Men, women look at sexual photos differently

BLOOMINGTON, Ind., April 13 Men and women show different brain activity when viewing sexual stimuli: Men look at the female face much more than women, found a U.S. study.

The study found men are more likely than women to first look at a woman's face before other parts of the body, and women focused longer on photographs of men performing sexual acts with women than did the males, according to the study published in Hormones and Behavior.

"The eye-tracking data suggested what women paid most attention to was dependent upon their hormonal state," lead author Heather Rupp, a fellow at The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction at Indiana University, said in a statement. "Women using hormonal contraceptives looked more at the genitals, while women who were not using hormonal contraceptives paid more attention to contextual elements of the photographs." It is commonly assumed males have more interest in visual sexual stimuli, but the researchers are working to figure out what characteristics are important to men and women in their evaluations of sexual stimuli, according to Rupp.

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