The presence of bare legs captures visual attention and eye movements

Revealing clothing, particularly exposed legs, is prevalent in media and daily life, yet it remains unclear whether bare legs involuntarily capture visual attention from others. The present study investigated the attentional capture of bare legs through three experiments. In Experiment 1 (n = 108), we examined whether task-irrelevant female bare legs interfere with performances in a visual search task. The results revealed that the presence of female bare legs significantly impaired search performance for both male and female participants, suggesting that female bare legs capture attention even when they are detrimental. Experiment 2a (n = 68) utilized eye-tracking while participants observed dance videos to investigate gaze behavior under more ecological conditions. We found that regardless of the participant's or the dancer's sex, participants spent significantly more time fixating on bare legs compared to clothed legs. Experiment 2b (n = 68) demonstrated that this effect was specific to legs, as no such attentional capture was observed for bare arms, ruling out the influence of low-level visual saliency. These findings suggest that female bare legs serve as a potent social signal that automatically recruits human visual attention.