What Our Eyes Say About Our Sexual Preferences
Pupil Sarah CartwrightWomen are more flexible in their desires than men, study suggests Cornell University researchers used porn and measures of pupil dilation to study arousal in straight-, gay- and bisexual-identifying men and women, reports a study published April 3 in PLoS ONE. The results, which point to surprising differences in arousal based on a person's sex and sexual orientation, corroborate previous research using measures of genital response, opening up a less-invasive method of studying arousal and orientation. Human development experts Gerulf Rieger and Ritch Savin-Williams measured pupil dilation in 325 people as they watched two 30-second videos -- one of a woman masturbating and one of a man -- as well as a 1-minute clip of a neutral landscape that served as a palate-cleanser and a control between the porn clips. Participants in a pilot study chose the clips based on the attractiveness of the models, and the order they...