Bats and balls

Research done by the Online Journalism Review at the USC Annenberg Center for Communications concludes that men like to stare at balls. http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/070312ruel/

The study, done to better understand eye movement when a user is reading a news article online, used images as part of the data gathering process.

Eyetracking, as the measurement is called, revealed that when men look at photos of people doing a particular task, they tend to focus on certain areas more so than women:

When photos do contain people related to the task at hand, or the content users are exploring, they do get fixations. However, gender makes a distinct difference on what parts of the photo are stared at the longest. Take a look at the hotspot below.

Although both men and women look at the image of George Brett when directed to find out information about his sport and position, men tend to focus on private anatomy as well as the face. For the women, the face is the only place they viewed.

This image of George Brett was part of a larger page with his biographical information. All users tested look at the image, but there was a distinct difference in focus between men and women.

Not only that, men have their primal instincts intact:

... this difference doesn’t just occur with images of people. Men tend to fixate more on areas of private anatomy on animals as well, as evidenced when users were directed to browse the American Kennel Club site.

So now its settled, men watch baseball to look at bats and balls.

Photo from the OJR website.