According to a news release from the University of British Columbia, making eye contact is not always effective. New research reveals that making eye contact, long believed to be an excellent way of persuading someone to agree with you, may actually be counterproductive, especially when that individual already disagrees with your point of view.

“There is a lot of cultural lore about the power of eye contact as an influence tool,” said Frances Chen, a professor at the University of British Columbia. “But our findings show that direct eye contact makes skeptical listeners less likely to change their minds, not more, as previously believed.”

The researchers used recently created eye-tracking technology to examine the impacts of eye contact in scenarios involving persuasion.

Several tests discovered that the more participants maintained eye contact with a speaker, the less persuaded they were by the case presented to them — in other words, participants’ opinions on different hot button topics fluctuated less as they maintained eye contact with the speaker.

According to researchers, spending more time making eye contact with someone as they talked was only linked with better receptiveness among participants who already agreed with the person on that particular issue. In one test, participants were more likely to find speakers convincing when they stared at their mouths as opposed to their eyes.

The results suggest that eye contact can indicate very different types of messages based on the scenario. While eye contact may be an indication of a connection or confidence in friendly scenarios, it has a significant role in the hostile meetings in primates and other mammal species.

The researchers hope to continue their research on this topic by examining whether eye contact may be linked with certain patterns of brain activity, the release of stress hormones, and increase in heart rate during persuasion efforts.

“Whether you’re a politician or a parent, it might be helpful to remember that trying to maintain eye contact may backfire if you’re trying to convince someone who has a different set of beliefs than you,” said co-author Julia Minson of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

The study’s results are described in greater detail in the journal Psychological Science.