World of Psychology

Sex Differences in Sex Visuals

By Will Meek, PhD

There was an interesting study covered in the Psych Central newsroom on how men and women differ in the attention paid to visual components of sex. Essentially, researchers used eye tracking technology to examine the pattern of how people processed pictures of sex. The goal of the work is to understand what visual elements of sex are important to men and women.

“Researchers hypothesized women would look at faces and men at genitals, but, surprisingly, they found men are more likely than women to first look at a woman’s face before other parts of the body, and women focused longer on photographs of men performing sexual acts with women than did the males.”

Everything I’ve seen that uses the eye-tracking technology has been terrific, and I think that this work really holds promise in unlocking some of the mysteries of what people find visually appealing sexually on conscious and subconscious levels.


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    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 16 Apr 2007
    Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.

APA Reference
Meek, W. (2007). Sex Differences in Sex Visuals. Psych Central. Retrieved on February 14, 2012, from http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2007/04/16/sex-differences-in-sex-visuals/

 

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