People sometimes say that the most attractive eye colour is blue, but what happens when it is scientifically tested?
Blue is the most attractive or beautiful eye colour, but only for some people, research finds.
Blue-eyed males are particularly attracted to blue-eyed females, the researchers found.
However, women showed no preference for blue or brown-eyed men and brown-eyed men showed no preference either.
Most beautiful eye colour study
The conclusion comes from a study in which 443 people looked at pictures of models whose eyes were digitally adjusted.
All the people in the study were Caucasians from Norway.
Here’s an example:
The study might help to explain a stereotype about blue-eyed people.
Blue eyes are often said to be more attractive, but when this is tested, the preference is hard to detect.
Another later study has found that people mention blue eyes being more attractive, but when it is tested, they are not especially attracted to blue eyes.
Why blue might be prettiest
The researchers give an evolutionary explanation for the preference for blue eyes in blue-eyed men:
“We propose that such a preference is an adaptation reflecting the selective pressure to increase the men’s ability to detect extra-pair paternity and decrease paternal uncertainty; that is, both as a phenotypically based assurance of paternity (i.e., when the father’s and offspring’s phenotypes match) as well as a defense against cuckoldry (i.e., when the phenotypes do not match).”
In other words, if you have blue eyes and so does your wife, then a brown-eyed baby spells bad news for your paternity.
The studies were published in the journals Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology and Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (Laeng et al., 2007; Gründl et al., 2012).
