14 DAY TRIAL // In a study of 34 volunteers, experts at the University of Southern California (USC) determined that men and women fix their gaze on different types of objects while they talk, and also that their attention is distracted by different things.
In order to conduct such an investigation, the team had the participants watch a video of an interview, while various objects, such as cars and dogs, rolled through the background. The motions of their eyes were tracked with special cameras, LiveScience reports.
Men were found to be more likely to focus their attention on the mouth of the person speaking in the interview. Conspicuous movements behind the people conducting the interview were most likely to distract their attention.
Women were more likely to be distracted whenever other people entered the frame. When no distractions were present, they tended to focus their attention on the eyes and bodies of the people in the interview.