The idea that men and women see the world in different ways may be physically true... at least a little bit. It turns out the pupil — the black spot where light comes into the eye — appears wider in women than men, findings that could turn out to be linked with beauty and attraction.
Of course, your pupils can vary in size, contracting and dilating to control how much light enters. The pupil is usually about 3 to 4.5 millimeters wide in adults, although it can reach up to between 5 and 9 millimeters in the dark.
Still, taking that account, scanning the eyes of 379 adults with normal eyes without vision problems revealed that on average, men had pupils 3.5 millimeters wide while women had pupils 3.8 millimeters wide. The scientists detailed their findings in the March issue of the journal Surgical and Radiologic Anatomy.
Intriguingly, pupils not only play a role in vision, but in sex as well. For instance, men apparently unknowingly regard women with larger pupils as more attractive, and the opposite is sometimes true. In fact, over 500 years ago, women in Italy used belladonna extract to dilate their pupils because they believed it would make them more attractive.
Image credit: Valua Vitaly/Shutterstock.