Abstract: Popular belief holds that eye contact increases persuasion success, and prior research suggests that speakers who direct gaze towards their listeners are perceived as more persuasive. In contrast, we demonstrate that more eye contact between the listener and speaker during communication of a counter-attitudinal message predicts less persuasion. In Study 1, participants freely watched videos of speakers expressing various views on controversial socio-political issues. Greater direct gaze at the speaker’s eyes was associated with lesser attitude change in the direction advocated by the speaker. In Study 2, we instructed participants to look at either the eyes or the mouth of the speakers in the videos. Intentionally maintaining direct eye contact again led to less persuasion than gazing at the mouth. These findings suggest that striving to maintain eye contact may be counter-productive across a variety of persuasion contexts.