Eye color has no impact on attractiveness — but this feature is surprisingly sexy: study

These eyes have it.

Beauty is in the big iris of the beholder, according to a new study exploring how the eyes affect attraction.

“Appearance isn’t everything, of course, but sometimes we do want to look our best. Our research reveals that people appear more attractive when their irises are bigger, showing more brightness in their eyes,” said professor Zachary Estes of Bayes Business School at City, University of London, whose research was published online in the journal Cognition.

An international team of researchers, including others from the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, and the University of California at Los Angeles, conducted six experiments to determine if pupil size had an effect on one’s attractiveness. Participants provided ratings on a pool of 3,000 headshots from men and women with blue and brown eyes, which had been edited so that some of their pupils appeared dilated (big) and others constricted (small).

Results showed that headshots depicting smaller pupils — and larger irises — were consistently rated more attractive than large pupils.

Researchers also found that eye color had no significant bearing on perceived attractiveness as black and white headshots featuring big irises were judged just as favorably as colored ones.

Pupil size is controlled by autonomic bodily functions, usually triggered by changes in light. However, researchers also noted that the practice of artificially constricting one’s pupils for aesthetics actually has a historical basis.

“During the Renaissance period, women used to apply drops of ‘belladonna’ herb to increase pupil dilation and appear more attractive,” said Martina Cossu, a professor of economics and business at the University of Amsterdam and co-author of the study. “Almost 400 years later, our study shows that they overlooked the fact that bright eyes with constricted pupils appear more attractive than dilated pupils.”