We blink about 10,000 times a day. Such eyelashes serve, among other things, to moisten the eyeballs, so they do not dry out. In addition, we also wipe off fine particles on the eye, which are then transported away via the tear fluid. But the blink obviously has an influence on our speech behavior.
This is indicated by results from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen. The team led by Paul Hömke was able to show that respondents gave shorter answers to questions when the individual eyelid blows of their counterpart lasted longer. Slower Blinkeln signalize the other party that you have understood the answer, the researchers write in the journal "PLOS One".
To find out, Hömke and his team had 35 test persons talk to computer-generated interlocutors, so-called avatars. The avatars asked questions such as: "How was your weekend, what did you do?" Afterwards, the subjects answered - without knowing what the experiment was about.
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During many of the respondents' answers, the avatars responded by nodding and blinking for a short time (208 milliseconds). For some answers Blinzler, who accompanied the nod, but also longer (607 milliseconds).
In the evaluation of the data Hömke found that answers in which the avatar showed long blink of an eye, averaged several seconds shorter. The fact that the avatar had blinked for different amounts of time during the answers, however, was consciously not noticed by any of the subjects.
The researchers believe that a slower blink of an eye might make the speaker feel better understood. However, it can not be ruled out that nodding in combination with long blinkers simply sends out the signal to stop speaking.