Looking for Ms. Right: Allocating attention to facilitate mate choice decisions

Original article:

Looking for Ms. Right: Allocating attention to facilitate mate choice decisions

Evolutionary Psychology 5(2): 428-441 Kelly D. Suschinsky, Department of Psychology, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, CANADA. *current address: Department of Psychology, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, AB, CANADA, kelly.suschinsky@uleth.caLorin J. Elias, Department of Psychology, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, CANADADaniel Brian Krupp, Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, CANADA

Abstract

Through various signals, the human body provides information that may be used by receivers to make decisions about mate value. Here, we investigate whether there exists a complementary psychological system designed to selectively attend to these signals in order to choose, and direct effort toward the acquisition of, a potential mate. We presented young men with three images of the same woman (six women in total) simultaneously, varying the waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) of each image while holding other traits constant. While participants chose their preferred image, we monitored visual attention using an infrared eye-tracker. We found that participants focused their attention selectively on body regions known to provide reproductive information in a manner consistent with the research hypothesis: Reproductively relevant body regions, especially the head and breasts, received the most visual attention. Likewise, images with lower WHRs and reproductively relevant regions in images with lower WHRs received the most visual attention and were chosen as most attractive. Finally, irrespective of WHR size, participants fixated more often and for longer durations on the images that they selected as most attractive.

Keywords

visual attention, female physical attractiveness, mate choice, infrared eye- tracker

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