I was brushing my teeth one night, when I, for some unknown reason, got fascinated with my eyes and their color. I’m sure everyone has had those private moments in front of the mirror where they have analyzed some aspect of themselves. As I leaned closer to the mirror, I noticed that I had this very dark ring around my iris (the colored part of my eye). I had never paid attention to it before and I had no idea what it was, but I was so pleased with my discovery that I decided to research it further and find a name for what I had observed. The term that came up was “limbal ring”. At this point, I got very excited and decided I wanted to try to capture my limbal rings in a photo. It took some work, and some very good lighting, but I managed to do it and this was the final result:
Upon further research, I discovered a study that was done at the University of California in Irvine that investigated if there was a correlation between the limbal ring and facial attractiveness.
They described that the thickness of the limbal ring lessens with age and sickness; therefore it is a good indicator of youth and health.
Participants of the study were seated in front of a screen which showed them two faces. These faces were identical except for the fact that one of the faces had the limbal rings edited out. The participants were then asked to choose the face they found more attractive.
These are two of the faces that were shown during the study:
Evolutionary Psychology Journal
Which face do you think is more attractive, the one on the left or the one on the right?
Only light colored eyes were used for the faces because the limbal rings are more prominent in light colored eyes. All of the faces had a very neutral expression and there was a mix of male and female faces.
It was shown that both males and females significantly rated the faces with visible limbal rings as more attractive.
In the pictures above, both faces had the limbal ring present in the photo on the right and the limbal ring absent in the photo on the left. When these pictures were shown to participants of the study, there was a greater preference for the two faces on the right.
To me it appears that there may be somewhat of a subconscious attraction to eyes with this feature because many people also choose to buy contact lenses that stimulate the appearance of a prominent limbal ring.
I found the results of this experiment fascinating and am amazed at how such a small feature can greatly influence our perception of facial attraction.
Alright, go check out those limbal rings!
Dragana Savic
