Pupillary activity while listening to verbal passages

Twelve college students were presented with neutral, pleasant, and unpleasant verbal passages each of 120 sec duration. Changes in pupil diameter before, during, and after each passage were continuously monitored. Dilation accompanied the pleasant and unpleasant passages relative to the neutral passage. No evidence for defensive pupillary constriction was found. Habituation occurred during periods of silence as well as during the stimulus passages. These results suggest that a study reported by Hess and Goodwin (1974) as demonstrating pupillary constriction to unpleasant visual material may be interpreted as reflecting differential habituation.