Sexual preference modulates attentional bias towards attractive faces in men, but not women

Humans commonly associate physical attractiveness with health and fertility, making it a key factor in mate desirability. Consistent with this, previous research has demonstrated a robust attentional bias towards attractive faces across a range of experimental paradigms. However, how this bias varies across the sexes and whether it depends on the sexual preference and/or relationship status of the perceiver is still poorly understood. Moreover, these studies often rely on undergraduate samples that may not represent the general population. In the present study, we therefore examined attentional biases towards facial attractiveness among a general population sample recruited during a public science festival ( n = 102). To do this, we employed an eye-tracking based preferential looking task, where people were presented with pairs of conventionally attractive and less attractive faces of either males or females. We investigated (1) whether men and women differed in their attentional bias towards attractive faces of their preferred and non-preferred sexes, distinguishing between immediate (automatic) and volitional (deliberate) components of attention and (2) whether attractiveness bias was modulated by participants' relationship status. Our results indicate that facial attractiveness primarily influences volitional rather than immediate attention in the current paradigm. Women showed a general, non-sex-specific bias, looking longer at attractive faces regardless of their sex, whereas men exhibited a more selective bias towards attractive faces of their preferred sex, which is in line with previous research. We found no clear effect of relationship status on attractiveness bias towards preferred faces. Together, these findings suggest that attractiveness-related attention is not a general, automatic response to attractive faces, but is expressed mainly in sustained gaze allocation and depends on the sex and sexual preference of the perceiver.