Trying hard to get your crush's attention? Do not bat your eye lids at him too much because it might just drive him away!
A John Hopkins study has found that people who are impatient and make more impulsive decisions tend to blink too many times.
For the study, 23 volunteers underwent a series of tests while the researchers measured their saccades - the eye's movement when people focus on objects.
In the first experiment, the researchers asked volunteers to stare at a screen where dots would emerge one at a time in various parts of the screen. Their saccades were recorded as they looked from one dot to the other.
In the second experiment, researchers wanted to determine whether the saccade speed was related to impulsiveness and decision making. The participants were told to observe the screen again. However, this time they were asked to follow visual commands (to look to the right or left) that instructed them to look at the dots appearing on the screen. However, they were warned that if they followed the command, they would be wrong 25 percent of the time. The researchers, at certain instances, delayed the second command to determine their patience levels and their desire for accuracy.
The last and the third experiment saw the volunteers filling out a questionnaire on a wide range of subjects including whether they purchased something instantly or said something before thinking.
The researchers found that people who had fast eye movements made decisions on impulse and seemed to be less willing to wait, in other words, they were impatient.
"Our hypothesis is that there may be a fundamental link between the way the nervous system evaluates time and reward in controlling movements and in making decisions," Shadmehr said in a statement. "After all, the decision to move is motivated by a desire to improve one's situation, which is a strong motivating factor in more complex decision-making, too."
The finding has been published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
Previous studies showed a relation between impatience and obesity, problems with the law, divorce and drug abuse, the Los Angeles Times reports.
