Czech study: Brown-eyed men percieved as more dominant
Czech scientists have come up with an interesting theory about the relation between a man's character and the colour of his eyes. According to the study which appeared in this month's issue of the journal Personality and Individual Differences, brown-eyed men are perceived as more dominant than blue-eyed ones. The main author of the study is Karel Kleisner from the Science Faculty of Prague's Charles University.
“What is important is that the faces of brown-eyed men were rated as more dominant than those of blue-eyed men. Even when their eyes were not brown, the eye colour had no effect on perceived dominance. That’s the main result. However, this suggests that some other facial features associated with eye colour affect the perception of dominance in males.”
So basically you showed those people photos of brown-eyed men, and they perceived those as more dominant. And then you changed the colour of their eyes, but they still perceived them as dominant although the colour was changed.
“Exactly. Dominant faces remain dominant in spite of the fact that the eye colour was changed.”
Why doesn’t this also apply to women? You found out that with women it’s different – why is that?
“Basically, from the evolutionary point of view, females are more stress-resistant stable compared to the rather variable stress-sensitive males. There is also another possible explanation – women’s sexual choices can enhance the link between eye colour and the face shape of men. But there is no such selection pressure on women. Men do not make choices based on different shapes in women. Women have also competitive preferences for dominant males as sexual partners, and this may eventually cause the differences in the shape of men’s faces.”
“We have proposed three causes that can explain this difference. It could be what is known as the pleiotropy effect – one gene will cause several phenotypic effects; also, some kind of genetic linkage that traits of dominance or the genes which bring about the dominant traits are linked with other genes that code eye colour. Let’s say that pleiotropy and genetic linkage deal with genes association in general, and they represent body map causation.
“What is much more interesting for me is the social feedback hypothesis that we have proposed in this paper. This hypothesis is based on the presumption that brown- and blue-eyed subjects are treated differently within their social surroundings, for instance by their parents and peers.
“It was observed by other researchers that blue-eyed boys, or pre-schoolers, are more socially vary, being thus more temperamentally inhibited, displaying more reticent behaviour and having more internalized problems compared to boys with brown eyes. Such an early experience may influence their hormonal balance and then be literally inscribed into the child’s face during his development, preserved until adulthood, finally brining on the perception of higher submissiveness of blue-eyed males.”
So it works in a circle because you if have brown eyes, it influences some level of hormones in your body which then in return affects the growth of your face?
You will be working with colleagues from Estonia and Turkey to see of the theory applies there. What results do you expect, and are you planning to extend such cooperation even further?
“We preliminarily hypothesize that due to its linkage to some specific facial features, eye colour could acquire particular meanings in different situations, different social contexts, different populations all around Europe. We are therefore planning to search for cross-cultural associations between perceived and self-reported psychological characteristics, shape of face, and eye colour.
“Also, we plan to observe the effect of rareness, local fashions and folklore and perception of eye colour. For instance, one good example would be to ask, how the blue eyes of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk might have increased his charisma in the pervasively browned-eyed Turkish population.”
The figure of Atatürk would be a very sensitive issue in Turkey. What did you colleagues there say when you told them about this?
“I told them, and they were open to this question and this explanation. You see, it’s also connected to another Turkish phenomenon called Nazar or Mashallah – all those blue eyes you can see on cars or doors, which are supposed to protect you from evil.”
“I’m not suggesting that brown-eyed people dominate blue-eye ones, mainly because we have been studying the relation between eye colour and perceived dominance. We left aside actual dominance, especially of males. We were interested in what people look like, not how dominant they actually are.”
But do you think that your theory could go as far as to imply things like this, even though you are not working with it? Can it be abused in this sense?
“I don’t think so. In history, this has been a problem of scientific results produced on the demand of dangerous ideologies in Germany, South Africa, or even the US. Sciences like anthropology, psychology and so on traditionally look for differences, but also resemblances in comparing people from different social, cultural and biological context. Differences simply emerged during the evolution and as such do not represent a problem. The hot spot there is the interpretation of these results.”
