Brown-eyed people seen as more trustworthy, study shows

A new study has shown brown-eyed people appear more trustworthy to others.

Researchers at Charles University in the Czech Republic found that those with brown eyes seem more trustworthy than those with blue eyes.

The study looked at the faces of 80 students with measures such as attractiveness, trustworthiness and dominance.

Faces were looked at by 238 participants who were asked to measure the indicators for each face.

The results were surprising.

Though it is well known that female faces tended to be considered more trustworthy, eye color also played a major role.

Researchers found that whether the participant was male or female, brown-eyed or blue-eyed, everyone chose the brown-eyed person as the most trustworthy, said NBC News.

The choice held true even if the person was considered attractive or unattractive.

Yet, when doctors looked more closely, they found that eye color didn't really matter and, instead, brown-eyed faces had something else in common.

Using comparisons on computer, they determined that in fact it was the morphology of the face that made the difference.

“Brown-eyed individuals tend to be perceived as more trustworthy than blue-eyed ones,” explain the authors, reported Scientific American.

“But it is not brown eyes that cause this perception. It is the facial morphology linked to brown eyes.”

Indeed, brown-eyed men have bigger mouths, broader chins, thicker eyebrows and bigger noses, said the Daily Mail.

Oddly, the researchers could not find the same morphology in women, suggesting something else makes female faces more trustworthy than the structure.

The findings were published in the journal PLoS ONE.