Men stare at breasts, women at wedding rings: study

An eye tracking study by a French laboratory, conducted in seven countries, presented an image of an attractive woman to both men and women to discover where their eyes went.

While the study made the unremarkable discovery that men spend longer than women observing a woman's chest, it also found that women spend much longer looking at the wedding ring on the woman's finger.

The study was conducted by French company Miratech and used its eye tracking technology to track the eye movements of men and women when presented with the image.

Men look at the woman's chest for 37 percent longer than women, with French men spending longest observing this region. French men spent 2.7 times as long looking at the chest as British men.

Of the women, it was French and Danish women who spent the longest observing the woman's breasts; more than twice as long as their British and Spanish counterparts.

Women look at the ring on the woman's finger for 27 percent longer than the men, although French women had the shortest attention span for this. British women were the most attentive, spending 149 percent longer looking at this than British men.

Both men and women spent the longest period of time looking at the woman's face, although men tended to linger on the lips while women focused on the eyes.

At the end of the test, participants were asked to say what they thought of the young woman in the photo.

While women found her "common and vulgar," men described her as "very attractive and sexy."