How can you tell is someone is in love with you, or just lusting after you?

New research shows that eye contact – how we fix our eyes on another person – can reveal our goals and intentions.

When we are in love with someone, most of our eye contact is directed at their face.  When feeling lustful, our eyes focus on the other person’s body.

Key quote from the research:

“In both studies, therefore, the number of fixations to the face, relative to the number of fixations to the body, was greater for decisions involving love than for decisions involving lust. These findings are consistent with the functional-coupling hypothesis, which posits that visual attention reflects, in part, the features of a stimulus that are most relevant to a person’s intentions or goals.”

Eye contact is not useful when trying to determine if someone is lying.  But, it can give us insight into how people feel about us.

Source:

Bolmont, M., Cacioppo, J. T., & Cacioppo, S. (2014). Love Is in the Gaze An Eye-Tracking Study of Love and Sexual Desire. Psychological Science, 0956797614539706.