Where do women and men look when communicating?
Last reviewed: 16.10.2021
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At men attention is concentrated on a mouth of other person, and it is possible to distract men for any extraneous movement. Ladies, on the contrary, prefer to look into the eyes or to the figure, and are distracted only by one more person who is in sight.
Women and men differently focus on the interlocutor, as researchers from the University of Southern California (USA) found out. Psychologists and neurophysiologists have long been concerned with human attention, including the visual. But for some reason, so far, works of this kind have been neglected by gender, age or ethnicity.
34 people took part in the experiment. They were directed by a video interview: a person on the screen answered questions, and behind him from time to time appeared a distracting factor - a pedestrian, a cyclist or a car. At the same time, researchers recorded video of the spectators watching these interviews; scientists were interested in what men and women mostly hold their gaze when they concentrate their attention, and how they can be distracted.
The results of observations psychologists presented in the journal Vision Research. It turns out that men literally look the other in the mouth: during the interview they kept their eyes mostly on the mouth of the speaker. At the same time, any strange movement that they noticed in the background could distract them. Women, however, constantly moved their eyes from the person's eyes to his body and back, and were distracted only if someone else was on the frame.
The reasons for such a difference - whether they are congenital or "culturally-acquired" - are not yet being discussed by scientists. Obviously, for this it is necessary to conduct additional studies that take into account the ethnic, social and professional belonging of the participants. Preterm and practical conclusions are premature, although it may turn out that it is really better for women to work where there is no need to be constantly distracted by other people.