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    Men tend to focus on physical attractiveness, while women consider both attractiveness and resource potential, finds a new eye-tracking study that sheds light on sex differences in evaluations of online dating profiles.

    Bytes Europe

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    8 Comments

    1. mvea on

      I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:

      https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-024-02950-1

      From the linked article:

      Eye-tracking study sheds light on sex differences in evaluations of online dating profiles

      A new study published in Archives of Sexual Behavior has employed eye-tracking methods to uncover intriguing differences in how men and women evaluate online dating profiles, shedding light on the priorities each gender has when seeking potential partners. Overall, men tend to focus on physical attractiveness, while women consider both attractiveness and resource potential.

      The researchers found that both men and women spent the majority of their time focusing on the faces in the profiles. In fact, 83% of the total gaze time was directed to the face region, regardless of the other information presented.

      However, deeper analysis revealed significant gender differences in how participants evaluated the profiles. Men, as expected, focused predominantly on the women’s faces, with little attention given to resource information such as income and occupation.

      Interestingly, the study also found that men paid more attention to unattractive women when those women had higher incomes or prestigious occupations. This suggests that while physical attractiveness remains a top priority for men, resource information can still influence their attention to some extent, particularly when the woman is less attractive.

      However, deeper analysis revealed significant gender differences in how participants evaluated the profiles. Men, as expected, focused predominantly on the women’s faces, with little attention given to resource information such as income and occupation.

      Interestingly, the study also found that men paid more attention to unattractive women when those women had higher incomes or prestigious occupations. This suggests that while physical attractiveness remains a top priority for men, resource information can still influence their attention to some extent, particularly when the woman is less attractive.

    5. CommittedMeower on

      I would love to see how this varies across different cultures, e.g. some are very clearly of the “men provide and women receive” belief whereas others are more 50/50.

    8. hananobira on

      ““The ‘profiles’ that we created were extremely basic,” Lykins noted. “They included images of faces (both attractive and unattractive), information about the person’s job and their annual income, and filler information (e.g., where they grew up and how many siblings they had).”

      So this study is bunk, then. What they proved is that women spent more time looking at profiles. But not many dating websites include salary information. Most tend to have data like a personal description, hobbies, deal-breakers, etc. So it may not have anything to do with ‘resource potential’ or some kind of evo psych ad-hoc explanation about females wanting a male to provide or something, just people wanting to get a well-rounded view of who the target is as a person, instead of trying to judge them by their looks.

      Now, if these were complete, standard profiles that happened to include salary information, and the researchers could prove that women spent more time looking at the salary section than at, say, the hobbies or education section, that might indicate specifically that women were interested in income and not just in getting to know more about the target.