The Woman's Body (Not the Man's One) Is Used to Evaluate Sexual Desire: An Eye-Tracking Study of Automatic Visual Attention

Introduction: Vision of the human body has been shown to be key in eliciting sexual desire. However, whether the visual pattern characterizing sexual desire is different in women and men is still unclear. Aim: To investigate the effect of gender on visual patterns triggered by an identical set of stimuli depicting attractive heterosexual couples. Methods: Heterosexual women and men (n = 106) were tested on a picture-viewing task associated with eye tracking. The context of sexual desire was activated by asking the participant whether they perceived such desire while looking at sensual pictures of heterosexual couples. Data were analyzed using mixed-subject design analyses of variance. Main Outcome Measure: Fixation durations were used to investigate visual patterns. 2 areas of interest were created to investigate visual patterns (face vs body area). Results: Results showed longer fixations on body rather than face areas irrespective of participant gender. Moreover, all participants looked longer at women's than men's bodies and at the faces of the opposite sex. Clinical Implications: These findings shed light on the automatic processes underlying sexual desire, which has the potential to improve the care of patients suffering from sexual disorders by optimizing interventions. Strengths & Limitations: The strengths of this study are the use of an eye-tracking paradigm, the dissociation between 2 fixation areas (ie, face and body), and the use of an identical set of stimuli allowing an accurate between-gender comparison of the visual pattern. The limitations are the small sample size, the use of healthy heterosexual individuals, and the absence of measures of sexual arousal and genital response. Conclusions: These findings confirm the association between the human body and sexual desire. They also reveal the unique attentional attractiveness of woman's bodies across genders. Copyright (C) 2018, International Society for Sexual Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.