Sunday, March 18, 2007

Men judging their competition or feeling insecure?

I came across an eye tracking study conducted by Nielsen and Coyne in the Online Journal Journalism Review when working on case study analysis of the online advertising on New Woman and Handbag.

This study showed differences in the eye tracking movements between men and woman while looking at a picture of George Brett. The picture clearly shows that men tend to focus on the private anatomy and the face. Women on the other hand focus only on the face. Ofcourse these results are very interesting, but only raised the following questions:
  • Are men focused on the private anatomy to judge the competition or to judge their own anatomy?
  • Do men also focus on the private anatomy of other men in real life?
  • If the picture showed a woman, would women only focus on the face of the woman or would they look at different parts to compare?
  • If the picture showed a woman, would men look focus on the same parts?

Unfortunately I couldn't find more information about eye tracking differences between men and women. It would be interesting to know if pictures, used to advertise to woman, only have to show a woman face to attract. Further it would be interesting how this differs from real life.

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