Page 335 - Between One and Many The Art and Science of Public Speaking

302 Part 3 Putting Theory Into Practice

Can you identify the meaning of these different facial expressions?

Competence and trustworthiness are two key components of a speaker’s
credibility; that is, the degree to which a speaker is perceived as believable.
Generally, the more a speaker makes eye contact with audience members, the
more credible the speaker will be perceived. Because credible speakers are also
likely to have more infl uence with an audience, it only makes good sense for the
speaker to maintain as much eye contact as possible with an audience.
Eye contact also has the power to reduce physical distances psychologi-
cally. When we make and sustain friendly eye contact with people at a distance,
it makes us feel “closer” to each other. It also helps to make people appear at-
tractive and open to dialogue. As was the case with competence and trustwor-
thiness, this is clearly to a speaker’s benefi t.
But there is yet another reason for maintaining eye contact with an audi-
ence. Eye contact is an important source of audience feedback. In North Amer-
ica, for example, an audience will use eye contact to let the speaker know the
degree to which it is engaged. Speakers can then use this feedback to make de-
cisions about whether they need to modify their speech to gain the audience’s
attention.
Having established its importance to delivery, let’s talk about how you can
optimize the positive effects of eye contact. First, recognize that you cannot fake
eye contact! People know you are looking directly at them or looking only at the
tops of their heads. Second, some eye contact is better than no eye contact at all.
Ideally, however, eye contact works best when you look at individual members
of the audience as you speak. This type of eye contact personalizes a public
message. All too often, people think eye contact means looking at the audience
members as a group, beginning with those in the center seats, and then turning
to those seated to our right or left. To the contrary, effective eye contact means
making every person in the room feel as if we were speaking only to him or her.

The Face

Eye contact works best when it is complemented with appropriate facial expres-
sions. The face and eyes, for example, can communicate happiness, surprise,
fear, anger, disgust, contempt, sadness, or interest. The face and eyes can also
modify the intensity of any of these nonverbal expressions of emotion. 13
Just as you can use metaphor to manipulate language intensity, you can use
your face and eyes to intensify your delivery. In most cases, you intensify what