I know you ladies will find this shocking, but there's now some proof that most men won't look you in the eyes when they're talking to you. In 2005 two researchers did an eyetracking study on 255 people, or in other words they tracked where people looked on a screen when browsing the web, and came up with some interesting info. The full article is here, but for our purposes we'll concentrate on this part:
When photos do contain people related to the task at hand, or the content users are exploring, they do get fixations. However, gender makes a distinct difference on what parts of the photo are stared at the longest. Take a look at the hotspot below.
Although both men and women look at the image of George Brett when directed to find out information about his sport and position, men tend to focus on private anatomy as well as the face. For the women, the face is the only place they viewed.
This image of George Brett was part of a larger page with his biographical information. All users tested looked the image, but there was a distinct difference in focus between men and women.
Coyne adds that this difference doesn’t just occur with images of people. Men tend to fixate more on areas of private anatomy on animals as well, as evidenced when users were directed to browse the American Kennel Club site.
We really are a bunch of dogs.
Found via Boing Boing.
