Do you think you know for sure what you find beautiful and who really appeals to you?

Decision-making processes in the brain are lightening fast and often proceed unconsciously. Explaining how this works is the aim of several different research fields—from the neurosciences to artificial intelligence all the way to psychology. The human brain has developed over millions of years; numerous instincts and patterns of behavior that have been useful for human beings over the course of our evolution are still present. The activity of the eyes provides an excellent picture of how our brain reacts to its surroundings. The “Eyetracker” recognizes which points our eyes concentrate on (fixation) and how long we look at individual points (duration). This makes it possible to investigate, for example, how we perceive billboards, commercials and websites, which content elements we pay attention to and which we overlook.

Dr. Bernhard Fink, behavioral biologist at the University of Göttingen, has developed pioneering experiments that reveal our preferences for faces, forms and colors. His research work is an effort to understand human behavior from the perspective of evolution. Part of this research deals with the question of what we find attractive, and investigates how human beings select a mate.

credit:
Dr. Bernhard Fink, Universität, Göttingen