*Women, including straight women, spend just as much time looking at attractive female faces as they do at handsome men, according to a new study. Researchers believe the attention may reflect an appreciation of beauty rather than sexual attraction.
“It seems that for women, an attractive face is simply pleasant to look at, regardless of gender, while for men, it is really only their sexual preference that holds their eye,” lead author Tom Roth of Utrecht University in the Netherlands told the Daily Mail.
The New York Post reports that the findings were published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior. However, researchers have yet to identify an evolutionary explanation for why women respond this way.
Men showed a different pattern. They spent more time looking at attractive faces that matched their sexual orientation, while equally attractive faces outside their preference received no additional attention. For women, however, sexual orientation made no difference in how long they looked at attractive faces.
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Researchers reached their conclusions by tracking the eye movements of more than 100 volunteers as they viewed paired photographs of men and women with varying levels of attractiveness. The equipment recorded where participants focused their attention and how long they looked.
Initially, the viewing patterns appeared similar. Differences between men and women emerged only as participants continued examining the photographs.
Previous research has established that attractive faces naturally draw attention. The study notes that physical attractiveness is often associated with health and fertility, making it an important consideration when choosing a mate.
Roth and his colleagues wanted to understand how that attention differs between men and women.
“However, how this bias varies across the sexes and whether it depends on the sexual preference and/or relationship status of the perceiver is still poorly understood,” the authors wrote.
The team plans to expand its research to include a broader range of faces, including people of different ages.
For Roth, the findings suggest that men and women may perceive physical beauty in fundamentally different ways.
“It is a reminder that men and women may be, quite literally, looking at the concept of attractiveness differently,” he said.
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