speaking, family relations, or romance, you want to feel connected with the other person in front of you, and you want that person to feel connected to you, improve the quality of your eye contact. We already knew this intuitively, but in the past ten years, neuroscience has been filling in the scientific picture of why this

Standing tall and straight, with chest forward and shoulder down, elbows slightly out and forearms in with knuckles out, facing the man squarely, with narrow eyes;

When you talk to this person, you feel heard and understood, as though this person really gets you.

In high school and early college, I was a fan of the rock band Grateful Dead. Whatever you may think of the band and its music and followers, some of the most personally meaningful moments from that period in my life—moments that I will remember for the rest of my life—came from seeing them play live. When the band got on stage, a collective joy

When you look someone in the eye, you’re giving that person the keys to your emotional world. No wonder the person trusts you more when you do that. And no wonder the other person perceives you as more confident—it takes guts to be so vulnerable with another person.

because they are the exact opposite of how we appear when we are confident, resolved, and determined, we use the shrug to express the opposite of these attitudes.

Seeing an eye glazed over, or glassy, you feel as though there is an extra layer in between you and the person inside. While that outside barrier might be slightly shiny, there is no depth at all—not the deep, radiant oceans of reflection on an eye we call “sparkly” or “shiny.”

It is obvious, to me at least, that happier people have shinier eyes.

This is what Goleman refers to as “attunement,” another crucial part of our social intelligence. He calls this an “agendaless presence”—it’s an ability to just be with another person, experiencing him