What do “narrowed eyes” mean?
Narrowed eyes typically signal that a person is angry or suspicious. Unless someone is narrowing their eyes, or squinting, to protect their eyes from sunlight, narrowed eyes point to a wide range of negative emotions. A person may be making their eyes smaller because they want to control the amount of information being transferred to the brain, considering it distasteful, offensive, or unpleasant. Similarly, narrowed eyes could mean someone is trying to discern a situation, person, place, or thing, deciding whether it is safe or not. A study conducted by the University of Colorado revealed that the openness of the eye was the leading predictor of emotion. Narrowed eyes signaled feelings like hatred, disgust, and anger, while wider eyes hinted at emotions like surprise, fear, and awe. Research suggests that a narrowed gaze likely operated as a way of concentrating, discriminating, and inspecting thousands of years ago, similar to the way a camera lens zooms in. This feature may have helped hunters determine if a certain area was safe and if their kill was safe to eat, among other functions. This support’s Darwin’s theory that facial expressions are not just random emotional impulses used to communicate, but that they served as invaluable tools to help our species survive.
Emotions Associated with Narrowed Eyes
Disgust Narrowed eyes, sometimes coupled with a wrinkled nose and pursed lips, is a clear indicator of disgust. In fact, scientists believe that this facial expression has been passed down from our hunter-gatherer ancestors who contorted their faces in this way in order to discriminate, sense danger, and examine their surroundings closely. Curled lips and wrinkled noses are linked with disgust because they lead to narrowed nasal passages, which may have blocked the stench from recently killed prey, among other foul-spelling stimuli.
Anger Narrowed eyes and furrowed brows are common ways to describe someone who is angry, but why? Anger is a stress response and stress leads to a buildup of tension in the body, affecting the eyes. Additionally, narrowing the eyes may be a way of controlling the increasing perceived hostility of the situation, allowing the person to self-soothe without sending any more damaging data to the brain. A 2024 determined that facial expressions, like narrowed eyes, were best interpreted when accompanied with sounds that confirmed the emotion. However, facial expressions are still considered the strongest identifiers of emotion.
Suspicion This might be the most identifiable emotion behind narrowed eyes. It’s natural to allow our eyes to narrow into slits when presented with conflicting information, which causes us to retreat into a secret bubble of discernment and scrutiny. This too, may be a result of evolution, as our ancestors had to be very careful and, therefore, very suspicious of everything and everyone around them. Narrowed eyes serve to sharpen focus, a very helpful biological tool for early humans.
Concentration Just like a camera lens circles in on something to focus, humans squint their eyes in order to concentrate their vision, thoughts, and feelings. Additionally, people with poor eyesight, and particularly those with nearsightedness, may squint in order to reduce blurriness.
Narrowed Eyes in Literature
“Narrowed eyes” is used in books in place of emotional adjectives. Instead of telling you how a character feels over and over again, many authors choose to detail facial expressions and body language in order to get the same message across to readers. You could easily stumble upon an angry character being described as having furrowed brows and narrowed eyes. This is a popular trope and equally synonymous with saying someone is suspicious or experiencing disgust. Here are some literary excerpts and examples on how to use this phrase. “Her eyes narrowed until they were a faint greenish glitter, like a forest pool far back in the shadow of trees.”―Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep “She narrowed her eyes at him. She wanted to tell him that it was his fault, that she would never have tripped if he’d just stayed the same old Jay he’d always been, gangly and childlike. But she knew that she was being irrational.”―Kimberly Derting, The Body Finder “My eyes narrowed. I didn’t like his logical reasoning.” — Jennifer L. Armentrout, Half Blood “She narrowed her eyes. ‘What is our heart’s desire?’ ‘Vengeance.’ His voice was soft, as if he were afraid that someone might be listening. ‘Justice.’”— George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows “He narrowed his eyes to slits so that he could peer into the eyes of this shameless, strutting personage to whom, apparently, modesty was unknown.”—Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen “Narrowed eyes and tight lips warned him that Naomi was about to explode.” —Eve Langlais, Delicate Freakn' Flower
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