OK. We have two apparently contrary eyetracking studies.

1. Men, but not women, staring at a crotch: <link>

2. Women, but not men, staring at crotches: <link>

Question: How do we make sense of the two studies? Is one of them wrong?

My guess: They're perfectly reconcilable. The difference is that in the first study, the context is baseball, whereas in the second study, the context is flagrantly sexual.

1. Men are more obsessed with sex, at least mechanically, than women are. So in the non-sexual context, men are more likely to look crotchward.

2. Once the context is made explicitly sexual, as in the second study, this difference in obsession cancels out, and the biologically designed program to look for arousal cues takes over, leading women to look at the crotch, while men are left to look at the face.

What do you think?

I don't think either study has enough data to reach any valid conclusions. The first study (men staring at George Brett's crotch) only had 255 participants. The second study (women focusing on genitals during heterosexual sex) had even fewer, 45 of which 30 were women.

Maybe there is something interesting here or maybe one or both studies are flukes. More research needs to be done to find out what is going on. Anything else is more or less just a guess.

Also depends how the second study was carried out. You can't have "believable" results unless you do a double blind study, but that's clearly out of the question, now, isn't it.

Try convincing men to stare pictures of women for no particular reason... I'd be suspicious on the spot!

I vote for hardwiring. Besides sexual readiness (gee, you think they would have done cross comparative research from Diane Fossy and other Primate researchers) it is also sexual viabilty. Size does matter in sperm delivery. Oh those poor Indian men trying to court western women. A reasonable length and diameter score the biggest points with exagerations of the extremes less preferable. Want a western woman's visual cue? Jim Morrison packed in leather pants. That poster still sells.

Men, I think focus one whatever visual cue turns them on. Nipple hardness etc. not just the face. Even smell (both sexes use this cue). We don't have many scents remaing from the ages but there are a lot of breasts and nipples, and fig leafs.

Results can still be statistically significant with the numbers of participants in each study, and I'd be very slow to call a study a "fluke" since the results came out the way they did for a reason, and the issue is finding what variables (intentionally or unintentionally) caused the data to come out as it did.

There are, however, limitations to the conclusions we can draw from the studies here, and I'd point to methodology as the source.

These studies are primarily behavioral: they are designed to look at what the subjects are doing (output) as they are presented with certain controlled sets of stimuli (input). The data regarding what people look at in different pictures, however, doesn't by itself give any particular insight into the mechanisms that guide such behavior (Skinner's "black box"); while there is mention in the linked article of differentially increased activity in the amygdala that correlates with these behaviors across sexes, this isn't of any particular help in understanding cause and effect since scientists studying the brain don't know what exactly the amygdala does.

I'd be very interested in further study regarding this subject that branches into developmental, social, or personality psychology, and possibly examines the extent to which the results of the studies reflect behavior found outside an artificial lab setting.

Until then, we really don't -know- any more than that the particular procedure of each study happened to produce particular respective results.

1. Men are mentally comparing themselves to the virile looking sports hero.

2. Alternately, what they are really looking at is the strike zone. Women aren't as likely to know what that is or why it's important.

3. Were the photos of the opposite sex, or both sexes? It makes a difference. Men are more likely to be looking at face and boobs, but I'm surprised they don't look at vaginas more thoroughly. Maybe because they all function more or less the same way, unlike penises. I imagine men would avoid looking at another man's naked penis in a context of arousal rather than a context of sizing up manliness. Women crotch gazers are sizing the guy up quite literally, and comparing themselves to the women. Not that I totally discount the theory that the eyes go where the clues are.

4. PS was the "private rocket" callout intentional, just above the crotch story?

In the spirit of the "Human Nature" column, I try to look at the biological causes of every issue brought up here. OK, I'm not unique with that, but let me offer a simple explanation for why men look "crotchward." The arm extends to the waist. Therefore, if the hands were holding anything, the object would be at crotch level. In a large urban area, that object could be a briefcase...or maybe a knife. I'd like to know which!

I'm not at all surprised that women have erotic dreams or look at men's crotches. They're hornballs like us, but a bit more subtle about it.

This reminds me of something else I saw a year ago: <link>

It might not be hardwired; this may vary by culture.

Eye-tracking studies are kind of like fMRIs; it's great stuff, but we've only just begun to see what can be seen from them. :0)

as evidenced by the chat over at Jurisprudence....

Thanks to Sono for being the only one reasonable enough to realize that jumping to purely "biological"/evolutionary explanations for a single observed behavior as idiocy.

We cannot take a modern observed behavior and then extrapolate without evidence to Flintstone fantasies of our species past and still pretend it's science.

Heres some questions I have:

1.) What positions were the male pictures in? Women are taught to fear men, especially in sexual situations, could they possibly be looking at hands first, not crotches?

2.) *Why* were the women who were on the pill, on the pill? Were they less likely to look at crotches because they are already in a sexual relationship, and simply more satiated than their counterparts not on the pill? What were the dating/sexual lives of the men in the sample? Did they bother to ask?

3.) Men still are more avid consumers of porn. Maybe the effect of full frontal female nudity has worn off for them, and they turn to the parts they fetishize like hair/eyes/lips sooner whereas women are simply distracted by that freaky looking dangly thing sticking out the front of naked men?

4.) I once worked with a signing chimp who had a fetish for hats. He would demand that you put one on as soon as you entered his environment and start masturbating while looking at you. And in the fall, he would go outsid eand masturbate to all the people passing by wearing hats. What is the "biological"/ evolutionary explanation for that?

I agree with your last point. Evolution doesn't explain everything.

"Evolution doesn't explain everything."

>>Not surprising, since it wasn't derived to explain everything, only to explain a a specific body of observations regarding biological diversity.

Thanks JGC, hate it when nuance in argument is lapped up by creationists like that.

Alas to see a hot subject pounded into boredom.

I'll connect to eye contact, wherever.