Why Do People Blink?
Blinking is a natural human reaction, but why do people blink? To blink means to open and shut your eyes quickly. It is something that people do involuntarily. According to experts we blink about once every 5 seconds. Multiply that by the number of seconds in a minute and the number of minutes in an hour. You do the math. It will make you think that the eyelid has got to be one of the most efficient and underrated parts of the body. As a matter of fact, it is known to be the fastest muscle in the body.
There are various reasons why people blink. The most important is to keep the eyes lubricated. Blinking automatically happens when a foreign object or irritant gets into the eye. The eyelid will keep on blinking until the irritant or foreign body is flushed away, usually with a good amount of tears, especially if the object is hard to remove.
Blinking also becomes more rapid when the eyes get tired. The same lubricating liquid that coats the eyeball also refreshes the eye. Watching the television or staring at a computer for excessive lengths of time tends to make the eyelids blink more often. Why do people blink faster? This is the body’s way of putting more lubricant on the eyes so that they can be refreshed more quickly. Similarly, when someone has stared at something for too long, the eyes dry up. The eye then play ‘catch up’ with all the moisture they have lost.
These are some of the reasons why our eyes blink, but there are also other reasons why people blink that are not related to lubricating the eyes. Specialists in nonverbal communication have studied that there are blinking behaviors in humans. They have found that the rate of blinking helps determine if a person is lying or not. It seems that a person who lies does not blink as much as someone who is telling the truth. This is especially true when the liar is concentrating very hard about the lie he is telling. A nervous liar on the other hand blinks more frequently. Someone will also blink faster when they are nervous about something.
Blinking seems to be an outward manifestation of the mind at work. When a person is concentrating on solving a math problem, for example, the eyes tend to blink more. It has been observed that blinking is more frequent when the thought patterns are more pronounced. However, a person who is ‘zoned out’ hardly ever seems to blink. Perhaps it is because the eyes become cameras and data is saved with every click and a memory or thought is processed with every blink. The brain releases chemicals that help with the thought processes and maybe this is another explanation for why do people blink?
