Eye Movements Help Identify Feelings Like Love and Lust: Study

Scientists from the University of Chicago found the looking into the eyes of a person can help gauge his or her feelings towards us.

Their findings suggest people set their gaze on others' faces while seeking out partners for romantic relations while staring at other person's body indicates sexual attraction and desire. Our eyes are capable of processing this judgment about the onlookers based on their gazing pattern, says the research.

"Although little is currently known about the science of love at first sight or how people fall in love, these patterns of response provide the first clues regarding how automatic attentional processes, such as eye gaze, may differentiate feelings of love from feelings of desire toward strangers," notes lead author Stephanie Cacioppo, director of the UChicago High-Performance Electrical NeuroImaging Laboratory, reports the Laboratory Equipment.

Past studies have shown different brain areas get stimulated by emotions like love and lust, which were thought to be the same. To confirm if the human brain was capable of identifying differences between the two feelings, the researchers observed male and female participants who were shown black and white images of strangers. In the first trial, the subjects had to look at pictures of young heterosexual couples seeing or interacting with each other and in the second, they viewed head shots of attractive individuals of the opposite sex.

The participants were then asked to classify feelings of persons in the photographs as lust or romantic love. The study noted no differences in time taken by the subjects from both groups in assessing emotions projected in the photographs. This indicates our brain can quickly process both love and sexual desire.

In addition, the experimenters kept tab of participants' eye movement patterns and saw that people would have a brief look at others' faces when they felt the image elicited romantic love. Sexual feeling prompted them to scan the person's body parts.

"By identifying eye patterns that are specific to love-related stimuli, the study may contribute to the development of a biomarker that differentiates feelings of romantic love versus sexual desire," said John Cacioppo, co-author and director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience , reports the Laboratory Equipment.

 "An eye-tracking paradigm may eventually offer a new avenue of diagnosis in clinicians' daily practice or for routine clinical exams in psychiatry and couple therapy," he adds.

More information is available online in the journal Psychological Science.