Why are close-set eyes more attractive?

Two studies, the first one from an Italian beauty competition (Sforza et al 2015), finds that ‘attractive’ intraocular distance morphologies were shorter than average and in the second study at University of Louisville by Cunningham et al, the authors discovered that women find men with smaller eyes more attractive. These studies show that a shorter external eye distance is more attractive for males than a longer distance.

In a study by the Psychology Department of the University of York (Vernon et al, 2014) they tested the effect of different facial features on positive or negative first impressions. The external distance between the eyes was shown to increase the perceived “Youthfulness and attractiveness” (0.23) and decrease the perceived “dominance” (-0.21). These results were statistically highly significant and prove that even from a brief encounter the human facial topography makes a profound impression. “these traits can be read from a glimpse as brief as 100 milliseconds or less”.