Can’t take my eyes off of you
by Gian Gonzaga | September 27th, 2007Have you ever been out with your romantic partner or spouse and found yourself staring at that really hot guy (or girl) at the corner of the bar? Even if you consciously make yourself look away it is almost like your eyes are pulled back towards them. You find yourself looking in their general direction more often, orient your chair that way so they are in your line of sight, maybe you even find a way to sit away from your partner so it isn’t so obvious.
You are not alone. In a new paper my friend Jon Maner, a professor at Florida State University, investigated a phenomenon he called Attentional Adhesion or how hard it is to shift your attention away from something. He, and is colleagues, proposed that people pay attention to physically attractive individuals because they are the most likely to be healthy and produce healthy (and attractive) children. In other words we are evolved to pay attention to really attractive people.
They found that both men and women who were more oriented towards short term flings and were primed with a short-term mating goal found it more difficult to pull their attention away from photos of highly attractive opposite sex individuals, but not photos of average attractive opposite sex people or photos of same sex people.
Then they looked at what people paid attention to when they were primed with jealousy and were high on being vigilant to competition. These folks didn’t pay attention to attractive opposite-sex individuals, they paid attention to attractive same-sex individuals (and they still didn’t pay attention to people who were only of average attractiveness). So what we pay attention to depends on our goals at the moment and what type of person we are.
It really isn’t surprising that we sometimes find ourselves staring at attractive individuals, and it might just be a fundamental part of our human nature.
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September 29th, 2007 at 1:42 am
Although, I hear what you are saying, I would not be that disrespectful to my romantic partner or spouse. If they are my romantic partner or spouse, then they have my undivided attention. Sure, I can appreciate handsome or beautiful men when I see them, but I do have free will and a modicum of self-control and respect for the feelings of the romantic partner or spouse I would be offending by such atrocious behaviour.
Since, I am not currently in a relationship I can allow such magnetism, attractiveness, and chemistry to draw me in completely. Yesterday, I was walking down the street and “felt eyes on me†and looked up and the most amazing eyes I’d ever seen were looking back at me. They drew me like a lodstone. As I passed him in the street, he said something like “You have a nice day†with such intensity that I felt mesmerized and faint. If I had it to do again, then I would stop and talk to him but he completely stupified me with his intense gaze and sexual chemistry and appeal. I recall that when I passed him, I looked back and still felt thunderstruck.
If I was used to “picking up†men, I may have stopped to talk to him but I honestly think from the moment I saw him I was struck dumb. It was the most perplexing thing to have happened to me in a very, very long time.