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Scholarship Recipient Investigates the Secrets of Attraction
Wednesday, 16 July 2008
Victoria University PhD student Barnaby Dixson is studying on a New Zealand Doctoral Research Scholarship. His research focuses on what men and women find attractive in one another.
(via Dominion Post)
For the past two years Barnaby has collected data using a NZ$60,000 eye-tracking machine to determine where sujects' eyes moved when presented with images of various members of the opposite sex.
While his findings on what men look at first and longest (women's breasts) are no surprise, his research indicates that it's other parts of the body that determine attractiveness. Primarily, men were attracted to women with a particular waist-hip size ratio.
"We think that waist-hip ratio is a cue that's processed very quickly, and then after that other factors become important." says Barnaby. He has presented his research at conferences in Canada and Japan.
Going forward, Barnaby would like to expand his research across more cultures to determine whether certain physical traits are considered universally attractive. "I think down the line some cross-cultural stuff would be fascinating. The thing about these studies is that they're really interesting, but when it comes to how men make these choices (about what is attractive) it's very difficult to get data when you're just doing questionnaires. So one way to get data on it is to use these eye-tracking systems." says Barnaby.
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