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Dilated Pupils: 10 Messages My Eyes are

Sending You

Dilated pupils can reveal how hard were thinking, how excited or
disgusted we are and more
Our pupils, the black holes which let light into the eyes, dont just help us see, dilated pupils
can also signal whats going on in our minds.

Here are 10 pieces of psychological research which show how dilated pupils reveal many
aspects of thought.

1. Im thinking hard
Look into my eyes and ask me to name the cigar-smoking founder of psychoanalysis and you
wont see much change in my pupil size. The name Sigmund Freud comes easily to my lips.

But ask me to explain the laws of cricket and watch my dilated pupils.

Thats because research has shown that the harder your brain works, the more your pupils
dilate. When Hess and Polt (1964) gave participants more and more difficult tasks to
complete, their pupils got bigger and bigger.

2. My brain is overloaded
Keep watching my eyes closely and youll spot the point when explaining the laws of cricket
gets too much.
Poock (1973) reported that when participants minds were loaded to 125% of their capacity,
their pupils constricted.

Itll be trying to explain a googly that will do it. (Dont ask).

3. Im brain damaged
The reason doctors and paramedics flash a light in patients eyes is to check their brains are
working normally (and because its such an easy test to do). They use the acronym PERRL:
the Pupils should be Equal, Round and Reactive to Light.

If my brain is broken, say, because Ive had a bump on the noggin, you wont see PERRL.
There may well be other extremely subtle clues, like the blood pouring from my head.

4. Youre holding my interest


Dilated pupils can also signal whether Im interested in what youre saying.

White and Maltzman (1977) had participants listening to excerpts from three books: one was
erotic, another involved mutilation while a third was neutral.

Their pupils widened at first for all three. But they only remained wide for the passages that
were erotic or involved mutilation.

Im likely to be interested in anything new, so my pupils will dilate a bit at first, but theyll
only stay dilated if I continue to be interested.

5. Youre turning me on
If things take a sexual turn then our eyes are also involved. Both men and womens get dilated
pupils when they are sexually aroused (e.g. Bernick et al., 1971).

However, not everyone agrees dilated pupils are a signal of sexual arousal. It tends to get
tested by showing nude pictures to people and some argue that were just really interested in
the nude form.

6. You disgust me
Just as I have dilated pupils when Im interested or turned on, so they constrict when Im
disgusted.

Hess (1972) showed people pictures of injured children. First peoples pupils dilated because
of the shock and then they constricted to try and avoid the troubling images.

7. Whether Im liberal or conservative


Should you happen to be carrying around pictures of politicians you might be able to work out
whether Im a liberal or a conservative just from my pupil size.

Barlow (1969) showed people pictures of Lyndon Johnson, George Wallace and Martin
Luther King, Jr.. The liberals pupils dilated when they saw fellow liberals Johnson and King
but constricted when they saw conservative Wallace. Conservatives showed the opposite
pattern.

8. Im in pain
If youve had enough of this article now and want to cause me some pain in return, then why
not stab me with a pencil? If youre watching closely youll see my pupils dilate.

Chapman et al. (1999) fired small electric shocks into peoples fingertips and measured how
much their pupils dilated. At maximum intensity the pupils dilated by about 0.2mm.

But that was only to a relatively tame current. Imagine what you could do to my pupils if you
plugged me into the mains.

9. Im on drugs
and you can narrow down the type by looking at my pupils.

Some drugs, like alcohol and opioids cause the pupils to constrict. Others, like amphetamine,
cocaine, LSD and mescaline cause dilated pupils.

Police officers know this and some use it as one way of checking if someone is off their face.
They generally look for dilated pupils to either less than 3mm or dilated to more than 6.5mm
(Richman et al. 2004).

10. My personality
This one is not strictly related to pupil dilation, but its too good to leave out.

If you look closely at the coloured part of my eye, the iris, you might even get some clues as
to my personality (Larsson et al., 2007).
Look closely for crypts in my eyes (lines going away from the iris, labelled 1 above) and
this suggests Im a warm, tender-minded person. If you see furrows (labelled 3 above), then,
watch out, Im impulsive.

It seems that the same gene, Pax6, which affects part of the brain associated with approach-
related behaviours (the left anterior cingulate cortex, if you really want to know) also induces
tissue deficiencies in the iris.

Dilated pupils
As youll have noticed, the same pupil response can mean different things, although generally
dilated pupils send a positive message and when they constrict its a negative one. But exactly
what it means depends on the situation (and whether someone has turned on a light).

This is all good fun to know, but can we really detect these tiny changes in peoples pupil
size?

According to an fMRI imaging study, change in pupil size may be difficult for us to notice
consciously, but we do seem to pick up on these very small changes unconsciously (Demos et
al., 2008).

So changes in pupil size may be experienced, along with other verbal and nonverbal signals,
as a gut instinct to either approach someone or run like hell.

Whether or not the eyes are windows to the soul, the pupils are certainly windows to the
mind.

Image credits: maryaben & Larsson et al. (2007)

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