Can you tell, right off the bat, whether the object of your love interest is “in like” or “in love”? Well, a new study on love and lust says you can. And it’s a fairly simple test. Get the details after the click.
Whether in Lagos or London, Atlanta or Accra, we’ve probably all had this discussion with our inner circles – how can you tell if a the object of your affection is only looking for a “fun-buddy” versus is open to (and actually ready for) a potential long term relationship? Though the conversations usually end with no clear answer, a new study on love and lust, published by Psychological Science, offers hope.
There is an answer…and it lies in the eyes.
The results of the study determined that in the case of trying to discover if a person is feeling the romantic, long-term will-you-marry-me kind of love or the more common I-just-want-to-have-sex-with-you sexual lust, the answer lies in how the other person looks at you.
Details of the research below:
Researchers from the University of Chicago conducted two studies on a group of heterosexual undergrads. In the first study, participants looked at a set of 120 photographs of couples and were asked if the photos elicited feelings of romantic love or sexual desire. Sexual desire was defined as an increase in sexual thoughts and fantasies toward a target, whereas love was defined as a sentimental and tender state that made participants long for a union.
Afterwards, the participants were shown the same photographs and asked simply to look at them and think about their feelings. While students were gazing at the photographs, their eye movements were tracked and recorded to determine where on the photo they fixated most and for how long.
In the second study, participants were given 80 photographs of individuals of the opposite sex and asked if they could possibly feel love toward or lust toward them. Again, their eye movements were tracked.
At the end of both studies, the results were pretty clear: “Subjects were more likely to fixate on the face when making decisions about romantic love,” the researchers wrote. “Judgments that involved lust elicited more eye fixations toward the body.”
The researchers of the study concluded that, “Mutual eye gaze is one of the most reliable markers of love between couples.”
Moral of the story – if your boo spends more time looking at your face, than your assets…relationship prospects are looking pretty good.
What do you think?
