Perception studies describe numerous discrete morphological facial features as important to judgements of various characteristics. Interestingly, little is known about whether people actually direct their visual attention to these features and how specific contexts or sex affect this attention. We, therefore, examined visual attention to faces in the context of intersexual (opposite-sex assessment of attractiveness) and intrasexual (same-sex assessment of dominance) selection. In total, 93 women and 33 men rated 80 high-resolution facial photographs of men and women while their gaze was recorded using eye-tracking. To explore patterns of raters' attention to faces and specific facial features, we used the number of fixations, fixation duration, and visit duration as visual attention measures. Women directed more visual attention towards the faces of potential partners (more fixations) than potential rivals, and men had longer fixation duration when assessing potential partners than rivals. Facial features that acquired the most visual attention across contexts and sexes were the eyes, nose, and mouth, but small differences between the sexes and contexts in visual attention were found for other facial regions suggested by previous perception studies, such as the chin and the cheeks indicating their importance in specific judgements.

Center for Virtual Reality Research in Mental Health and Neuroscience 3rd Faculty of Medicine Charles University Prague Czech Republic

Faculty of Physical Education and Sport Charles University Prague Czech Republic

Faculty of Science Charles University Prague Czech Republic

National Institute of Mental Health Klecany Czech Republic

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