Citation

Bolmont M, Cacioppo JT, Cacioppo S. Psychol. Sci. 2014; 25(9): 1748-1756.

Affiliation

High-Performance Electrical NeuroImaging (HPEN) Laboratory, Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, University of Chicago Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Chicago cacioppos@uchicago.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, Association for Psychological Science, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1177/0956797614539706

PMID

25031302

Abstract

Reading other people's eyes is a valuable skill during interpersonal interaction. Although a number of studies have investigated visual patterns in relation to the perceiver's interest, intentions, and goals, little is known about eye gaze when it comes to differentiating intentions to love from intentions to lust (sexual desire). To address this question, we conducted two experiments: one testing whether the visual pattern related to the perception of love differs from that related to lust and one testing whether the visual pattern related to the expression of love differs from that related to lust. Our results show that a person's eye gaze shifts as a function of his or her goal (love vs. lust) when looking at a visual stimulus. Such identification of distinct visual patterns for love and lust could have theoretical and clinical importance in couples therapy when these two phenomena are difficult to disentangle from one another on the basis of patients' self-reports.

Language: en