The Definitive Book of Body Language - Barbara Pease [57]
When a man is excited by a woman, which part of
his body can grow to almost three times its size?
When lovers gaze deep into each other's eyes, they are unknowingly looking for pupil-dilation signals and each becomes excited by the dilation of the other's pupils. Research has shown that when pornographic films are shown to men, their pupils can dilate to almost three times their size. Most women's pupils gave the greatest dilation when looking at pictures of mothers and babies. Young babies and children have larger pupils than adults, and babies' pupils constantly dilate when adults are present in an attempt to look as appealing as possible and therefore receive constant attention. This is why the bestselling children's toys almost always have oversized pupils.
Research also shows that pupil dilation has a reciprocal effect on the person who sees the dilated pupils. Men looking at pictures of women with dilated pupils showed greater pupil dilation than when they looked at pictures of women with constricted pupils.
Take the Pupil Test
The ability to decode pupil dilation is hardwired into the brain and happens completely automatically. To test this, cover diagram B with your hand and ask someone to stare at the “pupils” in illustration A. Then switch them to staring at illustration B and you'll see how their pupils dilate to match the illustration, because their brain thinks it's looking at eyes that find it attractive. Women's pupils dilate faster than men's to create rapport with what their brain sees as another person's eyes.
Diagram A
Diagram B
Hess conducted a pupil response experiment by showing five pictures to respondents: a naked male, a naked female, a baby, a mother and baby, and a landscape. Predictably, men's pupils dilated most at the naked female, gay men dilated most at the naked male, but women's pupils dilated most at the picture of the mother and baby, with the naked male picture coming in second.
Tests conducted with expert card players show that fewer games were won by the experts when their opponents wore dark glasses. For example, if an opponent was dealt four aces in a game of poker, his rapid pupil dilation could be unconsciously detected by the expert, who would “sense” he should not bet on the next hand. Dark glasses worn by the opponents eliminated pupil signals and, as a result, the experts won fewer hands than usual.
Pupil decoding was used by the ancient Chinese gem traders who watched for the pupil dilation of their buyers when negotiating prices. Centuries ago, prostitutes put drops of belladonna, a tincture containing atropine, into their eyes to dilate their pupils and to make themselves appear more desirable.
David Bowie has different-colored eyes—one blue and one hazel—and one is permanently dilated; this condition is called heterochromia and it affects 1 percent of the population. Bowie's eye variations are the result of a fistfight over a girlfriend at the age of twelve
An old cliché says, “Look a person in the eye when you talk to them” when you are communicating or negotiating, but it's better to practice “looking them in the pupil,” as the pupils will tell you their real feelings.
Women Are Better at It, as Usual
Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen at Cambridge University conducted some tests where subjects were shown photographs in which only a narrow strip of the face across both eyes was visible. The subjects were asked to choose between mental states expressed in the photographs such as “friendly,” “relaxed,” “hostile,” and “worried” and attitudes such as “desire for you” and “desire for someone else.”
Statistically, pure guesswork would result in half the answers being correct, but men's average score was 19 out of 25, while