In the Eye of the Beholder
A whiter sclera and a darker ‘limbal ring’ make an eye more attractive
The eyes may be the window to the soul, but until now they’ve been neglected by most attractiveness researchers. This is surprising because when we interact with other people we spend more time looking at their eyes than anywhere else.
Our eyes are not only the sensory organs they originally evolved to be, but also tools of communication, able to convey information on emotional state and intention. This month, two new research studies have been published that show the eyes also have it when it comes to communicating a person’s attractiveness.
You may have heard about the effects of a large, dilated pupil on attractiveness. We’ve known for some time that when people are aroused, their pupils, the black circle at the centre of the eye, becomes larger. This signal of arousal is found attractive, particularly to men, even when we don’t consciously notice it. Now Robert Provine of the University of Maryland has shifted his gaze towards the edges of the eye.
Whiter versions of the eyes were rated as 25% happier, 42% healthier, and 17% more attractive than the bloodshot versions
The white part of the eye, also known as the sclera, is not unique to humans, but it is unusual amongst the primate family. Chimpanzees, for example, have a dark brown sclera. Some have suggested that the whites of the eye serve as a social signal, allowing others to see where we’re looking. But Provine wondered if the colour of the sclera might also be important for assessing healthiness and beauty.
You may have noticed that one of the more routine airbrushing techniques in celebrity magazines is to make the whites of the eyes appear whiter, sometimes so much so that they no longer appear natural. There seems to be an assumption that whiter eyes are more attractive, but surprisingly nobody’s ever tested whether this is really true.
Provine took photographs of people’s eyes and then used Photoshop to make them appear redder, mimicking the effects of sleep deprivation. He then showed these images, along with the originals, to a group of around 200 men and women and had them to rate the eyes for healthiness, emotional state and beauty.
The results of the study, published in the journal Ethology, showed that the original, whiter versions of the eyes were rated as 25% happier, 42% healthier, and 17% more attractive than the bloodshot versions. So, proof positive that the airbrushers were onto something after all: a whiter eye is definitely a more attractive eye. This also explains why dark eye makeup is so often in vogue: by darkening the periphery of the eye we create a visual illusion that makes the sclera appear whiter than it really is.
But what about the last of the three main parts of the eye, the coloured iris? Iridology is a long-established, but entirely pseudoscientific, technique of alternative medicine, whose practitioners believe that by examining the texture and colour of the iris, it’s possible to diagnose pretty much every medical complaint going. Those who’ve investigated their claims have found no evidence for a link between healthiness and the iris, but again: until now nobody has thought to check if there’s such a thing as an attractive iris.
Darren Peshek and colleagues from the University of California at Irvine ran a similar study to Robert Provine’s, but this time they didn’t fiddle with the whites of the eyes: instead they tampered with the limbal ring. The limbal ring is the slightly darker ring that runs around the outside of most people’s irises. If you’ve got dark eyes, it might be difficult to spot, but those of you with blue or green eyes should be able to see that the edge of your iris, where it meets the sclera, is somewhat darker than the inside of your iris.
Anyway, Peshek showed his 45 participants a set of 80 pairs of faces: the faces in each pair were identical except for the fact that one had a darkened limbal ring and the other had an iris of a uniform colour. He found that both men and women preferred the faces with the dark limbal ring.
But why should this be? Well, the limbal ring fades as we age, so a darker ring could be a good signal of youthfulness, which we know is strongly linked to attractiveness. So forget all these moisturizing creams and chemical peels and spring for a pair of coloured contacts with an artificially dark limbal ring. But make sure you get yourself some eye drops too. Stick your fingers in your eyes too much and they’ll go red. And then you’re back to square one.
Peshek, D., Semmeknejad, N., Hoffman, D., & Foley, P. (2011). Preliminary evidence that the limbal ring influences facial attractiveness. Evolutionary Psychology, 9(2), 137–146. Read paper
Provine, R. R., Cabrera, M., Brocato, N. W., & Krosnowski, K. A. (2011). When the whites of the eyes are red: A uniquely human cue. Ethology, 117(5), 395–399. Read summary
The content of this post first appeared in the May 2011 episode of The Psychology of Attractiveness Podcast.
