It isn’t a new phenomenon that eyes are considered ‘the door to the soul’, but could this be more literal than we think?
Just as there are more prominent and dominant eye colours to others, the same goes for personality types and the correlation between the two may be more apparent than we know it to be.
Just like your eye health can say a lot about your lifestyle, there has been speculation about the colour of your eyes linking to your personality.
Although the link between the two is still being investigated, the current findings have led to some interesting observations.
Studies have shown that the eye and many of its properties are linked neurologically to our brains. They work together to compute outside surroundings and relay them back as messages to the brain.
The research highlighted that the eyes can give us insight into how the brain operates as they work so closely together and are reliant on the sensory input of the eyes, which is why if you are blind other senses tend to heighten.
Dr Anthony Fallone of Edinburgh University led the research that has studied the links between eyes and personality and was inspired by the change in colour of his own hazel coloured eyes.
He began to pair attributes of each eye colour with the attributes of the personalities he found to be associated with them.
Dark brown or black eyes
Dark brown and black eyes are the most common out of all the eye colours, as over 70% of the world’s population has brown eyes.
The American Academy of Ophthalmology has posited that dark brown eyes are the oldest of the eye colours and there was a point in early history when everybody had dark eyes.
A study from Current Psychology found that the majority of participants with darker eyes tended to be more agreeable and sympathetic.
Paired with their agreeable traits, dark-eyed people are most likely to be natural-born leaders and are often seen that way by other people due to their sympathetic nature.
Paired with being a good leader, an interesting finding also highlighted that people with brown eyes are less likely to develop eye cancer and degeneration, compared to those with lighter coloured eyes.
Blue eyes
Research from Copenhagen University has found that having blue eyes is a result of a gene mutation that happened within Northern Europe.
Rather than the gene mutation producing the colour blue itself, it is a result of the lack of brown pigment or melanin in the eye.
The lack of melanin in people who have blue eyes is also apparent when looking at their skin tone too which is why you’ll often find people who have blue eyes also have pale skin.
In contrast to the findings of dark eyes, the same study found that people with blue eyes are often perceived as being competitive, egotistical and less empathetic towards other people.
Although having blue eyes doesn’t always equate to having these personality traits, this was a majority perception.
Moreover, a 2005 study highlighted that psychologists found that blue-eyed children tended to be wearier of new things and were noticeably less open around their peers compared to children with dark eyes.
However, in adulthood, pregnant women with blue eyes were found to have lower levels of postpartum anxiety, depression and rumination in comparison to the women in the study who had darker eyes.
Grey eyes
Grey eyes are seemingly the rarest eye colour in the world, but it is argued that grey eyes are simply a variation of blue eyes.
Biologically, grey eyes have more melanin in the front of the eye than traditionally blue eyes do, which is what gives them the dark hue to make them look grey in colour.
The tendencies shown with people who have grey eye colour are that they are the most adaptable. This can be in social situations and amongst varying groups of people.
This can be translated to a well-balanced nature or having an extremely wide spectrum of emotions. The level of control that people with grey eyes have over their emotions is still yet to be investigated.
The studies have shown that people with grey eyes are considerably hard workers and often have higher tolerance and focus than their blue-eyed counterparts.
Similarly to those with dark or brown eyes, they strive to be taken seriously and can be known to keep their defences up just like blue-eyed children were shown to do.
Hazel eyes
Hazel coloured eyes are the eye colour that was a catalyst into Dr Fallone investigating if there were any correlations between eye colour and personality.
Although the descriptions of the hazel coloured eyes are often debated, they are called hazel because they bear resemblance to the colour of an actual hazelnut.
The Eye Doctors of Washington outline that hazel eyes consist mostly of brown and green. Similarly to grey eyes, they appear to flit between different colours depending on the light in which they are in and the way the colours are scattered through the iris.
When it comes to personality, those with hazel eyes have the tendency to be more independent from a younger age.
This tendency and commonality seem to come paired with a confident demeanour and spontaneous attributes.
Hazel eyes have varying levels of melanin, so can be harder to pair with certain personality traits, although having a confident personality seems to be a common theme across the varying research related to eye colour and personality.
Green eyes
The International Journal of Indian Psychology found that participants, with green eyes, who took part in their study were deemed to be the sexiest.
Contrary to green eyes having the affiliation of being jealous, the personality traits paired with those who have green eyes were associated with creativity and mischievous nature.
The mystery associated with those who have green eyes is considered the reason that people may be wary of those with green eyes, but have been shown to have the calmest personality when it comes to eye colour.
Although eye colour cannot directly imply a certain personality, research has shown that what causes our eye colours to be different could also be the reason why our temperaments are the way they are.
Featured image credit: Eric May via Flickr under a CC BY 2.0 license
