Eye color and the pupillary attributions of college students to happy and angry faces

Abstract

As a means of clarifying certain of Hess’ (1975) unsubstantiated conclusions concerning the role of pupil size in nonverbal communication, the relationship between eye color and the pupillary attributions of college students to Hess’ happy-angry face task was measured. The results supported Hess’ claim that eye color is related to sensitivity to pupillary cues but were incongruent with his notion that blue-eyed people are especially sensitive due to some selective evolutionary process. © 1979, The Psychonomic Society, Inc.. All rights reserved.