Study: Brown Eyed Men Judged More Dominant

Van Morrison wrote "Brown Eyed Girl" in 1967. Maybe it's time a female pop artist recognized "Brown Eyed Guy." And not just for the sake of equal billing.

Researchers at Charles University in Prague have found that the faces of brown-eyed men were judged more dominant than faces of blue-eyed men. The same was not found to be true for women. The results are published in the July issue of the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

Benedict Jones, a psychologist at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, who was not involved in the study, described the finding as "surprising" and "not one I would necessarily [have] expected." He suggested that other researchers would need to also run their own tests to verify that the reported link was not "an idiosyncrasy of this particular sample of face images."

One of the paper's co-authors, Karel Kleisner said one likely explanation might be that children get treated differently based on their eye color, and that this treatment leaves a lasting impact.

"It is possible that subjects with blue eyes are treated as [small children] for a longer period than brown-eyed children," Previous studies have found that blue-eyed boys of preschool age were more inhibited than boys with brown eyes. Although the effect seemed to go away within a few years, a person's social standing can alter their hormonal balance, which could have lasting effects on face shape, Kleisner said. He further suggested that females have competing preferences for dominant males as sexual partners and less dominant males as mates. Men with intermediate features might get left out of the mating game.