Psychologists claim, that the longer the man gazes at a woman when meeting her for the first time, the more interested he is in the object of his attention. The opposite is true as well, the shorter the gaze, about 4 seconds, the less interested he is.
Yet, if the man gazes longer than the period of critical 8.2 seconds, then, as psychologists believe, it can very much be the fact that he was stuck with love at first sight.
The Daily Telegraph newspaper “dug out” those observations made by scientists from the Journal of Sexual Behaviour.
The researchers base those findings on data obtained with hidden cameras, which monitored eye movements of 115 students as they were chatting with actors and actresses. Later, the participants were asked to comment on the attractiveness of the people they were talking to.
The data showed that the students who were chatting with the actresses which they considered more attractive, stared in their eyes on average for 8.2 seconds at a time. At the same time, they gaze for under 4.5 seconds at the ones they did not classify as attractive.
The researchers believe that men use direct eye contact as a tool for searching for partners and determining if the woman they are talking to at the moment can be a perspective sexual partner.
Such tendency does not hold for women. They look at the new acquaintances for equally long time regardless of whether they find them attractive or not.
The psychologists reason this difference by claiming that women are more concerned on how not to attract extra attention due to fear of unwanted pregnancy and the fate of a single mom.
Source of the image: flickr.com/photos/didmyself.
