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Gender and Visibility of Sexual Cues Influence Eye Movements While Viewing Faces and Bodies

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Abstract

Faces and bodies convey important information for the identification of potential sexual partners, yet clothing typically covers many of the bodily cues relevant for mating and reproduction. In this eye tracking study, we assessed how men and women viewed nude and clothed, same and opposite gender human figures. We found that participants inspected the nude bodies more thoroughly. First fixations landed almost always on the face, but were subsequently followed by viewing of the chest and pelvic regions. When viewing nude images, fixations were biased away from the face towards the chest and pelvic regions. Fixating these regions was also associated with elevated physiological arousal. Overall, men spent more time looking at female than male stimuli, whereas women looked equally long at male and female stimuli. In comparison to women, men spent relatively more time looking at the chests of nude female stimuli whereas women spent more time looking at the pelvic/genital region of male stimuli. We propose that the augmented and gender-contingent visual scanning of nude bodies reflects selective engagement of the visual attention circuits upon perception of signals relevant to choosing a sexual partner, which supports mating and reproduction.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the AivoAalto grant from the Aalto University, and Academy of Finland (Grant # 251125 to LN). We thank Sanni Aalto, Jenny Wahlström, and Anna Backström for their help with data acquisition.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Brain Research Unit, O.V. Lounasmaa Laboratory, School of Science, Aalto University, 00076, Espoo, Finland

    Lauri Nummenmaa

  2. Department of Biomedical Engineering and Computational Science, School of Science, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland

    Lauri Nummenmaa

  3. Turku PET Centre, Turku, Finland

    Lauri Nummenmaa

  4. Department of Psychology, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland

    Jari K. Hietanen

  5. Department of Psychology, Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland

    Pekka Santtila

  6. Department of Psychology, University of Turku, Turku, Finland

    Jukka Hyönä

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  1. Lauri Nummenmaa
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  2. Jari K. Hietanen
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  3. Pekka Santtila
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  4. Jukka Hyönä
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Correspondence to Lauri Nummenmaa.

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Nummenmaa, L., Hietanen, J.K., Santtila, P. et al. Gender and Visibility of Sexual Cues Influence Eye Movements While Viewing Faces and Bodies. Arch Sex Behav 41, 1439–1451 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-012-9911-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-012-9911-0

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