The Blue-Eyes Stereotype: Do Eye Color, Pupil Diameter, and Scleral Color Affect Attractiveness?

Gründl, Martin; Knoll, Sebastian; Eisenmann‐Klein, Marita; Prantl, Lukas

doi:10.1007/s00266-011-9793-x

Cited by 39 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Study 1 loosely replicated the finding by Griindl et al (2012) that the sclera becomes darker and more saturated (i.e., less white) with age, but using a different color space and a larger set of faces. Study 2 extends this work by showing experimentally that sclera coloration is used as a cue for perceiving the age, health, and beauty of the face.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 68%

Sclera color changes with age and is a cue for perceiving age, health, and beauty.

Russell

Sweda

Porcheron

et al. 2014

Psychology and Aging

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Redness or yellowness of the sclera (the light part of the eye) are known signs of illness, as is looking older than one's actual age. Here we report that the color of the sclera is related to age in a large sample of adult Caucasian females. Specifically, older faces have sclera that are more dark, red, and yellow than younger faces. A subset of these faces were manipulated to increase or decrease the darkness, redness, or yellowness of the sclera. Faces with decreased sclera darkness, redness, or yellowness were perceived to be younger than faces with increased sclera darkness, redness, or yellowness. Further, these manipulations also caused the faces to be perceived as more or less healthy, and more or less attractive. These findings show that sclera coloration is a cue for the perception of age, health, and attractiveness that is rooted in the physical changes that occur with age.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 68%

Sclera color changes with age and is a cue for perceiving age, health, and beauty.

Russell

Sweda

Porcheron

et al. 2014

Psychology and Aging

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“…We found that there are declines in facial contrast with age in men as well as women, that were very similar to those found in a previous study with only female faces (Porcheron et al, 2013). With age, red-green and yellow-blue contrast around the eyes decreases in part because the sclera becomes redder and yellower with age (Gründl, Knoll, Eisenmann-Klein, & Prantl, 2012;Russell, Sweda, Porcheron, & Mauger, 2014). We also observed a decrease of the absolute value of red-green lips contrasts in both female and male faces.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Facial Contrast Declines with Age but Remains Sexually Dimorphic Throughout Adulthood

Russell

Kramer

Jones

2017

Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology

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Facial contrast-the difference in coloration between facial features and the surrounding skin-is an important cue for several aspects of face perception, including the perception of age and sex. However, previous work showing age declines in facial contrast has investigated only female faces, and studies demonstrating sex differences in facial contrast have only used young adult faces as stimuli. In the present work we examined whether age related declines in facial contrast are similar in both female and male faces, and whether sex differences in facial contrast are similar across the adult lifespan. In a sample of 151 male and female faces, drawn from three age groups (young adult, middleaged, older adult), we analyzed contrast around three facial features: eyebrows, eyes, and lips, in each of the three channels of CIEL*a*b* color space. We replicated the finding that feature contrasts decline with age in female faces, and found similar declines with age in facial contrast in male faces. We also found that the sex differences in luminance contrast around the facial features were present throughout the adult life span. Our findings demonstrate that age differences in facial contrast generalize to both sexes, and that sex differences in facial contrast generalize to all adult ages, indicating the general relevance of facial contrast cues. These findings also have implications for the understanding of facial beauty and of beautification practices such as makeup.

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“…For us humans, the eyes are not only sensory organs but, when observed by others, also an extremely important socio-cognitive stimulus. The wealth of information conveyed by the human eyes includes cues of health and age (Russell et al 2014 ; Gründl et al 2012 ), social interest (Kret et al 2014 ), emotional and attentional states (Provine et al 2013 ; Hess and Polt 1960 ) as well as behavioural intent (Adams and Kleck 2005 ) and male dominance (Kleisner et al 2010 ; but see also: Kocnar et al 2012 , who did not confrim the association between eye morphology and male dominance). This informative function is underscored by the uniqueness of the ocular morphology in our species (Kobayashi and Kohshima 1997 ).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Humans do not perceive conspecifics with a greater exposed sclera as more trustworthy: a preliminary cross-ethnic study of the function of the overexposed human sclera

et al. 2018

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Understanding the adaptive function of the unique morphology of the human eye, in particular its overexposed white sclera, may have profound implications for the fields of evolutionary behavioural science, and specifically the areas of human interaction and social cognition. Existing hypotheses, such as the cooperative eye hypothesis, have attracted a lot of attention but remain untested. Here, we: (i) analysed variation in the visible sclera size in humans from different ethnic backgrounds and (ii) examined whether intraspecific variation of exposed sclera size is related to trust. We used 596 facial photographs of men and women, assessed for perceived trustworthiness, from four different self-declared racial backgrounds. The size of the exposed sclera was measured as the ratio between the width of the exposed eyeball and the diameter of the iris (sclera size index, SSI). The SSI did not differ in the four examined races and was sexually monomorphic except for Whites, where males had a larger SSI than females. In general, the association between the SSI and trustworthiness was statistically insignificant. An inverted U-shaped link was found only in White women, yet the strength of the effect of interaction between sex and race was very small. Our results did not provide evidence for the link between exposed sclera size and trustworthiness. We conclude that further investigation is necessary in order to properly assess the hypotheses relating to the socially relevant functions of overexposed sclera.

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The Blue-Eyes Stereotype: Do Eye Color, Pupil Diameter, and Scleral Color Affect Attractiveness?

Cited by 39 publications

References 24 publications

Sclera color changes with age and is a cue for perceiving age, health, and beauty.

Sclera color changes with age and is a cue for perceiving age, health, and beauty.

Facial Contrast Declines with Age but Remains Sexually Dimorphic Throughout Adulthood

Humans do not perceive conspecifics with a greater exposed sclera as more trustworthy: a preliminary cross-ethnic study of the function of the overexposed human sclera

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