Blue-eyed men prefer blue-eyed women

Jealous man seeks partner for meaningful relationship. Tall, handsome, blue eyes, looking for blue-eyed women only.

Why? Because men with blue eyes are drawn towards blue-eyed women, and prefer to choose them as their partner because this can provide reassurance that the woman’s babies are theirs too.

When surveyed, blue-eyed men find pictures of women with the same eye colour significantly more attractive than those with brown eyes, whereas neither brown-eyed men nor brown-eyed women show any preference for eye colour, Bruno Laeng of the University of Tromsø, Norway, and his team have discovered.

The effect is seen in real relationships, too. Blue-eyed men are more likely to be romantically involved with a woman of the same eye colour than they are with brown-eyed women, or brown-eyed men are with a partner of any eye colour (Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, vol 61, p 371).

Blue eyes are a recessive trait, Laeng explains, so two blue-eyed parents should produce a blue-eyed child, while a child with any other eye colour must have been fathered by another man. Blue-eyed men seeking a partner unconsciously know this, Laeng claims, and select women of similar eye colour to ensure they can more easily spot if they have been cuckolded.