Louis 'Skip' Sander
Optometrist's view of a Phoropter
Pupils
Lou has some unusual information about the size of people's pupils.
Everybody knows that our pupils contract in bright light, and dilate in the dark. A person's "normal" pupil size varies from individual to individual.
Neuroscientists know, but most people do not, that our pupils temporarily enlarge of when we are in a state of increased interest or arousal. When we are looking at something we like, our pupils unconsiously dilate. At some basic, animal level, everybody is aware of this, even though they may not know it intellectually or ever have even heard of it.
For centuries, people have taken advantage of this somewhat secret knowledge. Roman women used the drug belladonna to enlarge their pupils cosmetically and make themselves more attractive to men. More recently, poker players have worn sunglasses or eyeshades to obscure any sudden dilatation that might give away their hand.
Lou extends this to say that if a person has naturally large pupils, they have an advantage in life when interacting with other people. If you have naturally large pupils, says Lou, people will tend to think that you like them, and will therefore have a tendency to like you in return.
Beady-eyed Lou's pupils are naturally very small, so he has been working against this all his life. His son Bill has very large pupils, so he has had the opposite experience.
When Lou sees someone with very large pupils, he likes to let them know about this advantage they have. Most of them are totally unaware of it, but almost all of them want to know more. (And doesn't it make sense that Lou would approach these people and engage them in conversation? After all, the size of their pupils is a pretty good clue that they like him!)
This page will help them in their quest for more information. Look at these references and learn...
HowStuffWorks: How Pupils Advertise Attraction (It can be interesting to follow the links to the Sources)Power of Relevancy (Pupillary response as used in evaluating advertisements) Pupillary Responses, Cognitive Psychophysiology and Psychopathology (Good overview in a scientific paper)Pupillometry (Wikipedia article)Pupil Size, Eye Direction, and Message Appeal (Preview of an article in Journal of Marketing) Pupillometry: A Window to the Preconscious? (A scientific abstract) Pupillometric measures of cognitive and emotional processes (A complete scientific paper)People in advertising are very familiar with the attractiveness of large pupils. They often Photoshop images of people to make their pupils larger. Look at the pupils in this photo. Nobody can be sure, but I'm betting that those pupils have been digitally enlarged:
