…yes and no, some conflicting studies say. In this now famous eye-tracking study, researchers found men and women focused on slightly different, er, body parts.

But now antother study has come out, saying men and women both look at faces and, um, other body parts.

So what’s really going on? I think the second study points out two interesting things:

• Women’s focus changed depending on their hormone level

• Women spent more time than men focusing on couples that were “intertwined”, if you know what I mean

I’ve started studying how men and women process images. One of my theories is that women are more interested in images with more than one person. They are intrigued by the relationship between the people in the image. I’m still researching, so don’t know if it’s true, but it’s a hunch.

I ran across a blog post Alex Harris did in 2004 talking about some testing Netflix was doing on their home page. Go check out the two examples: One is an image of a couple enjoying a movie, the other contains images of hit movies.

Now, I don’t know if this is really a male vs. female thing. It could be a Humanistic vs. Spontaneous-type thing. Humanistics are very relationship-focused. Spending time with a loved one may be more important than watching the movie. Spontaneous folks love action and adventure. They may prefer the actual act of watching the movie and not be that concerned with who they are watching it with.

But I wonder how these images would test if broken down by gender. Would women prefer the “relationship” image of the man and woman on the couch with the popcorn and wine? Would men prefer the “hit movie titles” image?

What do you think? Any preferences? Ladies? Gents?