> It’s important to remember we’re talking about subconscious responses to pupil size. Just because you (and Eckhard Hess) believe it is “easier” to consciously perceivr pupils surrounded by blue irises does not mean your subconscious is any less aware of pupils in brown eyes.
Subconscious responses are still limited by physical limitations. If you don't believe, you can win the James Randi one million dollar prize by demonstrating it with an experiment. Maybe you can show that someone can subconsciously identify the shapes of a very black object placed in front of another very black object in a dark room.
> If it’s true that it’s easier to subconsciously decode pupils in blue eyes then it should be easy to verify experimentally
It's a proven fact that features are easier or harder to discern based on their background. For example a white cat is easier to see when it's almost pitch dark compared to a dark cat. Maybe someone like you can pioneer research in an experiment to formally prove it.
One can start by asking people which pupils are easier to discern from the iris in this picture. Pupils are black or a very dark color btw.
Compare top row to the rest. Now think about all the lighting conditions and distances that occur when people talk to or interact with other people. Of course there are people with vision impairments who won't notice the differences and may think they might all look the same. Scientists don't waste time trying to prove things already proven just because some internet troll debater may question things.
Hess' paper is quite well cited, so it should be easy to find any counter assertion to something that he stated with such high confidence: "It is of course". Maybe you can try finding one, but from this thread so far it seems like you're more interested in dismissing things for arguments' sake rather than try sourcing information like I have been doing.
> I see you are more interested in hurling insults than arguing your case in good faith. That’s fine but it means I am done responding to you after this comment.
You're the one that hasn't put in any research and just dismissing any scientific source I post. It's a pain and a waste of time to respond to low effort argumentative folks.
> You're the one that hasn't put in any research and just dismissing any scientific source I post. It's a pain and a waste of time to respond to low effort argumentative folks.
That's because your scientific sources are of questionable quality and don't support your hypothesis.
> so it should be easy to find any counter assertion to something that he stated with such high confidence: "It is of course".
More specifically Hess wrote "It is of course easier to see a pupil surrounded by a blue iris than it is to see one surrounded by a brown iris. Perhaps it is not unwarranted to assume that the response has been favored by evolutionary selection more in blue-eyed people than in brown-eyed people." (Emphasis mine.)
"Perhaps it is not unwarranted to assume" does not suggest high confidence.
> so it should be easy to find any counter assertion
I did a Google Scholar search for: "The Role of Pupil Size in Communication" blue brown
] As a means of clarifying certain of Hess' (1975) unsubstantiated conclusions concerning the role of pupil size in nonverbal communication, the relationship between eye color and the pupillary attributions of college students to Hess' happy-angry face task was measured. The results supported Hess' claim that eye color is related to sensitivity to pupillary cues but were incongruent with his notion that blue-eyed people are especially sensitive due to some selective evolutionary process.
The text describes issues with Hess's work, and how others at the time viewed Hess's conclusion:
] Hess offered no other evidence for this conclusion. That is, he did not bother to report any statistical evaluation of the differences between these means, nor did he provide the sample sizes and the standard deviations that would have permitted others to do so. Perhaps it is this lack of concern for relevant detail on Hess' part that led Ianisse (1977) to conclude, "it is difficult to seriously entertain the notion that the pupil plays a major role in nonverbal communication, for no convincing research has shown the proposed phenomenon to be veridical" (p.170). Ianisses's point is well taken, and perhaps even charitable, for Hess' apparent disdain for statistical evaluation of his data invites the speculation that possibly the obvious statistical tests were computed but were not reported because these results proved to be not significant.
and their attempt at replication showed that hazel-eyed people were more sensitive than blue-eyed people, but write that such an interpretation "would strain credibility":
] These results seem to be incongruent with Hess' conclusion that blue-eyed people have had some selective evolutionary advantage with respect to sensitivity to pupillary cues. While our data suggest that hazel-eyed people seem to be more sensitive to pupillary cues, we feel that it would strain credibility to attempt to explain these differences in terms of a selective evolutionary process as Hess did. In fact, any explanation of the processes that might have led to the differential sensitivity of browne, blue-, and hazel-eyed people to pupillary cues seems premature. For, as Janisse (1977) has correctly pointed out, it remains to be demonstrated that results such as these are veridical. Thus, subsequent research should focus on determining whether the apparent sensitivity advantages enjoyed by hazel- and perhaps blue-eyed individuals translate to more effective interpersonal skills.
It's hard to get much easier than that.
That part of Hess's research failed replication, just like how https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016787602... ("Replicating five pupillometry studies of Eckhard Hess") showed how some (though not all) of Hess's work could not be replicated, and pointed out how "Hess mostly used small sample sizes and undocumented luminance control".
Why are you so certain of Hess's hypothesis when it seems to have been shot down over 40 years ago? If you know of any follow-up studies which showed the replication attempt could not be replicated, while the original could, please provide it.
Perhaps you can point to something more substantial than 50 year old research containing documented questionable accuracy?
Did you not find these follow-up papers in your attempts to understand this research? They were quite easy to find, while you seemed very certain they did not exist. What formed the basis of your confidence that Hess's hypothesis had not been challenged?
And remember, your claim is "the evolutionary reason is that [blue-eyed people] end up being a good quality in a mate because it's easier to see ... their emotional states", so supporting evidence must "focus on determining whether the apparent sensitivity advantages enjoyed by ... blue-eyed individuals translate to more effective interpersonal skills."
Which you have failed to do, preferring to make chains of correlations to support your argument.
But correlations are not generally transitive, so that argument is invalid.
Subconscious responses are still limited by physical limitations. If you don't believe, you can win the James Randi one million dollar prize by demonstrating it with an experiment. Maybe you can show that someone can subconsciously identify the shapes of a very black object placed in front of another very black object in a dark room.
> If it’s true that it’s easier to subconsciously decode pupils in blue eyes then it should be easy to verify experimentally
It's a proven fact that features are easier or harder to discern based on their background. For example a white cat is easier to see when it's almost pitch dark compared to a dark cat. Maybe someone like you can pioneer research in an experiment to formally prove it.
One can start by asking people which pupils are easier to discern from the iris in this picture. Pupils are black or a very dark color btw.
https://mylumineyes.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/eye-color...
Compare top row to the rest. Now think about all the lighting conditions and distances that occur when people talk to or interact with other people. Of course there are people with vision impairments who won't notice the differences and may think they might all look the same. Scientists don't waste time trying to prove things already proven just because some internet troll debater may question things.
Hess' paper is quite well cited, so it should be easy to find any counter assertion to something that he stated with such high confidence: "It is of course". Maybe you can try finding one, but from this thread so far it seems like you're more interested in dismissing things for arguments' sake rather than try sourcing information like I have been doing.
> I see you are more interested in hurling insults than arguing your case in good faith. That’s fine but it means I am done responding to you after this comment.
You're the one that hasn't put in any research and just dismissing any scientific source I post. It's a pain and a waste of time to respond to low effort argumentative folks.