Did you know that the size of someone’s pupils can correlate with how attractive they are viewed as?
Which of these pictures do you prefer?
Did you say the left image? If you did, you are not alone. As Paul Parker writes in this article, “the vast majority of the population tend to warm towards portraits with larger pupil sizes. Those two pictures are identical other than that minute adjustment.”
“As far back as the 1970’s scientists were studying the effect of the pupil size on male feelings of attraction. This has been re-tested using a variety of different methods over the years and each time the results have been the same; men find women with bigger pupils to be more romantically appealing.”
This, of course, is because men in the study “unconsciously associated the dilated pupils with the women being attracted to them.” Translation, they viewed it as a nonverbal “look of love”.
Spoiler alert, women don’t necessarily respond the same way as men to pupil dilation (a lot is influenced by the various stages of the reproduction cycle) so it’s complicated…
This nonverbal cue is nothing new, however.
Weird Fact.
“In the Middle Ages, women in Italy poured the extract of belladonna (a poisonous plant) into their eyes to cause their pupils to dilate. Belladonna also nicknamed ‘Deadly Nightshade’, means ‘beautiful woman’ in Italian. While it successfully dilated the pupil, it also caused blurred vision, accelerated heart rate and in extreme cases – permanent blindness.”
Okay, so it appears that the seductive pull of large pupils has been commonly known for years. But what about the limbal ring?
And is it just me, or does that name sound like either a Sci-Fi “force” or something downright obscene?
It turns out there’s another eye characteristic that makes one attractive – a more prominent limbal ring. The limbal ring is the perimeter of the iris and forms the boundary with the “white” of the eye.
A study at UC Irvine found that subjects of both sexes found an opposite-gender image more attractive when the eyes had thicker limbal rings.”
Fascinating!
In the study, male viewers preferred the face image on the right.
So what are we to do with this information?
Well, for me, it explains things like:
- Why candlelight dinners are so popular (low light= larger pupils)
- And why popular cartoons often have large pupils (think anime)
- And why advertisers photoshop pictures including the models pupils
- And it also blows my mind at how we process so much information unconsciously, which has me both terrified and in awe at the same time!
Keep your eyes peeled for this subtle body language cue in advertising and in real life. And do me a favor and send me any pictures and examples you come across that demonstrate this nonverbal cue. I’d love to find more ways we see this in our world.
Your co-pilot, (who is now squinting yet wishing you a Happy Valentine’s Day!),
