Love may be blind, but a study by University of Chicago researchers has found one unit of measurement that might help us know whether it's love or lust at first sight, and, baby, it's all in the eyes.
According to the study published in Psychological Science, where your blind date looks at you could indicate what exactly the other person is really thinking about when it comes to the future.
Since little is known about the science of love, a research team, led by Stephanie Cacioppo, decided to dig into the matter.
They showed students from the University of Geneva a series of black-and-white photographs of people they had never met. In the first part of the study, the students viewed photos of young, adult heterosexual couples who were looking at or interacting with each other. In the second part of the study, the students viewed photographs of individuals of the opposite sex who were looking directly at the camera/viewer. And yes, this was a PG study: none of the photos contained nudity or erotic images.
As the photographs popped up, participants were asked to decide as rapidly as possible whether they perceived each photograph or the persons in the photograph as eliciting feelings of sexual desire or romantic love.
Remarkably, this type of automatic judgment can happen in as little as half a second.
The analysis? The eye-tracking data from the two studies revealed that noticeable differences in eye movement patterns based on whether the students reported feeling sexual desire or romantic love.
For instance, if a person's eye patterns concentrate on a stranger's (otherwise known as your date's) face, the onlooker sees the person as potential for romantic love. But, if the viewer's eye patterns concentrate on the other person's body, they're probably thinking more along the lines of desire and lust.
This may all seem obvious on some level, but according to co-author of the study, John Cacioppo, "By identifying eye patterns that are specific to love-related stimuli, the study may contribute to the development of a biomarker that differentiates feelings of romantic love versus sexual desire. He also noted, "An eye-tracking paradigm may eventually offer a new avenue of diagnosis in clinicians' daily practice or for routine clinical exams in psychiatry and/or couple therapy."
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