ATTRACTIVE MEMBERS

Whether we’re looking for someone to date or sizing up a potential rival, our eyes irresistibly lock on to good-looking people.

In a recent study participants, all heterosexual men and women, fixated on highly attractive people within the first half-second of seeing them. Single folks ogled the opposite sex, of course. But those in committed relationships more often eyed beautiful people of the same sex.

So if we’re interested in finding a mate, our attention gets quickly and automatically stuck on attractive members of the opposite sex, and if we’re jealous and worried about our partner cheating on us, attention gets quickly and automatically stuck on attractive people of our own sex because they are our competitors.

But this evolutionary trick is not without potential romantic peril. Even some people in committed relationships had trouble tearing their eyes away from attractive members of the opposite sex. On the other hand, fixating on attractive people of the same sex as rivals could contribute to feelings of insecurity.

Men prone to jealousy keep a close eye on attractive potential rivals, because when it came to concerns about infidelity, men are very attentive to highly attractive guys because presumably their wives or girlfriends may be too.

The Florida State researchers flashed pictures of attractive men and women and average-looking men and women in front of participants and measured the time it took to shift their attention away from the image. Surprisingly there was little difference between the sexes, and women paid just as much attention to men as men did to women.

It seems that evolution has primed our brains to subconsciously latch on to signs of physical attractiveness in others, both to find a mate and to guard him or her from potential competitors.

This entry was posted on 29. June 2010 at 22:16 and is filed under Links. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.