You've got your brand new Manolo Blahnik's (I wish!) and skinny jeans on; your hair is quaffed; make-up perfect. And you're cruising the scene downtown. Or the beach. Wherever. You're scoping people out and have to believe you're being eyed too ... But how can you tell if that cute guy is interested?
Why the 8 second rule, of course. Researchers say that's how long a man will look at a woman when they meet for the first time, If he's interested.
To do the study, they stealthily used hidden cameras to track eye movements of more than 100 students as they spoke to actors and actresses. Then they were asked to rate their conversation partner's attractiveness.
Results were not the same for the male and female students ... here's how it broke down: men looked into the eyes of actresses they considered beautiful for an average of 8.2 seconds. Actresses they didn't find as attractive, they only looked at for just over four seconds. The female students, however, looked at male actors for the same amount of time, regardless of their attraction to them.
The full study is printed in the journal "Archives of Sexual Behavior."
Draw your own conclusions about what this says for the war of the sexes.
