Attractiveness in the Eyes: A Possibility of Positive Loop between Transient Pupil Constriction and Facial Attraction

Abstract

Contrary to the long-held belief of a close linkage between pupil dilation and attractiveness, we found an early and transient pupil constriction response when participants viewed an attractive face (and the effect of luminance/contrast is controlled). While human participants were making an attractiveness judgment on faces, their pupil constricted more for the more attractive (as-to-be-rated) faces. Further experiments showed that the effect of pupil constriction to attractiveness judgment extended to intrinsically esthetic visual objects such as natural scene images (as well as faces) but not to line-drawing geometric figures. When participants were asked to judge the roundness of faces, pupil constriction still correlated with their attractiveness but not the roundness rating score, indicating the automaticity of the pupil constriction to attractiveness. When pupillary responses were manipulated implicitly by relative background luminance changes (from the prestimulus screen), the facial attractiveness ratings were in accordance with the amount of pupil constriction, which could not be explained solely by simultaneous or sequential luminance contrast. The overall results suggest that pupil constriction not only reflects but, as a part of self-monitoring and attribution mechanisms, also possibly contributes to facial attractiveness implicitly.

Enlargement of female pupils when perceiving something cute

“…In addition, the positive correlation in Experiment 1 is consistent with the findings of a previous study examining the relationship between aesthetic pleasure and pupillary response 11 . Further, the negative correlation in Experiment 2 is consistent with the findings of a previous study examining the relationship between facial attractiveness and pupillary response 12 . According to the results of Experiment 1 and 2, the pictures of human faces cause the opposite pupillary response to that of other stimuli.…”

“…Aesthetic or attractiveness judgments are related to cuteness, and previous studies have shown that these judgements are correlated with changes in pupil diameter. For example, in a study which used faces as stimuli, the pupils of participants dilated as ratings of aesthetic pleasantness increased 11 and contracted as ratings of attractiveness increased 12 . Pupillary response is also associated with uncanny, which is considered to be the opposite of cute, and weaker pupillary dilation has been shown for uncanny faces 13 .…”

Equivalent pupillary mimicry in younger and older adults.

“…One might intuitively expect greater dilation to more attractive stimuli. To the contrary, Liao et al (2021) found that pupil diameter decreased monotonically with increasing facial attractiveness This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.…”

Influence of the Location of a Decision Cue on the Dynamics of Pupillary Light Response

“…PLR is not completely reflexive; many non-visual cognitive factors, including attention (e.g., Binda et al, 2013 ; Naber et al, 2013 ), saccadic eye movement preparation ( Jainta et al, 2011 ; Mathôt et al, 2015 ; Wang et al, 2018 ; Pandey and Ray, 2021 ; Wang and Munoz, 2021 ), decision-making (e.g., de Gee et al, 2014 ; Sheng et al, 2020 ), and even subliminal stimuli can influence PLR ( Laeng et al, 2012 ; Einhäuser, 2017 ; Mathôt, 2018 ). On the other hand, pupil size too can influence cognition; for instance, movement planning ( Cherng et al, 2020 ) and esthetic appraisal evaluation ( Liao et al, 2021 ).…”