Love or lust? Eyes will tell

The study found no significant difference in the time it took subjects to identify romantic love versus sexual desire, which shows how quickly the brain can process both emotions, the researchers believe. But analysis of the eye-tracking data from the two studies showed marked differences in eye movement patterns, depending on whether the subjects reported feeling sexual desire or romantic love. People tended to visually fixate on the face, especially when they said an image elicited a feeling of romantic love. However, with images that evoked sexual desire, the subjects' eyes moved from the face to fixate on the rest of the body. The effect was found for male and female participants.