Alexander Gerianne M, Charles Nora
Department of Psychology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77845, USA.
Arch Sex Behav. 2009 Jun;38(3):434-41. doi: 10.1007/s10508-008-9429-7. Epub 2008 Nov 19.
An individual's reproductive potential appears to influence response to attractive faces of the opposite sex. Otherwise, relatively little is known about the characteristics of the adult observer that may influence his or her affective evaluation of male and female faces. An untested hypothesis (based on the proposed role of attractive faces in mate selection) is that most women would show greater interest in male faces whereas most men would show greater interest in female faces. Further, evidence from individuals with preferences for same-sex sexual partners suggests that response to attractive male and female faces may be influenced by gender-linked play preferences. To test these hypotheses, visual attention directed to sex-linked stimuli (faces, toys, play styles) was measured in 39 men and 44 women using eye tracking technology. Consistent with our predictions, men directed greater visual attention to all male-typical stimuli and visual attention to male and female faces was associated with visual attention to gender conforming or nonconforming stimuli in a manner consistent with previous research on sexual orientation. In contrast, women showed a visual preference for female-typical toys, but no visual preference for male faces or female-typical play styles. These findings indicate that sex differences in visual processing extend beyond stimuli associated with adult sexual behavior. We speculate that sex differences in visual processing are a component of the expression of gender phenotypes across the lifespan that may reflect sex differences in the motivational properties of gender-linked stimuli.
个体的生殖潜力似乎会影响其对异性魅力面孔的反应。否则，关于可能影响成年观察者对男性和女性面孔情感评价的特征，我们知之甚少。一个未经检验的假设（基于魅力面孔在配偶选择中的假定作用）是，大多数女性会对男性面孔表现出更大兴趣，而大多数男性会对女性面孔表现出更大兴趣。此外，来自对同性性伴侣有偏好的个体的证据表明，对有魅力的男性和女性面孔的反应可能会受到与性别相关的游戏偏好的影响。为了检验这些假设，我们使用眼动追踪技术，对39名男性和44名女性针对与性别相关的刺激（面孔、玩具、游戏风格）的视觉注意力进行了测量。与我们的预测一致，男性对所有男性典型刺激表现出更强的视觉注意力，并且对男性和女性面孔的视觉注意力与对符合或不符合性别规范的刺激的视觉注意力相关，其方式与先前关于性取向的研究一致。相比之下，女性对女性典型玩具表现出视觉偏好，但对男性面孔或女性典型游戏风格没有视觉偏好。这些发现表明，视觉加工中的性别差异超出了与成人性行为相关的刺激范围。我们推测，视觉加工中的性别差异是整个生命周期中性别表型表达的一个组成部分，可能反映了与性别相关刺激的动机属性中的性别差异。
