By: Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer
Published: 12/06/2012 03:24 PM EST on LiveScience
How a man's gaze roams over a woman's body can tell you how into sex he is — a new finding that doesn't play out when the genders are swapped.
Men's gaze reflects their underlying sexual motivation, the researchers found. A woman's gaze, on the other hand, does not seem to match her sexual thoughts as clearly.
The findings aren't just about the differences between Mars and Venus; researchers hope they can be used to track the sexual motivations of sex offenders, providing a way to measure how well treatments are working.
"Eye movement is spontaneous and very difficult to inhibit so we thought perhaps we can use an eye tracker as a reliable marker to track sexual interest," study researcher Kun Guo, a psychologist at the University of Lincoln in the United Kingdom, told LiveScience.
Previous work has found that men, especially, give away their sexual thoughts with their eyes. The dilation of the pupil in response to sexual images, for example, can reveal sexual orientation reliably in men and in gay women, though straight women don't show such clear patterns. Studies have also found that heterosexual men gaze longer at pictures of women than of men, while heterosexual women look at male and female images about equally. [50 Sultry Facts About Sex]
Guo and his colleagues had previously discovered when young men look at images of women close to them in age, their eyes are drawn to the chest and waist-hip region. (This may not shock any woman who's been ogled in a bar lately.) These two regions are likely important signals for men, with breasts hinting at the sexual maturity of the woman and waist/hip ratio suggesting her ability to carry a child, Guo said. Men don't show the same ogling patterns when looking at older women or children, suggesting this sizing-up may be a signal of sexual interest.
To test the idea, the researchers showed 30 men, ages 18 to 25, and an equivalent group of women, all heterosexual, pictures of clothed children, early-20s adults and adults in their late 30s or early 40s. They asked the participants to simply look at the pictures as they'd normally scan an image while a gaze-tracking device recorded where their eyes moved.
Next, the participants filled out questionnaires about their sexual personalities, covering topics from how sexually inhibited they were to how sexually compulsive, or likely to take sexual risks, they were.
By comparing the questionnaire answers with the gaze-tracking data, the researchers found that men who reported more sexual compulsivity or risk-taking gazed longer than other men at the breasts and hip-waist regions of 20-year-old women — but not at those regions in girls or women older than themselves. In other words, their gaze seems to give away their higher-than-average sexual interest. And the longer gazes are confined to women they find sexually interesting (based on age).
"We argue it's a high-level mental process which guides this unique gaze pattern," Guo said.
Women's gaze patterns were not nearly so neat. The researchers did find that highly sexually compulsive women looked more at the bodies of the 20-year-old women than did other women, but they also looked more at the bodies of children and 40-year-old women. It could be that the more sexually compulsive a woman is, the more she compares her body with other women's, the researchers wrote online Nov. 13 in the Journal of Sex Research. Either way, the women's gaze did not appear to reveal their sexual interests; no gaze patterns were found when shown images of men.
Guo and his colleagues are now analyzing the data from a third experiment comparing the gaze patterns of sex offenders with non-offenders. So far, he said, the results look promising.
"We argue probably we can use this eye tracker potentially as some kind of reliable methodologically to asses how effective the treatment is and how likely people will be to reoffend," Guo said.
Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas or LiveScience @livescience. We're also on Facebook & Google+.
Copyright 2012 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Our 2024 Coverage Needs You
It's Another Trump-Biden Showdown — And We Need Your Help
The Future Of Democracy Is At Stake
Our 2024 Coverage Needs You
Your Loyalty Means The World To Us
As Americans head to the polls in 2024, the very future of our country is at stake. At HuffPost, we believe that a free press is critical to creating well-informed voters. That's why our journalism is free for everyone, even though other newsrooms retreat behind expensive paywalls.
Our journalists will continue to cover the twists and turns during this historic presidential election. With your help, we'll bring you hard-hitting investigations, well-researched analysis and timely takes you can't find elsewhere. Reporting in this current political climate is a responsibility we do not take lightly, and we thank you for your support.
Contribute as little as $2 to keep our news free for all.
Can't afford to donate? Support HuffPost by creating a free account and log in while you read.
The 2024 election is heating up, and women's rights, health care, voting rights, and the very future of democracy are all at stake. Donald Trump will face Joe Biden in the most consequential vote of our time. And HuffPost will be there, covering every twist and turn. America's future hangs in the balance. Would you consider contributing to support our journalism and keep it free for all during this critical season?
HuffPost believes news should be accessible to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay for it. We rely on readers like you to help fund our work. Any contribution you can make — even as little as $2 — goes directly toward supporting the impactful journalism that we will continue to produce this year. Thank you for being part of our story.
Can't afford to donate? Support HuffPost by creating a free account and log in while you read.
It's official: Donald Trump will face Joe Biden this fall in the presidential election. As we face the most consequential presidential election of our time, HuffPost is committed to bringing you up-to-date, accurate news about the 2024 race. While other outlets have retreated behind paywalls, you can trust our news will stay free.
But we can't do it without your help. Reader funding is one of the key ways we support our newsroom. Would you consider making a donation to help fund our news during this critical time? Your contributions are vital to supporting a free press.
Contribute as little as $2 to keep our journalism free and accessible to all.
Can't afford to donate? Support HuffPost by creating a free account and log in while you read.
As Americans head to the polls in 2024, the very future of our country is at stake. At HuffPost, we believe that a free press is critical to creating well-informed voters. That's why our journalism is free for everyone, even though other newsrooms retreat behind expensive paywalls.
Our journalists will continue to cover the twists and turns during this historic presidential election. With your help, we'll bring you hard-hitting investigations, well-researched analysis and timely takes you can't find elsewhere. Reporting in this current political climate is a responsibility we do not take lightly, and we thank you for your support.
Contribute as little as $2 to keep our news free for all.
Can't afford to donate? Support HuffPost by creating a free account and log in while you read.
Dear HuffPost Reader
Thank you for your past contribution to HuffPost. We are sincerely grateful for readers like you who help us ensure that we can keep our journalism free for everyone.
The stakes are high this year, and our 2024 coverage could use continued support. Would you consider becoming a regular HuffPost contributor?
Dear HuffPost Reader
Thank you for your past contribution to HuffPost. We are sincerely grateful for readers like you who help us ensure that we can keep our journalism free for everyone.
The stakes are high this year, and our 2024 coverage could use continued support. If circumstances have changed since you last contributed, we hope you'll consider contributing to HuffPost once more.
Support HuffPostAlready contributed? Log in to hide these messages.