Researchers conducted a study in which they asked college undergraduate students to leer at members of the opposite sex. They found that when women were ogled by strange men, their performance on math tests were worse compared to those who were not ogled by strange men. But when men were leered at by strange women, their performances were unaffected. Lead author Sarah J. Gervais explained:
Link via Ace of Spades HQ | Photo (unrelated, but returned when I searched for "creepy stare") via Flickr user Michael Cordedda used under Creative Commons license
Asked to describe the “objectifying gaze,” Ms. Gervais laughs. “In the laboratory, as you might imagine, it’s relatively difficult to get people to gaze at other people,” she says. “So what we did in this study is we trained confederates — those are people that are sort of in on this study — we trained them to visually scan women’s bodies and then to stare at their chests when they were interviewing them, and … we did this also to men.”
The men appeared to be unfazed when their female interviewers stared at the men’s chests before and after asking the first, third, and fifth interview questions, Ms. Gervais says.
Link via Ace of Spades HQ | Photo (unrelated, but returned when I searched for "creepy stare") via Flickr user Michael Cordedda used under Creative Commons license
Let's see: sex or math test? Sex or math test? Yeah, kinda hard to decide which would be preferable.
What I found difficult in interviews was I tend to look down from a person's eyes, male or female. I tend to avoid direct eye contact for a long period of time, but that sometimes makes it look like I'm staring in other places, when that's the last thing on my mind.