London, January 12: A man’s eyes will tell you if he is looking for a brief fling or a long-term relationship, scientists say.
If he maintains eye contact for long periods, he is thinking of his date as a potential long-term partner.
But if his gaze strays regularly from the face to the body, he is thinking of other – more short-term – things.
The study carried out by Dr Tom Currie of Tokyo University found that faces were far more important than bodies if men were seeking a life partner, the Daily Mail reported Tuesday.
Psychologist Dr Anthony Little of Stirling University, told the paper: “If you are looking for long-term relationships you are looking for a friendly, humorous, co-operative pleasant partner – information we all get from faces.
“But when it comes to men and short-term relationships they are not so bothered about whether someone has a nice-looking face, the body becomes a bit more important. They shift their attention.”
The conclusions were drawn from a study of 260 volunteers, equally divided between men and women, who were asked to look at images of models from the opposite sex who were dressed only in their underwear.
They were then asked to rate each model’s attractiveness for either a long-term relationship or a fling.
They were first shown separate images of the models’ bodies and faces, and asked to rate them individually before rating the complete pictures.
When looking for a long-term relationship, only 20 percent of men gave higher scores to pictures of the bodies than they did to the images of their faces.
However, when asked to rate them for a short-term affair, 40 percent ranked the pictures of their bodies higher than those of their faces.
–Agencies