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Find Out A Woman’s Interest In The Opposite Gender!

By Staff

Do you want to find out a woman's interest in the opposite gender? Then find out her partner status to get the clue. Because a woman's interest in the opposite gender does get influenced by her partner status.

Indiana University neuroscientist Heather Rupp conducted this study. For instance, ask some women and men to rate the photos of opposite-sex faces for realism, masculinity/femininity, attractiveness, or affect. The participants have to give their "gut" reaction and to rate the pictures as quickly as possible. The participants should be heterosexual, from a variety of ethnic backgrounds and should not use hormonal contraception.

Women both with and without sexual partners will show little difference in their subjective ratings of photos of men when considering such measures as masculinity and attractiveness. The women who did not have sexual partners will spend more time evaluating photos of men, demonstrating a greater interest in the photos. However there won't be any difference between men who had sexual partners and those who did not.


There were no detectable effects of sexual partner status on women's subjective ratings of male faces. There were on response times, which emphasizes the subtlety of this effect and introduces the possibility that sexual partner status impacts women's cognitive processing of novel male faces but not necessarily their conscious subjective appraisal. It is also noted that influence of partner status in women could reflect that women, on average, are relatively committed in their romantic relationships.

These findings may reflect sex differences in reproductive strategies that may act early in the cognitive processing of potential partners and contribute to sex differences in sexual attraction and behaviour.

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Story first published: Thursday, June 11, 2009, 14:49 [IST]