Natural selection gave blue eyed men a preference for blue eyed women. Natural selection for women whose babies will be more obviously testable for paternity gave many men a preference for blue-eyed women.
Before you request a paternity test, spend a few minutes looking at your child’s eye color. It may just give you the answer you’re looking for. According to Bruno Laeng and colleagues, from the University of Tromso, Norway, the human eye color reflects a simple, predictable and reliable genetic pattern of inheritance. Their studies1, published in the Springer journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, show that blue-eyed men find blue-eyed women more attractive than brown-eyed women. According to the researchers, it is because there could be an unconscious male adaptation for the detection of paternity, based on eye color.
Since blue eyes are a recessive trait the reason for the preference for blue eyes by men is explainable with classical Mendelian genetics:
The laws of genetics state that eye color is inherited as follows:
1. If both parents have blue eyes, the children will have blue eyes.
2. If both parents have brown eyes, a quarter of the children will have blue eyes, and three quarters will have brown eyes.
3. The brown eye form of the eye color gene (or allele) is dominant, whereas the blue eye allele is recessive.
It then follows that if a child born to two blue-eyed parents does not have blue eyes, then the blue-eyed father is not the biological father. It is therefore reasonable to expect that a man would be more attracted towards a woman displaying a trait that increases his paternal confidence, and the likelihood that he could uncover his partner’s sexual infidelity.Eighty-eight male and female students were asked to rate facial attractiveness of models on a computer. The pictures were close-ups of young adult faces, unfamiliar to the participants. The eye color of each model was manipulated, so that for each model’s face two versions were shown, one with the natural eye color (blue/brown) and another with the other color (brown/blue). The participants’ own eye color was noted.
Both blue-eyed and brown-eyed women showed no difference in their preferences for male models of either eye color. Similarly, brown-eyed men showed no preference for either blue-eyed or brown-eyed female models. However, blue-eyed men rated blue-eyed female models as more attractive than brown-eyed models.
That means there is a place or set of places in the genome where genetic variations give some of us our pronounced preference for blue eyes. I also prefer green eyes. Does the same set of genetic variations cause both preferences?
There's a lesson here for for future parents who will be able to use genetic engineering techniques to choose eye color for their daughters: Choose blue to maximize the appeal of their daughters. The blue color won't cost them any with the brown eyed guys but will boost their appeal to blue eyed guys.
However the very trait that increases attractiveness of women has a different effect in men: It decreases the range of women who they find attractive. If you want your son to find a larger range of women attractive then it actually makes sense to give him brown eyes.
Blue eyed men tend to have blue eyed romantic partners.
In a second study, a group of 443 young adults of both sexes and different eye colors were asked to report the eye color of their romantic partners. Blue-eyed men were the group with the largest proportion of partners of the same eye color.
According to Bruno Laeng and colleagues, “It is remarkable that blue-eyed men showed such a clear preference for women with the same eye color, given that the present experiment did not request participants to choose prospective sexual mates, but only to provide their aesthetic or attractiveness responses…based on face close-up photographs.” Blue-eyed men may have unconsciously learned to value a physical trait that can facilitate recognition of own kin.
Once offspring genetic engineering becomes possible I am expecting we will see a huge surge in births of blue eyed and blond hair daughters. They'll also have larger lips, more bottle-shaped bodies, greater symmetry, higher cheekbones, and every other feature that is considered sexy and beautiful. People will make their sons more physically attractive as well. The future will be beautiful.
By Randall Parker at 2006 October 29 03:17 PM Brain Sexuality | TrackBackI don't think our instincts are smart enough to know Mendelian genetics.
But I will say, I have blue eyes and I find blue eyed women especially attractive.
Our instincts are the RESULT of genetics. If blue eyed men who prefered blue eyed women could avoid the time and energy wasted raising someone else's child, they themselves will have a better chance of reproducing. Blue eyed men who had no preference had less chance of reproducing and quickly became outnumbered if not extinct. Insticts have nothing to do with being smart or learning mendelian genetics. Thats why we call them instincts instead of knowledge.
That which is rare and exotic is what we find most attractive... that's why these recessive traits are sought after.
I suspect that if genetic engineering results in a boom of blonde-haired blue-eyed babies, a few generations down the road, it won't be as attractive as say, purple or red eyes. You get the point. ;)
I think Not My Second Opinion is closer to the truth. Since there are fewer people who have blue eyes, a blue eyed man sees a kindred spirit in a blue eyed woman.
Not My Second Opinion,
While I agree there is something to be said about the "rare and exotic", to me that doesn't explain why blondes in the US seem to be preferred to women of Hispanic, Black, Arab, Indian, East Asian, etc. heritage. Blondes in the US are no more rare than any of these other groups, and with the possible exception of East Asians, I don't think any are nearly as “preferred” as blondes.
Of course if it turns out that men just lump all women with brown hair and eyes together, then I’d have to say your probably right about the appeal of blondes.
"kindred spirit:" yeah, that's why fat ugly men prefer fat ugly women. But they don't. Or men feel that they are more like men than like women, so most men prefer men. Oops, not true.
Is there, and I'm not trying to be unpleasant, any mechanism for determining why people like some similarities in partners and not others? If the mechanism is: they like partners with the same trait when everyone else does too, then that's no answer.
And what evolutionary mechanism would make people prefer rair traits for the fact that they are rare? Albinos are rare, but I'm not interested. Ditto Down Syndrome. Most rare traits will be that way because they are bad. Though some will be rare because they are new beneficial traits or only recently being for, so how to tell? Look at last generation and yours, if something is more common in your generation, find it attractive?
Rob,
Yes, I'm not attracted to all sorts of rare human traits. The argument for the attraction of rareness does not hold up to close scrutiny. It also does not make sense evolutionarily speaking.
Well, if you look at it from an anthropological view, it makes sense. Since blue eyes are a resessive trait, and not as many people have it, blue-eyed people will instinctively want to keep their kind 'alive'. Collaborating with their own kind is the only way to maintain their kindred; and over the years, this instinct has developed into a spousal preference. As for the "rare and exotic" theory, I believe there is some truth to it, but only to a certain extent. 'Positve' "rare and exotic" traits (like blue eyes) may be sought after because it is deemed rare and mystical, whereas their 'negative' counterparts (like down-syndrome) are indeed frowned-upon.
Could it be that in areas where many people have blue eyes they're more likely to form couples than in areas where blue eyes are scarce? I live in Denmark and all of the men I've dated had blue, blue/green, blue/grey eyes. I've not dated a single brown eyed man. I'm adopted from Thailand and have very dark brown eyes. My husband has light blue eyes. Everyone in his family has blue eyes! They're also from a geographically limited area. We're talking a 100km radius which isn't that much! So it seems that chance and supply is more of a factor. I don't know what eye color my husband's ex's had but I think it's safe to assume that they had blue eyes. I also don't know if hub would've preferred to have married someone with blue eyes. Tough luck to him! He made his choice:-D
I live in Australia, in an area where people predominantely have blue or green eyes. I have brown eyes myself, as most of people from Spain, where I come from. However, even though brown eyes over here are less common, most of men still have a "thing" for having blue eyed babies.. My husband has blue eyes and we have a baby girl whose eyes are in between grey-green and a tiny bit of hazel in the middle.
She has absolutely beautiful eyes but for some reason I keep getting the same boring and annoying comment about her eyes not turning blue like her dad and instead getting brown like mine... She is still 10 months old so her eyes might change to brown, or maybe not!! who cares?... what is with some people over here? is it a crime or unlucky having brown eyes? They seem to think it is... hahahaha poor people...
My girl has the most gorgeous eyes and I'm really happy that they didn't turn blue. I personally prefer really dark brown, dark green or hazel eyes and I am very proud of my brown eyes and wouldn't change them for anything in the world. They are my eyes and everybody should feel proud of their eye colour and don't think about stupid things like the colour of their future children. The eye colour is not important!! what is important is that they are healthy but most of all, what it matters is the person as a whole beautiful and amazing being, regardles of their skin colour, eye colour or shape... Take care all and be happy!!
I totally agree with you Mistery! Brown eyes rock! They are sensual and deep and so beautiful! Blue eyes are common where I come from and green well I have seen plenty of those too, nearly everyone here has blue eyes so brown eyes are a rarity here and by living here I have seen people prefer mates with opposite traits so here i have seen many blue eyed people who absolutely adore brown eyed people and they all say brown eyes are amazing and beautiful here, no one moans about blue or green eyes being more beautiful because brown eyes are seen just as beautiful, u can't get the mystical appeal with other eye colours like you can with brown. And the way all u people say blue or green eyes change colour with lighting and clothing, well I got news for you I know many brown eyed people whose eyes change colour too with lighting and clothes, I know a person who had proper brown eyes which then later had beautiful streaks in them yellow/green during in the sunlight and they go to this beautiful colour range full of amazing volcanic browns and greens as well, and then they look brown or dark brown in the dark and indoors, so in effect it's not just blue spooky eyes that can look appealing because brown eyes are just as amazing in fact even more! You can get just as a wide variation of brown/hazel eye colour as blue or green eyes and to tell u the truth blue eyes are seen as common and cold whereas green and brown eye colours are seen as warm and actually attractive. Where green eyes are simply more rarer that’s all. So in effect brown and green eyes are very beautiful and all you people who think blue eyes are this and that, well please people who have brown eyes are more luckier than u blue uncoloured eyes, yes your eyes are actually a mutation of eye colour and probably not the colour eyes are suppose to be, which may explain why brown eyes are dominant! Because blue eyes have no melanin pigment in them – for all u illiterate freaks who always put brown eyed people down just because u can’t stand the fact that brown eyes are dominant, when I say blue eyes have no melanin in them I mean there is no colour pigment in the blue eyes just in case u don’t know what melanin is, so basically blue eyed people have no colour in their eyes and brown and green eyed people do have colour in their eyes because they have something called melanin a pigment which also acts as a bonus of protection from the sun! which I am afraid blue eyed people simply have very little of in fact if not any, especially those ghostly ice cold light blue eyes, ooo spooky which u may refer to as ‘baby blue’ well there is a new lingo ‘baby browns’ hmm it makes much more sense and doesn’t seem as racist ay, especially since this whole blue eyed façade is simply another form of racism and you all know I am right.
No, no, no. Blue eyes are rare simply because they are the latest evolution in eye color. The blue eye trait has not had the time to spread like with brown eyes. Blue eyes are seen as "beautiful" because women in the region had fewer men to choose from than their counterparts in Africa, so the men that survived the harsh winters and tribal fighting were able to choose the women that appealed to them - creating a premium on ESTROGEN. Also unlike Africa the northern climes had brutal winters so a man could only raise maybe one or two families at a time with the window of food gathering much narrower than in Africa. So with the less attractive women being cast aside, only traits that encourage men to hang around and care for their children, softer faces, poutier lips and blue eyes developed. So many people reflect upon the fact that eyes that sparkle are seen as attractive in both men and women. Blue eyes are much more likely to have this "sparkle" adaptation. This is simply a manifestation of the emphasis in ESTROGEN in caucasion women. They had to develop an alluring look in order to avoid extinction. This also explains the fullness and roundness of caucasian breasts compared to their counterpart females in Africa. The caucasion blonde woman needed to keep a man around at all costs, thus developing the paternal family system that predominates European culture. If the man is stuck with one woman for a very long time she better be pretty because there are a thousand girls he's giving up. Children were such a high investment in the primative European north that sometimes men and women would live together for ten years or more, which in primative terms is ages, since the man sacrifices lots of breeding opportunities within that time, as well as risks dying and leaving few offspring. It also probably didn't happen all at once either. Eye color probably hybridized through many shades of hazel to grey to finally blue in the people who were augmenting the mutation. The men too acquired this trait over time which seemed to work in the opposite way as well, women find light eyes attractive more so than dark ones. Although the premium on blue eye color is not the same in men as it is in women. Men can always compensate for lack of features with brute strengh or money.
The idea that blue eyed men look for blue eyed women as an affirmation of parentage is purposterous, simply because blue eyed traits needed to evolve in a bubble. In other words there has to be a pool of recessive trait blue eyed people in order for such a large population of blue eyes to even develop. If a blue-eyed man picked out a blue-eyed woman in this bubble, how is he to be certain in any way shape or form if the baby is really his if all the other men in town have blue eyes?! No blue eyes is a SEXUAL trait, developed for sex, to acquire the best mate, not the best baby.
Men prefer women who don't intimidate them, thus, plain and chunky, bottle-blonde or whatever hair and eyes, and easily accessible, like skank barflys or waitresses. Ninety-five percent of men are afraid of beautiful, confident, accomplished women.
Although I see some sense in this, I have to agree that the trait of the blue eyes is for the fun of the act of reproduction and not for actual conceiving of the bundle of joy. Everyone must remember, when the Norse started with the pillaging and raping, trust me I think determining the paternaty of a child was the last thing on their minds. Also, from the uppermost areas where they lived down to Africa and spread through out the world, when these traits came into existance no one CARED who the father was. Infadelity was proven by actually CATCHING the mate in the act, not looking at your offspring and wondering "Does he have Hugar's nose?" Remember the saying "It takes a village to raise a child"? Reason being that the ever consumeing fire of reproducing and the fun it intailed (Until some churches put a stop to it) was the most important to keep your tribes and clans alive. Reminds me of the silly things said about witches killing children and even "Satan" worshipers killing their own kind. Why bother? You would be killing the next generation of worshipers or witches. Doesn't make sense.
But, to have multiple wives with multiple offspring to carry on the Clan or Tribe is what mattered the most and so these traits were formed as well as the attractiveness deemed worthy by the viewer. Back then, you also have to realize that these "resesive traits" were not really that rare. Demographically speaking, they were not rare at all. Each were in their own demigraphical area, hence why the old burning of the loins when you see someone with similar traits. As I say, blood calls to blood no matter how old it is or how barbaric. The traits then became recessive when we all started exploring, and seeing others and how different, and then mingling. The genes were not needed anymore due to the population of all mankind thriving. If you have too much of one thing, it gets boring, trait wise of course. If you want to try to go by the study, then you would have to say that eventually we will all be blond with blue eyes. I do not believe evolution will work out this way. It seems our Mother Earth likes variety, and she means to keep things interesting.