Gazing Patterns and Attribution of Sexual Involvement

Summary Selected stimulus dimensions of interpersonal gazing—duration and reciprocity of gaze, sexual composition of the interacting pair—were examined for their impact on observer attributions of sexual involvement. One hundred seventy-one City College of New York psychology students rated 16 brief, filmed encounters as to the degree of sexual involvement apparent in each encounter. Longer and reciprocated gazes resulted in attributions of greater sexual involvement, as did gazing variations between opposite- as contrasted to same-sex pairs. Within every gaze condition, female judges made significantly greater attributions for opposite- as opposed to same-sex pairs. Few such differences appeared for male judges because of their tendency, relative to females, to give higher ratings for same- as opposed to opposite-sex pairs. Results suggest that females were relatively more discriminating in their use of gazing cues in attributing sexual involvement, a finding consonant with other reports of females' grea...

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