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Eye contact can be totally normal, but it can get weird pretty quickly.
With the right person, it can be romantic or sexually charged, or it can be a way to get to know someone in a way you didn’t know them before.
But staring into someone’s eyes for ten minutes? It doesn’t matter who you’re staring at, that sounds a little excessive.
One study found what happens when you’re told to stare in one person’s eyes for ten minutes, and the results are fascinating.
One psychologist had a group of twenty young people, 15 of whom were women, break off into pairs and just look into one another’s eyes. They were told to put no expression on their faces, just to stare.
The control group stared at a wall.
The results?
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Those who stared directly into another person’s eyes reported having a unique and profound experience, and they felt compelled to continue staring at that person.
They also experienced reduced color intensity, and another interesting thing—some kind of facial hallucination.
90% of them said they’d seen deformed facial traits on the faces of their partners. 75% of them said they’d seen a monster. Half of them said they saw themselves. They all scored much higher on the dissociative test they were asked to complete.
This means that staring at someone, no matter who they are, can induce some kind of altered consciousness state! Who knew!
It seems that staring into the eyes of another person for ten straight minutes is just as unsettling as we all imagined. So next time you want a drug-free trip, just ask your friend if you can stare at them for ten minutes.
