The Book of Tells (Peter Collett)[unlocked]

THE BOOK OF TELLS
• THE DIPPED HEAD. When she's looking at her lover,
one of the ways that a woman can make her eyes look
bigger is by lowering her head. This creates a foreshortened
effect, so that her chin appears to be smaller,
while the top of her face, including her eyes, seems to be
bigger. But there's also another principle at work.
Because children are shorter, they sometimes look at
adults out of the top of their eye sockets. When a woman
lowers her head while looking at her lover it automatically
makes her seem much smaller, and therefore
more in need of protection. The fact that lowering of the
head is associated with submission is another reason why
women are more likely to dip their head when they're
flirting with a man. 23 In fact Ruth Campbell and her
colleagues at University College London have found that
individuals who are photographed looking down are
seen as more feminine. 24
• DILATED PUPILS. When people become aroused -
either pleasantly or otherwise - their pupils tend to
dilate. However, people can't consciously control the
size of their pupils, and they have no way of knowing
how large or small their own pupils are. People are
generally more attracted to individuals with large pupils
than to those with constricted pupils, although they are
seldom aware of the role that pupil size plays in their
preferences. But there are individuals who know about
pupil dilation and who use it to gauge other people's
moods. For example, it's reported that in pre-revolutionary
China, jade sellers used to watch the pupils of their
customers so that they could see if they liked a particular
piece of jade or were happy to pay the asking price. 25 In
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