The Definitive Book of Body Languageon their head are perceived to be relaxed, youthful and 'cool'- just back from Club Med, in fact. This is because they give
the wearer the appearance that they have two huge eyes with
dilated pupils on the top of their head; this mimics the non-
threatening effect that babies and cuddly toys with painted
large pupils have on us.
Creating the 'Four Eyes'
effect of dilated pupilsThe Power of Glasses and Make-up
Wearing make-up definitely adds to perceived credibility, espe-
cially for women in business. To demonstrate this we
conducted a simple experiment. We hired four similar looking
female assistants to help sell our training products at a
seminar. Each woman was given her own separate merchan-
dise table and all were dressed in similar clothing. One
assistant wore glasses and make-up, the second wore glasses
and no make-up, the third had make-up and no glasses and the
fourth had neither make-up nor glasses. Customers would
approach the table and talk with the assistants about the pro-
grammes, spending an average discussion time of between
four and six minutes. When the customers left the tables they
were asked to recall information about each woman's person-
ality and appearance and to choose adjectives from a list that
best described each woman. The woman wearing both make-
up and glasses was described as confident, intelligent,
sophisticated and the most outgoing. Some female customers
saw her as confident but also cold, arrogant and/or conceited
— indicating they may have seen her as a possible competitor,
because the men never saw her this way. The assistant who