Steven Pinker
I had the pleasure of being a guest on Science of Perception Box, a video podcast from Unlikely Collaborators. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Me: Eye contact can often generate common knowledge. We know, even from the ethological literature in animal communication, that eye contact is a very potent signal because you’re looking at the part of the person that’s looking at the part of you that’s looking at the part of them that’s looking at the part of you. And so eye contact can generate common knowledge. It often resolves ambiguities in, say, a car stopping and a pedestrian crossing. Establishing eye contact would be a way of generating that common knowledge. Christof Koch: Or two cars merging on a freeway, right? The other guy sort of briefly nods. Me: Exactly. And in fact, I was tickled to see a sign in the San Francisco airport parking lot, which I actually photographed and included in the book. It has a cartoon of a pedestrian and a driver, with a dashed line joining their eyes, and it says, “Make eye contact before crossing.” There it is. Yes. @heather_berlin