TY - DATA
T1 - Supplementary data for the paper: Replicating five pupillometry studies of Eckhard Hess
PY - 2021/04/14
AU - Joost de Winter
AU - S.M. (Sebastiaan) Petermeijer
AU - L. (Lars) Kooijman
AU - Dimitra Dodou
UR - https://data.4tu.nl/articles/dataset/Supplementary_data_for_the_paper_Replicating_five_pupillometry_studies_of_Eckhard_Hess/14134874/2
DO - 10.4121/14134874.v2
KW - replication study
KW - pupil dilation
KW - interest
KW - arousal
KW - gender differences
KW - mental demands
N2 - <p></p><p>Several
papers by Eckhard Hess from the 1960s and 1970s report that the pupils dilate
or constrict according to the interest value, arousing content, or mental
demands of visual stimuli. However, Hess mostly used small sample sizes and undocumented
luminance control. In a first experiment (<i>N</i> = 182) and a second preregistered
experiment (<i>N</i> = 147), we replicated five studies of Hess using modern
equipment. Our experiments (1) did not support the hypothesis of gender
differences in pupil diameter change with respect to baseline (PC) when viewing
stimuli of different interest value, (2) showed that solving more difficult
multiplications yields a larger PC in the seconds before providing an answer
and a larger maximum PC, but a smaller PC at a fixed time after the onset of
the multiplication, (3) did not support the hypothesis that participants’ PC
mimics the pupil diameter in a pair of schematic eyes but not in single-eyed or
three-eyed stimuli, (4) did not support the hypothesis of gender differences in
PC when watching a video of a male trying to escape a mob, and (5) supported
the hypothesis that arousing words yield a higher PC than non-arousing words.
Although we did not observe consistent gender differences in PC, supplementary
analyses showed gender differences in eye movements towards erogenous zones.
Furthermore, PC strongly correlated with the luminance of the locations where
participants looked. Overall, our replications confirm Hess’s findings that
pupils dilate in response to mental demands and stimuli of an arousing nature. Hess’s
hypotheses regarding pupil mimicry and gender differences in pupil dilation did
not replicate.</p><p></p>
ER -