Eye Color, Does it matter?
Does eye color affect attractiveness?
Eye color is probably the most easily identifiable trait a layperson could pick out if you asked
them what makes somebody attractive.
However, we will come to see the fault in equating this phenomenon with blue eyes being
the most attractive eye color.
This video will likely ruffle some feathers.
I don’t know why, because it shouldn’t, but people tend to take pride in their eye
color being unique to them.
A lot of you have probably even complimented others on their eye color making them attractive.
At the end of the day, your dentofacial growth, health indicators, cephalometric proportions,
and general sexual dimorphism will determine how unique and attractive your face is.
Trying to place eye color on the same plane as these things is a false equivalence.
There is no evidence to suggest eye color is as influential as your jaw morphology,
skin quality, zygomatic bones, nose, or lips.
That is not really what we are trying to assess here anyways.
Assuming all things equal, does having blue eyes, or colored eyes in general, provide
that little cherry on top?
Does eye color change your attractiveness at all?
There are only two terms you really have to keep in mind here; they are the Iris of the
eyes, or colored portion of the eye, and the sclera, or whites of the eyes.
These two are really the only varying ‘colors’ of the eye.
How does changing the eye color of models affect their beauty?
A study by Feinman and Gill at the University of Wyoming sought to find sex differences
in physical attractiveness preferences.
They really honed in on coloration preferences: eyes, hair, and complexion.
The researchers studied the likes and dislikes male and female respondents made on different
eye colors.
The results were very significant, indicated by the low P values.
Females tended to prefer or like men with dark eyes, while men tended to prefer women
with the lightest eyes.
When it came to dislikes, males tended to dislike dark eyes and females light eyes.
Table 1 illustrates how prominent this preference really is.
Highlighted in yellow the females actually preferred brown eyes the most in men, with
dark blue a close second.
The males liked light blue eyes the most in females, but brown was a very close second,
and none of the other colors trailed too far behind.
This tells us that the males are a little less discerning in their eye color preferences.
Well, there is one caveat; black eyes were liked less than 4% of the time, and disliked
the most in females by male counterparts.
Females didn’t seem to dislike black eyes as much.
This was probably the most surprising part; females actually disliked light blue eyes
in males a good amount more than they disliked black eyes.
To sum up the results from Feinman and Gill, there does seem to be a confirmation of the
general ‘ideal’ of darker features being preferred in men and lighter features being
preferred in women.
This can be sort of demonstrated in women tending to dye their hair lighter.
There is an association between ‘man’ and dark color shades, and ‘women’ and
lighter color shades.
On eye color specifically, if we are speaking generally, brown eyes seem to be the most
consistently attractive eye color.
Still, there is no notable gap between the other colors, and the effect is probably not
that influential to overall facial attractiveness.
Rather, when the participants are asked to make slight like vs dislike preferential judgements,
they are really narrowing in on something that does not really play into facial beauty
that much.
What about other factors or colors in the eye besides the iris?
Research by Grundl et al., would align with this theory.
Their paper titled “The Blue eyes stereotype: Do eye color, Pupil diameter, and scleral
color affect attractiveness?”.
Actually shows that even within the eyes themselves, eye color is not that important when judging
attractiveness.
If we broaden that idea even more, eye color really is quite negligible in the grand scheme
of things.
Table 1 shows how attractiveness correlates with different factors in the eye area.
The thing that jumps off the screen is that a person’s real age is highly negatively
correlated with attractiveness.
This means older equals less attractive eyes.
Perceived age even more so showed older equals less attractive.
It does not really come as a surprise that older looking eyes are not as attractive:
whether that be scleral show, upper eyelid exposure, eye ‘glow’, wrinkles, eye bags,
lack of eyelashes, or lack of brows.
A lot of coloration qualities like saturation, brightness, blueness, and hue of the iris
were statistically non-significant.
Surprisingly, the sclera or whites of the eyes was negatively correlated with attractiveness.
This makes sense as the sclera of the eye are much more of a health indicator than the
iris color.
Yellowish, darker scleral color can signal dehydration or other health defects.
Blue sclera color can signal iron deficiency.
Veins, and other discoloration can be due to lack of sleep.
If your sclera is not clear, there is likely something negative going on with your health.
Table 2 shows the attractiveness value of brown vs blue eyes.
First, these results were not significant, but they also showed minimal difference.
Blue eyes received ever so slightly higher assessments of attractiveness on average,
but brown eyes have a slightly higher range, or ‘max possible’ attractiveness(within
1 Standard deviation).
The big difference comes in table 3; Blue eyes were overwhelmingly chosen when respondents
were asked “which features of this eye area do you find particularly attractive?”.
These results were significant, so the respondents really did believe their answers to this question.
The main takeaway of this study was that a younger looking eye area is perceived as most
beautiful.
As far as eye color, blue eyes were not rated more attractive than other colors.
The results from table 2 demonstrate something called the ‘blue-eyes stereotype”.
People believe blue eyes make eye areas attractive, but when it came to actual judging, the color
of the iris did not even really factor in.
The true attractiveness of the eyes comes down to how youthful they look; a clear and
healthy sclera is on e of these factors, as the ‘glow’ of the sclera can start to
diminish with age.
Preference would seem to play a larger role in iris color attractiveness, than say a jawline.
A defined, forward grown jaw will almost always be chosen as more attractive than a downward
grown jaw with a lot of facial fat.
So we cannot extrapolate the results of these studies to say that the cheekbones and how
high or low they are are purely subjective in how they affect facial attractiveness.
Eye color would seem to be a unique facial feature in this respect; even hair color has
a large preferential swing.
The eyes are so uniquely us; since the iris color is one of the most interpersonally variable
and captivating colors in the human face, it obviously receives a lot of societal attention..
Most people do not even know what the sclera is, so the eye color is usually the first
thing an average person could spell out.
For the average person the eye area usually just boils down
to your eye color.
eyebrows, and eyelashes.
There is not really anything wrong with that, we
are not all scientists, but
being able to discern prejudice from reality does help when trying to assess attractiveness.
Further research does need to be done, especially as it relates to the rarity of certain eye
colors within ethnic groups.
If you would like to get your face assessed, discover your eye youthfulness indicators,
or just get an indepth look into your face, order a QOVES facial evaluation over at our
website, performed by our in-house team of doctors and dentists to help you achieve that
next big glow-up.
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