Isn't it eyeronic? Little evidence for consistent eye colour choices across relationships

Abstract

This study examined the anecdotal notion that people choose partners based on preferred characteristics that constitute their ‘type’. We gathered the eye colours of participants’ partners across their entire romantic history in three samples (student-centred, adult, and celebrity). We calculated the proportion of partners’ eye colours, and compared that to 100,000 random permutations of our observed dataset using t-tests. This was to investigate if the eye colour choices in the original datasets had greater consistency than in the permutations. Across all samples, we observed no good evidence that individuals make consistent eye colour choices, suggesting that eye colour may not be a priority when choosing a partner.