14 DAY TRIAL // Only yesterday, the scientific journal PLoS ONE witnessed the publication of a new study stating that people with brown eyes appear more trustworthy than people whose eyes are of any other color.
Experiments carried out with the help of 238 volunteers showed that, when asked to rate various faces taking into consideration aspects such as attractiveness, dominance and trustworthiness, people are likely to label brown-eyed individuals as the most trustworthy.
“We tested whether eye color influences perception of trustworthiness. Facial photographs of 40 female and 40 male students were rated for perceived trustworthiness. Eye color had a significant effect, the brown-eyed faces being perceived as more trustworthy than the blue-eyed ones,” the study reads.
The specialists who carried out this study explain that, as peculiar as this may sound, it is not the color of their eyes that makes brown-eyed people more appealing to those who are in dire need of someone to trust.
Apparently, each eye color comes with a matching face, and the physical traits of the latter are the ones that up a person's appearance of reliability, Scientific American reports.
“We concluded that although the brown-eyed faces were perceived as more trustworthy than the blue-eyed ones, it was not brown eye color per se that caused the stronger perception of trustworthiness but rather the facial features associated with brown eyes,” the people behind this scientific investigation explain.
In case anyone was wondering why it is exactly that people with brown eyes score more than others on the trustworthiness scale, the answer is quite simple.
Some of the hallmarks of a brown-eyed person's face (such as bigger mouths and rather prominent eyebrows positioned close to one another) also happen to be natural expressions of happiness.
In other words, these people appear happy most of the time, regardless of whether they are indeed jumping for joy or not, and this is why they strike others as more trustworthy.