Blinking acts as a subtle social clue during conversations

Blinking isn’t just to keep your eyes clean! It acts as a subtle social clue to steer conversations – just like nodding

  • Humans blink around 13,500 times a day and scientists wanted to find out why
  • This level of blinking is more than is necessary for keeping our eyeballs clean
  • Humans use blinking as a subtle hint to get people to speak more or less

Humans use blinking as a subtle hint to get people to speak more or less, a study has found.

Scientists studying blinking found that the rapid shutting of our eyes, far from being random, can actually help control a conversation.

Rapid blinks in conversation – during natural pauses – encouraged people to chat more, a scientific study found.

But longer blinks get other people to speak less.

Blinking should be considered as a cue, a bit like nodding the head, or saying ‘mmm-hmm’, the researchers suggest.

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Humans use blinking as a subtle hint to get people to speak more or less, a study has found. Scientists studying blinking found that the rapid shutting of our eyes, far from being random, can actually help control a conversation (stock image)

Blinking has a clear physiological function: it keep the eyes moist – and clears the eyes – a bit like windscreen wipers on a car windscreen.

But scientists have long suspected it is more than just a way of lubricating the eyeballs.

We blink around 13,500 times a day, much more frequently than necessary for keeping our eyeballs clean.

We also blink more frequently in conversation than when we are silent.

So scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands set out to test what purpose blinking serves.


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They created a computer face – an avatar – that acted as a virtual listener – that asked questions of volunteers such as ‘How was your weekend?’.

Scientists then controlled the reactions of the avatar – using short and long blinks that each lasted less than a second.

The short blinks were 208 milliseconds and the long blinks 607 milliseconds. 

The researchers found that the subtle difference between the short and long blinks was picked up by the listener.

Longer blinks resulted in substantially shorter answers, while longer blinks led to measurably longer replies, namely by several seconds.’

Rapid blinks in conversation – during natural pauses – encouraged people to chat more, a scientific study found. But longer blinks get other people to speak less. Blinking should be considered as a cue, a bit like nodding the head, or saying ‘mmm-hmm’, the researchers suggest (stock image)

The researchers said: ‘Our findings show that one of the subtlest of human movements–eye blinking–appears to have a surprising effect on the coordination of everyday human interaction.’ None of the volunteers realised they were influenced by the blinking.

The researchers say that blinking as a conversational cue does not work on anyone – people with low empathy respond less well.

So trying to rapidly blink in the face of a crashing bore may not succeed.

Our blinking changes over time.

Infants hardly blink at all. Previous research has found that when people have a lot on their minds, such as trying to solve a difficult problem, they blink more.

It has also been found that monkeys who live in larger social groups also blink more than those that live with fewer companions.

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