Arch Sex Behav (2008) 37:219–228
DOI 10.1007/s10508-007-9208-x
ORIGINAL PAPER
Sex Differences in Visual Attention to Erotic and Non-Erotic
Stimuli
Amy D. Lykins Æ Marta Meana Æ Gregory P. Strauss
Received: 4 September 2006 / Revised: 29 March 2007 / Accepted: 29 March 2007 / Published online: 1 August 2007

Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007
Abstract It has been suggested that sex differences in the
processing of erotic material (e.g., memory, genital arousal,
brain activation patterns) may also be reflected by differ-
ential attention to visual cues in erotic material. To test this
hypothesis, we presented 20 heterosexual men and 20 het-
erosexual women with erotic and non-erotic images of het-
erosexual couples and tracked their eye movements during
scene presentation. Results supported previous findings that
erotic and non-erotic information was visually processed in a
different manner by both men and women. Men looked at
opposite sex figures significantly longer than did women,
and women looked at same sex figures significantly longer
than did men. Within-sex analyses suggested that men had a
strong visual attention preference for opposite sex figures as
compared to same sex figures, whereas women appeared to
disperse their attention evenly between opposite and same
sex figures. These differences, however, were not limited to
erotic images but evidenced in non-erotic images as well. No
significant sex differences were found for attention to the
contextual region of the scenes. Results were interpreted as
potentially supportive of recent studies showing a greater
non-specificity of sexual arousal in women. This interpre-
tation assumes there is an erotic valence to images of the sex
to which one orients, even when the image is not explicitly
erotic. It also assumes a relationship between visual attention
and erotic valence.
Keywords Sex differences
Visual attention

Erotic stimuli
A. D. Lykins (&)
M. Meana
G. P. Strauss
Department of Psychology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas,
Box 455030, Las Vegas, NV, 89154-5030, USA
e-mail: lykinsa@unlv.nevada.edu
Introduction
Despite a recent meta-analysis indicating that men and
women may be more similar than different on a host of
psychological factors expected to show sex differentiation
(Hyde, 2005), sexuality remains one of a number of areas in
which significant and persistent sex differences with large
effect sizes abound (Lippa, 2005). In terms of cognition, men
and women appear to process sexual information differently.
They selectively focus on different aspects of erotic stimuli,
and both implicitly and explicitly demonstrate different
preferences and attitudes in regards to sexuality.
The sexual content-induced delay, which refers to the
interfering effect of erotic content on information processing
time (i.e., decision times for word identification and dot
probes, as well as overall reading times) (Geer & Manguno-
Mire, 1996), appears to be more pronounced in women (Geer
& Bellard, 1996; Geer & Manguno-Mire, 1996; Geer &
Melton, 1997). This suggests that sexual information creates
more interference or contains more emotional content for
women than it does for men. Women have also consistently
demonstrated a preference and better memory for romantic
words, images, and films than sexual ones, in contrast to
men, who show attentional and memory biases for the latter
(Geer & Bellard, 1996; Geer, Judice, & Jackson, 1994; Geer
& McGlone, 1990; Laan, Everaerd, van Bellen, & Hane-
wald, 1994; Mosher & MacIan, 1994; Sigusch, Schmidt,
Reinfeld, & Wiedermann-Sutor, 1970; Wells, 1990).
Confirmatory evidence for these sex differences can be
also found in the largely self-report based sexual fantasy
literature. In their comprehensive review of this literature,
Leitenberg and Henning (1995) concluded that men’s sexual
fantasies focused more on explicit sexual acts, nude bodies,
and physical gratification, whereas emotional context and
romance were more often found in women’s fantasies.
123
220
Finally, women appear to have more negative implicit and
explicit attitudes toward sex as indicated by self-report and
tests of associations (Geer & Robertson, 2005; Oliver & Hyde,
1993). Interestingly, despite the apparently more complex or
even conflicted cognitive processes associated with sexual
stimuli in women, the stimulus features required to evoke a
genital response in women appear to be much less specific
than in men (Chivers, 2005; Chivers, Rieger, Latty, & Bailey,
2004). Women are genitally aroused to a greater extent than
men to sexual stimuli that do not correspond to their sexual
orientation.
It is important to note that some studies have found no
significant sex differences in the processing or arousability
of sexual information, with both men and women reporting
greater arousability to genital rather than romantic themes
(Meuwissin & Over, 1991; Schmidt, Siguisch, & Schafer,
1973; Smith & Over, 1991; Tokatlidis & Over, 1995). One
study actually found men more susceptible than women to
cognitive interference from both sexual and romantic con-
tent (Kirsch-Rosenkrantz & Geer, 1991). However, these
studies are outnumbered by those that find women to be more
romantically focused and more susceptible to the interfering
effect of sexual content than are men.
Geer and Manguno-Mire (1996) suggested that some of
these sex differences may be explained by differential
attention to visual cues in erotic material. Recent investi-
gations have revealed sex differences in both self-reported
sexual arousal and brain activation patterns while viewing
erotic stimuli. Janssen, Carpenter, and Graham (2003) found
significant differences in self-reported sexual arousal to
different erotic film clips, such that men reported much
higher levels of arousal to male-selected film clips than did
women. Youn (2006) recently reported sex differences in
subjective sexual arousal to an erotic video, regardless of
presence or absence of guided imagery, supporting the
contention that men are more psychosexually responsive to
visual erotic material than are women. Hamann, Herman,
Nolan, and Wallen (2004) found that certain brain regions
involved in the processing of appetitive, emotional, and
biologically salient stimuli (the amygdala and hypothala-
mus) were more activated in men than in women when
viewing visual erotic stimuli. A recent study investigating
event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to erotic pictures
suggested that men and women may have equal rates of
activation, although men and women were not directly
compared (Anokhin et al., 2006). If the latter two studies and
their conclusions are indeed confirmed by future research, it
will raise the possibility that different brain structures are
being activated in women when they view erotic stimuli.
Regardless of the direction of differences in the subjective
and physiological responses of men and women, we still do
not know what each sex is actually attending to within the
erotic image.
123
Arch Sex Behav (2008) 37:219–228
In order for individuals to process visual sexual infor-
mation such as that utilized in the aforementioned studies
(e.g., written passages, photos, videos), they must first
visually attend to said stimuli. However, to our knowledge,
there currently exist no controlled studies on sex differences
in the visual processing of sexual material. Visual attention
is arguably the most elementary step in the cognitive pro-
cessing of information and clearly a primary component of
most sexual experiences. Because of this lack of knowledge,
we are left to wonder: do men and women attend to different
scene regions when presented with the same erotic stimuli?
Eye-tracking methodology is uniquely suited to the
investigation of this question as it is a reliable and valid
measure of attention with a relatively long history of appli-
cation in the reading and scene perception literature (Rayner,
1995). In a first test to determine the validity of eye-tracking
methodology as a measure of differences in the visual pro-
cessing of erotic and non-erotic material, Lykins, Meana,
and Kambe (2006) demonstrated that both men and women
visually attended differently to erotic and non-erotic images.
More specifically, their results strongly indicated that men
and women attended more to bodies than to faces or context
in the erotic stimuli, in terms of total time spent looking at a
region as well as in terms of total number of fixations.
Although not surprising, the results of this study provided
evidence that eye-tracking methodology could capture dif-
ferences in the processing of erotic and non-erotic material at
the level of visual attention.
Having established the validity of this methodology, we
then turned to the current investigation of potential sex dif-
ferences in the visual processing of erotic stimuli. To this
end, we presented the same erotic and non-erotic images to
men and women and tested for differences in total time spent
looking at same and opposite sex faces and bodies. We also
tested separately for time spent looking at contextual aspects
(non-human setting) of the scenes. Drawing from the liter-
ature here briefly reviewed, we expected that both men and
women would focus more on bodies than on faces in the
erotic scenes, but that men would show a stronger pattern of
visual attention to opposite sex bodies than would women,
particularly in the erotic stimuli. We also hypothesized that
women would attend visually more so than men to the
contextual aspects of both the erotic and non-erotic scenes.
Method
Participants
All participants were 21 years of age or older, and had
normal or corrected to normal vision. The sample consisted
of 20 men and 20 women. All participants were right-han-
ded, and self-identified as heterosexual. Results indicated
Arch Sex Behav (2008) 37:219–228
that sociodemographic variables (e.g., ethnic and religious
distributions) were comparable for men and women. Par-
ticipants remained naı̈ve with respect to the purpose of the
study until debriefing.
Measures
The stimuli consisted of five erotic and five non-erotic digital
photographic color scenes. Erotic images were collected
from a book depicting various sexual foreplay scenarios for
heterosexual couples. The scenes consisted of couples in
various states of undress, interactively engaged in some
aspect of foreplay, with facial expressions communicating
high sexual receptivity. The matched non-erotic images
were photographs taken by us and their composition was
guided by an attempt to maximize the parallelism between
erotic and non-erotic images. Models were positioned sim-
ilarly to those in the erotic images, similar zoom distances
were employed, and backgrounds approximating those of
the erotic images were chosen. The models, however, were
fully clothed, had neutral facial expressions, and their bodily
positions were adjusted to divest the photo of erotic infer-
ence. All images were 800 · 600 pixels and were viewed at
a distance of 82 cm.
In order to test whether the manipulation of eroticism in
the images was successful, we asked participants to rate
how arousing they found each set of images. Participants
endorsed one of five response options, ranging from ‘‘very
unarousing’’ to ‘‘very arousing.’’ On average, women and
men rated the erotic images as somewhat arousing (women:
M = 3.8, SD = .70; men: M = 3.70, SD = .73), and the non-
erotic images as generally somewhat unarousing (women:
M = 2.65, SD = .93; men: M = 2.55, SD = .83). A depen-
dent samples t-test revealed that the erotic images were rated
as significantly more arousing than the non-erotic images by
both men and women (women: t[19] = 5.21, p < .001; men:
t[19] = 5.21, p < .001), providing evidence for the suc-
cessful manipulation of eroticism.
Each participant underwent a practice and an experi-
mental phase. In the practice phase, participants viewed
neutral images of people in various non-erotic situations in
order to acclimate to the equipment and procedure. In the test
phase, the participant was shown the erotic and non-erotic
couples images. All participants were exposed to all images.
In order to analyze visual attention to the different aspects
of the scene, each image was divided into five scene regions:
male face, female face, male body, female body, and context.
The face scene regions included the face and the hair (head)
of the individual in the image. The body scene regions
consisted of all of the body save the face region (i.e., torso,
arms, breasts or chest area, genitals, and legs). The context of
the scene was defined as everything in the image that did not
221
include body regions, such as the background and all of the
objects included in it.
Apparatus
The stimuli were displayed at a resolution of 1024 ·
786 pixels on a True Color monitor (256 colors) using a
Radon VE ATI Graphics card operating at a refresh rate of
85 Hz. Eye movements were recorded by an SMI Eyelink
headband-mounted eye-tracker, which was carefully bal-
anced to be comfortable even with extended use. The system
used infra-red (940 nm) video-based technology to simul-
taneously track the eyes and head position composition. Eye
positions were sampled at 250 Hz. Viewing was binocular,
although only the position of the right eye was tracked as is
common in scene perception eye-tracking research (e.g.,
Henderson, Weeks, & Hollingworth, 1999).
Procedure
All stimuli and procedures were approved by the University
of Nevada, Las Vegas Institutional Review Board, and par-
ticipants received course research credit for their participa-
tion. Participants were briefed about the procedure of the
experiment before it began and were encouraged to ask
questions at any time. A male research assistant tested the
male participants and the primary investigator (who is
female) tested the female participants. Once the eye-tracker
was placed upon the participant’s head, the equipment was
calibrated. Calibration consisted of having the participant
fixate, or focus upon, nine markers on the display area, and
the calibration was checked by having the participant per-
form the same task again. The Eyelink system was calibrated
to each individual until the average error in gaze position was
0.5. The practice session began once the eye-tracker was
successfully calibrated.
In the practice session, participants were presented with
three images of people in non-erotic situations and were
instructed to ‘‘look at the pictures as you normally would.’’
Once the practice session was completed, the experimental
session began. In the experimental session, each participant
was presented with ten images of couples (five erotic and five
non-erotic). The presentation of erotic and non-erotic image
sets was counterbalanced across all subjects, so that an equal
number of participants saw all erotic images first, followed
by all non-erotic images, versus all non-erotic images first,
followed by all erotic images.
Upon completion of the eye-tracking portion of the study,
participants completed a short questionnaire including demo-
graphic variables and potential prior exposure to images or
individuals in the images used in the study. The experiment
lasted approximately 20 min.
123
222
Data analyses
Our two dependent measures of interest, total number of fix-
ations and total gaze time, are two of the most commonly used
and reported variables in the scene perception literature and
considered indicative of the amount of visual attention a given
scene region draws and maintains. Total number of fixations
was a count of the number of times the participant’s eye landed
on any given scene region across the entire stimulus presen-
tation time; number of fixations is considered to be a measure
of drawing attention. Total gaze time was a measure of the
total number of milliseconds the individual attended to a
particular scene region across the entire stimulus presentation
time (in this case, 15 s); total gaze time is thought to be an
indication of overall interest in a given scene region.
For the purpose of our analyses, we considered 4 factors:
Sex (male, female), Stimulus Type (erotic, non-erotic),
Sex Congruency of Scene Region (same sex, opposite sex),
and Scene Region (face, body). Although Sex Congruency of
Scene Region could have been incorporated into a 4-level
Scene Region factor (same sex face, opposite sex face, same
sex body, opposite sex body), its consideration as a separate
2-level factor facilitated interpretation of results. To further
clarify, when we compared men and women’s gaze times on
opposite sex bodies, for example, we compared how long
men looked at women’s bodies to how long women looked at
men’s bodies. We also considered one other scene region
separately: context (non-human elements of the scene: set-
tings such as a picnic, an office, a gym etc.). The reason for
not including context as another level of the Scene Region
factor in the 4-factor analysis was that it would preclude the
consideration of a Sex Congruency factor.
Results were thus analyzed in two 2 (Sex of Participant:
Men vs. Women) · 2 (Stimulus Type: Erotic vs. Non-Ero-
tic) · 2 (Sex Congruency of Scene Region: Opposite Sex vs.
Same Sex) · 2 (Scene Region: Face vs. Body) mixed design
ANOVAs (one each for number of fixations and total gaze
time). The very high correlations between number of fixa-
tions and total gaze time precluded the use of MANOVA.
Pairwise dependent sample and independent t-tests were
conducted for simple effects analyses, as appropriate. There
were also separate analyses conducted to compare men and
women on number of fixations and gaze times devoted to
contextual aspects of the erotic and non-erotic photographs.
Results
Number of fixations
Means and SDs of total number of fixations men and women
had on each of the different scene regions (opposite or same
sex faces or bodies, contextual aspects of the scenes), are
123
Arch Sex Behav (2008) 37:219–228
shown in Table 1. Results of the omnibus ANOVA for total
number of fixations are presented in Table 2. Significant
main effects were found for Stimulus Type, Sex Congru-
ency, and Scene Region. Three significant two-way inter-
actions and two three-way interactions were found and
analyzed using simple main effects.
Replicating previous results (Lykins et al., 2006), there
was a significant Stimulus Type · Scene Region interaction.
There was a simple main effect for Stimulus Type (erotic vs.
non-erotic), whereby both men and women looked at the
faces more times in the non-erotic than the erotic stimuli,
p = .05, whereas bodies were looked at more times in the
erotic than the non-erotic stimuli, p < .001. There was also a
significant simple main effect for Scene Region (face vs.
body) in both the erotic and non-erotic stimuli: men and
women looked at the bodies more times than at the faces in
both the erotic (p < .001) and non-erotic (p < .001) stimuli.
We also found a significant Sex Congruency · Scene
Region interaction. A significant simple main effect was
found for Sex Congruency, such that men and women looked
at opposite sex faces more times than at same sex faces,
p < .001; similar results were found for opposite vs. same
sex bodies, p < .001. There was also a significant simple
main effect for Scene Region, such that in both the erotic and
non-erotic stimuli, participants looked at the bodies signifi-
cantly more times than at the faces, p < .001 and p < .001,
respectively. Thus, both opposite sex faces and bodies drew
more attention than same sex faces and bodies, across
stimulus types. Bodies also drew more attention than faces in
general, regardless of whether individuals were attending to
opposite or same sex individuals (Fig. 1).
In the Sex · Sex Congruency interaction, a significant
simple main effect was found for Sex, such that women
looked at the same sex individuals more times than did men,
p = .001, and men looked at the opposite sex individuals
more times than did women, p < .001. There was also a
significant Sex Congruency simple main effect for men, such
that men looked significantly more times at opposite sex than
same sex individuals, p < .001. No such effect was found for
women. Thus, men attended to opposite sex individuals
more times than did women, and women attended to same
sex individuals more times than did men. Also, men looked
at opposite sex individuals significantly more times than they
did same sex individuals, whereas there was no difference in
women’s attention to opposite and same sex individuals
(Fig. 2).
Two significant three-way interactions were observed.
First, there was a significant Sex · Sex Congruency · Scene
Region interaction. A significant Sex simple main effect was
found, such that men looked at the opposite sex bodies more
times than did women, p < .001, and women looked at the
same sex bodies more times than did men, p < .001. No such
effects were found for number of fixations on either the
Arch Sex Behav (2008) 37:219–228 223

Table 1 Means and SDs for women and men: total number of fixations as a function of Stimulus Type, Sex Congruency, and Scene Region
Female participants (n = 20) Male participants (n = 20) Male and female participants combined
(n = 40)
Erotic Non-erotic Both stimulus Erotic Non-erotic Both stimulus Erotic Non-erotic Both stimulus
stimuli stimuli types stimuli stimuli types stimuli stimuli types
M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD

Opposite sex
Face 5.58 2.05 6.13 1.78 5.86 1.92 5.77 1.88 6.24 2.53 6.01 2.21 5.68 1.94 6.19 2.16 5.93 2.06
Body 10.70 2.38 6.69 2.20 8.70 3.04 15.38 3.63 10.95 3.13 13.17 4.03 13.04 3.85 8.82 3.43 10.93 4.20
Both 8.14 3.40 6.41 2.00 7.28 2.90 10.58 5.64 8.60 3.69 9.59 4.84 9.36 4.79 7.50 3.14 8.43 4.14
Same sex
Face 4.42 1.40 5.17 2.18 4.80 1.84 3.84 2.16 4.55 2.06 4.20 2.11 4.13 1.82 4.86 2.11 4.50 4.99
Body 10.91 3.46 8.66 1.53 9.79 2.87 8.34 2.34 5.46 1.99 6.90 2.59 9.63 3.19 7.06 2.39 8.34 3.08
Both 7.67 4.14 6.92 2.56 7.29 3.47 6.09 3.18 5.01 2.05 5.55 2.71 6.88 3.78 5.96 2.50 6.42 3.23
Opposite and same sex
Face 5.00 1.80 5.65 2.02 5.33 1.94 4.81 2.23 5.40 2.43 5.10 2.32 4.90 2.02 5.52 2.23 5.21 2.14
Body 10.81 2.93 7.68 2.12 9.24 2.99 11.86 4.67 8.21 3.80 10.03 4.61 11.33 3.91 7.94 3.07 9.64 3.90
Both 7.90 3.80 6.66 2.30 7.28 3.19 8.33 5.08 6.80 3.45 7.57 4.40 8.12 4.48 6.73 2.93 7.42 3.84
Context 8.52 4.38 13.60 4.24 11.06 4.97 9.47 5.68 14.59 5.66 12.03 6.17 9.00 5.03 14.10 4.96 11.55 5.59

opposite or same sex faces. Women looked at both opposite 12

Face
and same sex bodies more times than faces, p < .001 and Body

10
p < .001, respectively. Women also looked at the opposite
sex faces more times than at the same sex faces, p = .028,
Total # Fixations

8
whereas they looked more times at the same sex bodies than
at opposite sex bodies, p = .018. Men also looked at opposite 6
and same sex bodies more times than at opposite and same
4

2
Table 2 Analysis of variance on total number of fixations for 4-way
interaction (Sex · Stimulus Type · Sex Congruency · Scene Region) 0
Opposite Sex Same Sex
Source df F g2 p Sex Congruency

Between subjects Fig. 1 Sex Congruency · Scene Region interaction for total number
Sex of participant (S) 1 <1 .02 ns of fixations
S within-group error 38 (8.06)
Within subjects
Stimulus Type (T) 1 62.24 .62 <.001 sex faces, p < .001 and p < .001, respectively. Men looked
Sex Congruency (SC) 1 35.93 .49 <.001
at opposite sex faces more times than same sex faces,
Scene Region (R) 1 124.95 .77 <.001
T·R 1 101.33 .73 <.001 p < .001, and also looked more times at opposite than same
SC · R 1 7.14 .16 .011 sex bodies, p < .001.
S · SC 1 36.47 .49 <.001 A significant Stimulus Type · Sex Congruency · Scene
T · SC 1 4.15 .10 .049
Region interaction was also observed. There was a signifi-
S·T 1 <1 .02 ns
S·R 1 1.65 .21 .042 cant simple main effect for Stimulus Type, such that par-
S · SC · R 1 58.60 .61 <.001 ticipants looked at the opposite sex body more times in the
T · SC · R 1 5.62 .13 .023 erotic than the non-erotic stimuli, p < .001, and also looked
S·T·R 1 <1 .01 ns
at the same sex bodies more times in the erotic than the non-
S · T · SC 1 <1 .00 ns
S · T · SC · R 1 <1 .00 ns erotic stimuli, p < .001. However, participants looked more
T within-group error 38 (2.47) times at the same sex face in the non-erotic stimuli than in
SC within-group error 38 (9.00) the erotic stimuli, p = .028. A significant Sex Congruency
R within-group error 38 (12.53)
simple main effect was also found, such that both the
T · R within-group error 38 (3.18)
SC · R within-group error 38 (3.72) opposite sex faces and bodies were looked at more times
T · SC within-group error 38 (4.23) than the same sex faces and bodies in the erotic stimuli,
T · SC · R within-group error 38 (1.83) p < .001 and p < .001, respectively. These results were

123
224
12
10
Total # of Fixations
8
6 erotic than in the non-erotic stimuli and visual attention to
4 A significant Stimulus Type · Sex Congruency interac-
2
0
Opposite Sex Same Sex
Sex Congruency
Fig. 2 Sex · Sex Congruency interaction for total number of
fixations
found in the non-erotic stimuli as well, p < .001 (face) and
p = .033 (body), respectively. Lastly, a significant simple
main effect was found for Scene Region. Opposite sex
bodies were looked at more times than opposite sex faces in
both the erotic and non-erotic stimuli, p < .001 and p < .001,
respectively. Participants also looked at the same sex bodies
more times than at the same sex faces in both the erotic and
non-erotic stimuli, p < .001 and p < .001, respectively.
A separate two-way ANOVA (Sex · Stimulus Type) was
conducted to examine potential sex differences in number of
fixations to the contextual region of the scene. A significant
main effect was found for Stimulus Type only, F(1,38) =
56.71, p < .001, g2 = .60, whereby both men and women
attended to the contextual region of the scene significantly
more times in the non-erotic than in the erotic stimuli. There
was no significant Sex · Stimulus Type interaction.
Total gaze time
Means and SDs of total gaze time male and female partici-
pants gazed at different components (face or bodies, oppo-
site sex or same sex figures) of erotic and non-erotic images
are shown in Table 3. Omnibus ANOVA results for total
gaze time are presented in Table 4. Significant main effects
were found for Stimulus Type, Sex Congruency, and Scene
Region. Three significant two-way interactions and one
three-way interaction were found and analyzed using simple
main effects.
Similar to our results for number of fixations, there was a
significant Stimulus Type · Scene Region interaction.
There was a simple main effect for Stimulus Type, whereby
both men and women looked at the bodies of both opposite
sex and same sex figures in the erotic stimuli for longer
periods of time than at the bodies in the non-erotic stimuli,
p < .001. There was no significant variation between Stim-
ulus Type in the amount of time spent looking at faces. There
123
Arch Sex Behav (2008) 37:219–228
Female was also a simple main effect for Scene Region in the erotic
Male
stimuli: both men and women looked at bodies for more time
than at faces in the erotic stimuli, p < .001. There was no
simple main effect for Scene Region in the non-erotic
stimuli. Thus, visual attention to bodies was higher in the
bodies was higher than to faces in the erotic stimuli only.
tion was also observed. There was a simple main effect for
Stimulus Type (erotic vs. non erotic), whereby both men and
women looked longer at opposite sex individuals in the
erotic stimuli than in the non-erotic stimuli, p < .001. Men
and women also looked longer at same sex individuals in the
erotic than in the non-erotic stimuli, p = .038. There was a
simple main effect for Sex Congruency in the erotic stimuli
whereby all participants gazed longer at the opposite sex
individual than at the same sex individual, p < .001. There
was also a simple main effect for Sex Congruency in the non-
erotic stimuli whereby participants gazed longer at the
opposite sex individuals than at the same sex individuals,
p < .001. Thus, there appeared to be a preference for
opposite sex individuals in both types of stimuli; however,
that preference was accentuated in the erotic stimuli (Fig. 3).
As with our results for total number of fixations, a sig-
nificant Sex · Sex Congruency of Scene Region was
observed. There was a simple main effect for sex whereby,
regardless of stimulus type or scene region, men looked at
opposite sex figures significantly longer than did women,
p = .004, and women looked at same sex figures signifi-
cantly longer than did men, p < .001. There was a simple
main effect for Sex Congruency in men whereby they looked
at the opposite sex figures significantly longer than at same
sex figures, p < .001. There was no simple main effect for
Sex Congruency in women. Men thus conferred more visual
attention than women to opposite sex figures and women
conferred more visual attention to same sex figures than
men, regardless of stimulus type. Additionally, men
appeared more focused on opposite sex figures than same sex
figures while women appeared to divide their attention more
evenly (Fig. 4).
Lastly, results indicated a significant Sex · Sex Con-
gruency · Scene Region interaction. There was a simple
main effect for Sex whereby, regardless of stimuli, men
looked longer at opposite sex bodies than did women,
p < .001 and women looked longer at same sex bodies than
did men, p < .001. There was a simple main effect for Sex
Congruency in men in regards to both faces and bodies, as
they looked significantly longer at both the opposite sex
faces and bodies than the same sex faces and bodies, p < .001
and p < .001, respectively. There was a small simple main
effect for Sex Congruency in women with regard to attention
to faces, such that women attended longer to opposite sex
than to same sex faces, p = .010. There was a simple main
 Table 3 Means and SDs for women and men: total gaze time (in ms) as a function of Stimulus Type, Sex Congruency, and Scene Region
Female participants (n = 20) Male participants (n = 20) Male and female participants combined (n = 40)
Erotic stimuli Non-erotic stimuli Both stimulus types Erotic stimuli Non-erotic stimuli Both stimulus types Erotic stimuli Non-erotic stimuli Both stimulus types
M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD

Opposite sex
Face 2429.00 1242.17 2360.80 1072.55 2409.90 1146.57 2346.88 761.32 2398.32 1025.92 2372.60 892.08 2402.94 1018.48 2379.56 1036.13 2391.25 1020.89
Body 3289.44 900.72 1942.94 793.51 2616.19 1080.23 4490.48 1281.99 3077.86 873.45 3784.17 1297.70 3889.96 1251.32 2510.40 1004.34 3200.18 1323.92
Both 2874.22 1150.56 2151.87 954.97 2513.05 1111.68 3418.68 503.75 2738.09 1001.42 3078.39 1314.78 3146.45 1358.26 2444.98 1016.01 2795.72 1246.32
Same sex
Arch Sex Behav (2008) 37:219–228

Face 1748.64 514.27 1962.12 814.44 1855.38 680.94 1369.80 916.04 1709.72 795.01 1539.76 863.92 1559.22 757.93 1835.92 804.61 1697.57 789.04
Body 3234.36 1098.52 2597.44 757.96 2915.90 985.80 2253.88 695.58 1397.84 529.16 1825.86 748.35 2744.12 1034.47 1997.64 886.16 2370.88 1028.12
Both 2491.50 1118.34 2279.78 829.28 2385.64 996.69 1811.84 919.20 1553.78 685.03 1682.81 815.87 2151.67 1080.43 1916.78 844.92 2034.23 973.95
Opposite and same sex
Face 2103.82 1004.96 2161.46 961.43 2132.64 977.62 1858.34 967.46 2054.02 970.70 1956.18 967.95 1981.08 987.88 2107.74 961.46 2044.41 973.76
Body 3261.90 991.93 2270.19 834.56 2766.05 1038.54 3372.18 1522.84 2237.85 1109.87 2805.02 1441.77 3317.04 1278.15 2254.02 975.81 2785.53 1252.63
Both 2682.86 1150.59 2215.83 896.19 2449.34 1054.36 2615.26 1478.88 2145.94 1040.11 2380.60 1295.99 2649.06 1321.20 2180.88 968.39 2414.97 1180.02
Context 2424.12 1212.33 4117.28 1162.35 3270.70 1452.35 2536.16 1370.57 4436.64 1708.59 3486.40 1806.51 2480.14 1278.44 4276.96 1451.40 3378.55 1632.23

Total Gaze Time (ms)

S·T
S·R
T·R
Source

0
S · SC
T · SC

R · SC

500
3500

1000
1500
2000
2500
3000

time (ms)
S·T·R
S · T · SC
S · SC · R
T · SC · R
Within subjects

S · T · SC · R
Between subjects

Scene Region (R)

Stimulus Type (T)
S within-group error

T within-group error

R within-group error
Sex of participant (S)

Sex Congruency (SC)

SC within-group error

T · R within-group error
T · SC within-group error

Erotic
df

38
38
38
38
38
38

1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
F

<1
<1
<1
<1
<1
<1
<1

2.00
7.62

33.62
19.59
46.75
29.46
19.59
58.26

Stimulus Type
(571431)
(605453)
(300967)

(1491582)
(1642204)
(1086327)
g2

.00
.00
.02
.05
.47
.02
.00
.02
.34
.17
.61
.44
.43
.61
.01

preferentially to same sex bodies compared to men.

Non-Erotic
tion (Sex · Stimulus Type · Sex Congruency · Scene Region)
p

Same Sex
ns
ns
ns
ns
ns
ns
ns
ns

Opposite Sex
Table 4 Analysis of variance on total gaze time for 4-way interac-

Fig. 3 Stimulus Type · Sex Congruency interaction for total gaze

<.001
<.001
.009
<.001
<.001
<.001
<.001

the bodies of these figures, and women appeared to attend

figures. In summary, men appeared to attend preferentially
a simple main effect for Scene Region in women in regards

to a greater extent than women to opposite sex figures and to

effect for Scene Region in women in regards to opposite sex
than at same sex faces, p < .001. There was no simple main
to same sex figures as they gazed longer at same sex bodies
effect for Scene Region in men in terms of opposite sex

Scene Region in men in terms of same sex figures. There was

the faces, p < .001. There was no simple main effect for
figures as they looked at opposite sex bodies longer than at
225

123
226
A separate two-way ANOVA (Sex · Stimulus Type) was
conducted to examine potential sex differences in attention
to the contextual region of the scene. A significant main
effect was found for Stimulus Type only, F(1, 38) = 60.34,
p < .001, g2 = .61. There was no significant Sex · Stimulus
Type interaction. Thus, results indicate that both men and
women attended to the contextual region of the scene sig-
nificantly longer in the non-erotic than in the erotic stimuli.
Discussion
In summary, both men and women attended preferentially to
the bodies as compared to the faces in both erotic and non-
erotic stimuli although, as hypothesized, this difference was
much larger in the erotic stimuli than in the non-erotic
stimuli. These results provide additional support to the
contention that erotic information is processed in an essen-
tially different manner than non-erotic information, such that
attentional focus is differentially drawn toward individual
scene regions depending on the level of eroticism in the
image. Our second major hypothesis was partly confirmed:
men visually attended more than did women to opposite sex
figures; however, they did so regardless of whether the
stimulus was patently erotic or not. Women divided their
visual attention more evenly than did men across male and
female figures in both types of stimuli. This is an intriguing
finding that may be related to the non-specificity of sexual
arousal in women or alternately harkens to a broader sex
difference unrelated to eroticism. Our third hypothesis was
not confirmed as we found no significant sex differences in
the amount of time spent looking at the contextual features of
the stimuli. Though a wealth of data suggests that women are
relatively more focused on scenarios and the situations in
which sexual activity is taking place, this study did not find
concordant results at the level of visual attention.
3500
3000
Total Gaze Time (ms)
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0 individuals, even when they are fully dressed and not
Opposite Sex
Sex Congruency
Fig. 4 Sex · Sex Congruency interaction for total gaze time (ms)
123
Arch Sex Behav (2008) 37:219–228
Similar to previous findings, the Stimulus Type · Scene
Region interaction revealed a significant difference in the
manner in which participants attended to erotic and non-
erotic images. Not surprisingly, the bodies attracted more
attention in the erotic than in the non-erotic stimuli while
faces were attended to in relatively the same manner across
stimulus types. This was true for both men and women.
Results replicated the methodology study findings reported
by Lykins et al. (2006), and provide additional support for
the utility of eye-tracking methodology in human sexuality
research. An additional processing difference found in this
study was the preferential attention given to opposite sex
figures in the erotic stimuli. Although there was a clear
preference for opposite sex individuals across stimuli, this
preference was significantly amplified in the erotic stimuli.
Accordingly, these data further support the argument that
erotic information is processed differently than non-erotic
information and add visual attention as another level of
processing at which this difference might be manifested
(Anohkin et al., 2006; Geer & Bellard, 1996; Geer et al.,
1994; Geer & Manguno-Mire, 1996; Geer & Melton, 1997).
Perhaps more interestingly, the Sex · Sex Congruency
interactions revealed that men showed a stronger and clearer
visual attention preference for opposite sex figures than did
women. In fact, across stimulus types, women appeared to
disperse their attention between the male and female figures
far more evenly than did men. The three-way interactions
revealed that, when looking at opposite sex individuals, men
paid much more attention to the body than the face. Again,
this difference was not seen in women. However, when
gazing at same sex individuals, women looked at women’s
bodies significantly longer than men looked at men’s bodies.
There are at least two potential explanations for this
result. Firstly, it could be that any photograph of a man and a
woman interacting positively has some erotic processing
potential for heterosexual individuals. If this were the case,
then the sex differences we found in the dispersion of visual
attention across same sex and opposite sex figures might
indeed be indicative of a sex difference in the processing of
Female
erotic material. An alternate possibility is that men and
Male
women differ fundamentally in the way they divide attention
across a visual stimulus regardless of its content. If this were
the case, then we would not be able to reach any conclusions
about sex differences in processing specific to sexual
material.
Although our erotic stimuli were rated as significantly
more arousing than our non-erotic stimuli, it seems reason-
able to posit that reasonably attractive figures of the opposite
sex are inherently erotic to some degree for heterosexual
Same Sex engaged in sexual activity. After all, most people’s first
feelings of arousal in regards to a romantic partner occur
under the latter conditions. If this is the case, then these
Arch Sex Behav (2008) 37:219–228
results may provide some evidence of the non-specificity of
female sexual arousal at the level of visual attention.
Women’s more equal distribution of attention across male
and female figures compared to the more narrow visual
attentional focus of men on female figures seems to be in
alignment with the sex differences in the specificity of sexual
arousal found by Chivers et al. (2004). Chivers et al. found
that women aroused more to stimuli that did not correspond
with their self-reported sexual orientation than did men.
Although more recent results suggest that lesbians demon-
strate a more category-specific pattern of arousal than het-
erosexual women (Chivers, 2006), the visual attention
conferred on the female figures by the heterosexual women
in our study remains consistent with these findings. Clearly,
we can only very cautiously infer arousal from visual
attention as we did not measure arousal in this study. How-
ever, it is not unreasonable to posit that visual attention and
arousal may be related. One must attend to something before
it can be appraised as arousing, and the scene perception
literature certainly supports the contention that visual
attention is drawn to regions containing informative, emo-
tional, appetitive, or aversive stimuli (Calvo & Lang, 2004;
Henderson & Hollingworth, 1999; Lundquist & Ohman,
2005).
Alternately, it could be that men and women have fun-
damentally different visual scan patterns, such that men are
more narrowly focused on specific regions drawing their
attention, whereas women show a more general scan pattern
of the entire scene. Though we were unable to find any lit-
erature to either support or refute this contention in healthy
adults, we believe that our results for attention to context do
not support this explanation. We found no significant
Sex · Context interaction, which suggests that men and
women attended to the contextual features of the scene to the
same extent. If women had a fundamentally more dispersive
visual scan, we would have expected them to attend more
than men to the background. Furthermore, the main effect for
Stimulus Type in this analysis revealed a significant differ-
ence in attention to context between erotic and non-erotic
stimuli, further showing that men and women appeared to
vary their attention to the context in the same way. Our
results thus seem to favor the explanation of there having
been an erotic component in our supposedly non-erotic
stimuli.
One cannot, however, discount the possibility that the
women in our study attended more to same-sex figures than
men for social comparison reasons. There is evidence to
suggest that adolescent girls engage to a greater extent than
boys in bodily social comparison (e.g., Jones Carlson, 2001)
and that women appear to be significantly more plagued by
body image concerns than men (Feingold & Mazella, 1998).
227
In addition, maybe men are subconsciously avoiding gazing
at the same-sex figure because it elicits homoerotic anxiety.
Either of these factors could conceivably result in the
viewing patterns we found.
At the level of visual attention, the lack of a Sex ·
Stimulus Type interaction did not support the sex difference
hypothesis in the cognitive processing of sexual material
(see Geer & Manguno-Mire, 1996). That is, of course, unless
our non-erotic stimuli were not as non-erotic as we had
assumed. In their study of ERPs to erotic and non-erotic
images, Anohkin et al. (2006) argued that an ‘‘erotic bias’’
for information processing exists in both sexes, but that the
extent to which one may find sex differences expressed
likely depends on the chosen research methodology. It is also
possible that expected sex differences may have been found
if we had examined higher-order cognitive processes (e.g.,
memory). Further investigation into this issue is warranted.
One final issue worth discussing is that of scene region
size in within-participant analyses. It seems logical to posit
that the body scene region was attended to the most simply
because it was larger than the face scene region, and not
because of a greater level of interest in the body. Had this
been a concern, we would have controlled for region size;
however, we chose not to, based on a voluminous scene
perception literature indicating that complexity and infor-
mativeness of scene regions affects viewing to a greater
degree than their size (Henderson & Hollingworth, 1999).
Within our study, this argument is supported by the fact that
our largest scene region (context), which comprised an
average of 58% of the scenes, attracted far less than even
10% of the average total viewing time. It thus appears that, in
the case of visual attention to erotic images, size does not
matter.
Future research could target the limitations of the current
study. To tease apart the extent to which sex differences in
the processing of erotic stimuli occur at a higher-order
cognitive level versus at the basic level of visual attention,
factors such as appraisal and interest could be assessed
through concurrent self-report, and memory for scene
regions could be tested post-stimulus presentation. It would
certainly be useful to test more directly the relationship
between visual attention and subjective and physiological
arousal, potentially through pupilometry in addition to
genital arousal measures. As distraction has been linked to
the development and maintenance of sexual dysfunction,
utilizing paradigms examining this construct may prove
useful as both a basic research methodology and a potential
treatment. Finally, it may be useful to use standardized
computer-generated images that have been precisely
designed to control for image features that are difficult to
standardize in photographic images.
123
228
References
Anokhin, A. P., Golosheykin, S., Sirevaag, E., Kristijansson, S.,
Rohrbaugh, J. W., & Heath, A. C. (2006). Rapid discrimination
of visual scene content in the human brain. Brain Research,
1093, 167–177.
Calvo, M. G., & Lang, P. J. (2004). Gaze patterns when looking at
emotional pictures: Motivationally biased attention. Motivation
and Emotion, 28, 221–243.
Chivers, M. L. (2005). A brief review and discussion of sex
differences in the specificity of sexual arousal. Sexual and
Relationship Therapy, 20, 377–390.
Chivers, M. L. (2006). Do women have a ‘‘sexual orientation?’’
Insights from female sexual psychophysiology. Paper presented
at the meeting of the International Academy of Sex Research,
Amsterdam.
Chivers, M. L., Rieger, G., Latty, E., & Bailey, J. M. (2004). A sex
difference in the specificity of sexual arousal. Psychological
Science, 15, 736–744.
Feingold, A., & Mazzella, R. (1998). Gender differences in body
image are increasing. Psychological Science, 9, 190–195.
Geer, J. H., & Bellard, H. S. (1996). Sexual content induced delays in
unprimed lexical decisions: Gender and context effects. Archives
of Sexual Behavior, 25, 379–395.
Geer, J. H., Judice, S., & Jackson, S. (1994). Reading times for erotic
material: The pause to reflect. Journal of General Psychology,
121, 345–352.
Geer, J. H., & Manguno-Mire, G. M. (1996). Gender differences in
cognitive processes in sexuality. Annual Review of Sex Research,
7, 90–124.
Geer, J. H., & McGlone, M. S. (1990). Sex differences in memory for
erotica. Cognition and Emotion, 4, 71–78.
Geer, J. H., & Melton, J. S. (1997). Sexual content-induced delays
with double-entendre words. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 26,
295–316.
Geer, J. H., & Robertson, G. G. (2005). Implicit attitudes in sexuality:
Gender differences. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 34, 671–677.
Hamann, S., Herman, R., Nolan, C. L., & Wallen, K. (2004). Men and
women differ in amygdala response to visual sexual stimuli.
Nature Neuroscience, 7, 411–416.
Henderson, J. M., & Hollingworth, A. (1999). High-level scene
perception. Annual Review of Psychology, 50, 243–271.
Henderson, J. M., Weeks, P. A., & Hollingworth, A. (1999). The
effects of semantic consistency on eye movements during
complex scene viewing. Journal of Experimental Psychology,
25, 210–228.
Hyde, J. S. (2005). The gender similarities hypothesis. American
Psychologist, 60, 581–592.
Janssen, E., Carpenter, D., & Graham, C. (2003). Selecting film clips
for sex research: Gender differences in erotic film preference.
Archives of Sexual Behavior, 32, 243–251.
123
Arch Sex Behav (2008) 37:219–228
Jones Carlson, D. (2001). Social comparison and body image:
Attractiveness comparisons to models and peers among adoles-
cent girls and boys. Sex Roles, 45, 645–664.
Kirsch-Rosenkrantz, J., & Geer, J. H. (1991). Gender differences in
memory for a sexual story. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 20,
295–305.
Laan, E., Everaerd, W., van Bellen, G., & Hanewald, G. (1994).
Women’s sexual and emotional responses to male- and female-
produced erotica. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 23, 153–169.
Leitenberg, H., & Henning, K. (1995). Sexual fantasy. Psychological
Bulletin, 117, 469–496.
Lippa, R. A. (2005). Gender, nature, and nurture (2nd ed.). Mahwah,
NJ: Erlbaum.
Lundquist, D., & Ohman, A. (2005). Emotion regulates attention: The
relation between facial configurations, facial emotion, and visual
attention. Visual Cognition, 12, 51–84.
Lykins, A. D., Meana, M., & Kambe, G. (2006). Detection of
differential viewing patterns to erotic and non-erotic stimuli
using eye-tracking methodology. Archives of Sexual Behavior,
35, 569–575.
Meuwissen, I., & Over, R. (1991). Multidimensionality of the content
of female sexual fantasy. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 29,
179–189.
Mosher, D. L., & MacIan, P. (1994). College men and women
respond to X-rated videos intended for male or female
audiences: Gender and sexual scripts. Journal of Sex Research,
31, 99–113.
Oliver, M. B., & Hyde, J. S. (1993). Gender differences in sexuality:
A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 114, 29–51.
Rayner, K. (1995). Eye movements and cognitive processes in
reading, visual search, and scene perception. In J. M. Findley, R.
Walker, & R. W. Kentridge (Eds.), Eye movement research:
Mechanisms, processes and applications (pp. 3–22). New York:
Elsevier Science.
Schmidt, G., Sigusch, V., & Schafer, S. (1973). Responses to reading
erotic stories: Male-female differences. Archives of Sexual
Behavior, 2, 181–199.
Sigusch, V., Schmidt, G., Reinfeld, A., & Wiedermann-Sutor, I. W.
(1970). Psychosexual stimulation: Sex differences. Journal of
Sex Research, 6, 10–24.
Smith, D., & Over, R. (1991). Male sexual fantasy: Multidimensi-
onality in content. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 29, 267–
275.
Tokatlidis, O., & Over, R. (1995). Imagery, fantasy, and female
sexual arousal. Australian Journal of Psychology, 47, 81–85.
Wells, J. W. (1990). The sexual vocabularies of heterosexual and
homosexual males and females for communicating erotically
with a sexual partner. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 19, 139–147.
Youn, G. (2006). Subjective sexual arousal in response to erotica:
Effects of gender, guided fantasy, erotic stimulus, and duration
of exposure. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 35, 87–97.