A smiling mouth expression modulates gaze appearance by enhancing how the eyes light up (opens in new tab)

Research on composite facial expressions has shown that a smiling mouth, when combined with neutral eyes, can influence how the eyes are interpreted. From a gestalt-oriented perspective, we propose that smiling not only affects emotion recognition but also produces a fascinating, compelling visual counterpart: an enhancement of the eyes’ apparent luminosity, or ‘lighting up’. We tested this hypothesis in two within-subject experiments by collecting ratings of perceived eye brightness and smil...