Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA; Department of Developmental Psychology, Utrecht University, 3584 CS Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2023 Jan;225:105532. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2022.105532. Epub 2022 Aug 18.
The cooperative eye hypothesis posits that human eye morphology evolved to facilitate cooperation. Although it is known that young children prefer stimuli with eyes that contain white sclera, it is unknown whether white sclera influences children's perception of a partner's cooperativeness specifically. In the current studies, we used an online methodology to present 5-year-old children with moving three-dimensional face models in which facial morphology was manipulated. Children found "alien" faces with human eyes more cooperative than faces with dark sclera (Study 2) but not faces with enlarged irises (Study 1). For more human-like faces (Study 3), children found human eyes more cooperative than either enlarged irises or dark sclera and found faces with enlarged irises cuter (but not more cooperative) than eyes with dark sclera. Together, these results provide strong support for the cooperative eye hypothesis.
合作眼假说认为，人类眼睛的形态进化是为了促进合作。虽然已知幼儿更喜欢含有巩膜白色的刺激物，但尚不清楚巩膜白色是否会特别影响儿童对伙伴合作性的感知。在当前的研究中，我们使用在线方法向 5 岁儿童呈现了移动的三维面部模型，其中对面部形态进行了操作。与巩膜较暗的面部相比，儿童发现具有人类眼睛的“外星”面部更具合作性（研究 2），但不具有放大的虹膜（研究 1）。对于更像人类的面部（研究 3），儿童发现具有人类眼睛的面部比放大的虹膜或巩膜更具合作性，并且发现具有放大虹膜的面部比巩膜更可爱（但不更具合作性）。总的来说，这些结果为合作眼假说提供了强有力的支持。
