Eyes really ARE window to the soul

WHEN I was a spotty teenager I read an article that said you could tell if a girl fancied you by the size of her pupils — they would dilate to show she was interested.

Of course, this is not an infallible test, and trying to judge pupil size in a busy pub by staring manically into someone’s eyes is unlikely to lead to a successful outcome.

That said, a study published this month in the journal Scientific Reports has shown that measuring the way that people’s pupils expand and contract is a surprisingly effective measure of their emotional intelligence.

In the study, participants’ pupil sizes were measured while they listened to a story on tape — this showed that some people are ‘super-synchronisers’, so well-tuned to a story’s emotional content that their pupils expand and contract with it. The hope is this research will lead to new insights into autism and other conditions, where people struggle to communicate.

It may also help people’s love lives, as the same researchers have shown that making and breaking eye contact, a popular form of flirting, makes your pupils contract and expand in time with the other person’s, and that makes you seem more interesting — a tip that would have been useful to me 50 years ago.