Eye Tracking: SEX! (Got Your Attention Yet?)

Sex sells. And it is no surprise that sexual imagery calls our attention more easily than non-sexual content. Put a sexually explicit image on a screen next to a non-sexual image, and you can guess which picture someone is likely to look at.

So, when it comes to sex and our perception of how humans react to visual sexual stimuli, much of what we assume to be correct generally is and studies have shown this, in fact, to be true. It’s also a common belief that men typically respond more to visual sexual stimuli than do women, but a recent eye tracking study has shown that there is actually quite a bit of variability in this effect. Perhaps it’s not that the gender of the participant dictates their level of stimulation, but the overall type of stimuli presented to a male or female.

Researchers at Indiana University recently tested 45 heterosexual participants between the ages of 25 and 35, showing them sexual imagery involving males and females in a variety of sexual acts. Their goal was to determine if men and women had preferences for certain types of stimuli, and participants were asked to look at a number of images while an eye tracking device using Gazetracker software recorded their point of gaze and the amount of time each person spent looking at the sexually explicit picture.

After a questionnaire and vetting process based on participants’ described level of sexuality, the subjects were seated comfortably in a private room and shown a variety of sexually explicit images on a computer screen – color photos of heterosexual couples engaged in oral sex or intercourse taken from public domain websites. Participants were instructed to look at the image as long as they liked (and were allowed to stop at any time if they felt uncomfortable), before pressing the space bar to continue to the next photograph. A one second black screen with fixation cross hairs in the center preceded each image so to assure that the subject begin viewing each photo from the same starting point.

In the end, the researchers did not find a significant difference between men and women in their overall ratings of each photo, nor the viewing times of each image. This, of course, is inconsistent with the commonly held assumption that men find visual sexual stimuli more interesting/arousing than do women. But they did find differences in what exactly men and women were interested in. And to find out the details about which types of visual sexual stimuli each gender was interested in, you’ll have to read the study… can’t resist, can you?

Sex-Specific Content Preferences for Visual Sexual Stimuli

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