Eye Movements Reveal Difference Between Romantic Love and Lust

Researchers found that eye movements can identify the difference between love and lust.

Researchers at the University of Chicago found that eye expressions can tell the difference between love and lust. According to them, the eye patterns concentrate on the stranger's face only if the viewer sees that the person as a potential partner in romantic love and if the person has sexual desires they would gaze more at other person's body. This judgment takes place in less than half a second.

"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," noted lead author Stephanie Cacioppo.

In a previous study, Cacioppo had showed how different networks of brain region get activated by love and sexual desire. In the current study, two experiments were conducted to test the visual pattern in order to assess two different emotional as well as cognitive states that are challenging to untie from one another i.e. love and lust.

The test includes male and female students from the University of Geneva who were made to view a series of black and white photographs of unknown people. In one part of the study, the participants viewed pictures of young, adult heterosexual couples who were looking at or interacting with each other.

In the second part of the study, the participants viewed pictures of two attractive individuals of the opposite sex who were looking directly at the viewer. None of the pictures had obscene images.

For both the experiments, the participants were placed before a computer and were made to view different blocks of the photographs and decide quickly and precisely whether they perceived each photograph or the person in the photograph as romantic love, or did it lead to feelings of sexual desire.

There was no significant difference in the time the subjects took to identify love and the time they took to identify sexual desire. This reveals the speed at which the brain processes both the emotions.

They evaluated the eye-tracking data from two studies and found significant differences in eye movement patterns, which again depended on whether the subject reported feeling sexual desire or romantic love. In romantic love people tend to visually fix their gaze on face, and in case of sexual desire the gaze shifts from face to the rest of the body.

"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 co-author John Cacioppo, the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor and director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience. "An eye-tracking paradigm may eventually offer a new avenue of diagnosis in clinicians' daily practice or for routine clinical exams in psychiatry and/or couple therapy."

The study was documented in Psychological Science.