My resting state can best be described as fairly gormless. The volume button isn’t completely turned off, but my connection with the world at large is, at best, a low-level hum of static. I’m not entirely disengaged from society, you understand; I just tend to operate on a need-to-know basis, and unfortunately, I’m not always convinced that I need to know.
My interest in the wider community can be piqued when I’m doing something that interests me or, more specifically, when a photograph of a late-70s speedway team appears on Facebook. At that point, I can identify every rider, recall their riding styles, and probably tell you what colour their leathers were. Yet, simultaneously, I’ll have forgotten to put the bins out, missed someone’s birthday or failed to acknowledge an important family occasion.
It’s not that I lack an enquiring mind. As a writer, curiosity is an occupational hazard. The problem is that my brain only seems to fire on all cylinders when I’m engaged, confused, or confronted by some visual stimulant that flicks a switch. Otherwise, it appears to be running on a reduced electricity tariff.
One of my favourite pastimes is people watching. I’ve written about this previously, particularly our mutual habit of attempting to construct an abbreviation or character profile of the individual under scrutiny. The results are invariably inaccurate, occasionally offensive, and generally based on absolutely no evidence whatsoever.
We like to think we’re rather good at reading people. We imagine ourselves as amateur Sherlock Holmeses, detecting subtle clues in body language, facial expressions, and the way someone holds a glass of wine. In reality, our powers of observation are about as reliable as a chocolate teapot. We see someone scratching their nose and conclude they’re nervous, someone looking at their watch and decide they’re bored, and someone wearing an expensive coat and assume they’ve got money.
The truth is that we’re probably rubbish at it.
But there’s another aspect of people watching that deserves closer examination. Attractiveness.
As the old saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And while I would like to think I’m an enlightened observer of the human condition, I can’t claim to be entirely immune to the occasional visual distraction. Certain parts of the human anatomy can have an almost hypnotic effect on me, rather like a moth drawn to a particularly bright light.
This became apparent at a recent police reunion.
I was happily minding my own business, engaging in conversation, and generally doing a passable impression of a functioning adult when my eyes began to wander. Not aimlessly, I might add. They appeared to have identified a particular target and, without consulting the rest of my brain, decided to maintain a rather prolonged interest in a certain pair of assets.
I shall spare you the anatomical detail. Suffice to say that my powers of observation were suddenly operating at a level that would have impressed Sherlock Holmes himself.
And this got me thinking.
Was this an entirely automated response? Was my brain simply doing what brains do when confronted with something visually appealing? Did I need therapy? Or was I, to put it bluntly, just a bit of a wrong ‘un?
Time to investigate.
The science of being distracted
It turns out that there is actually some interesting research into this particular area of human weakness. And, rather reassuringly, it suggests that I might not be entirely responsible for what happened at the reunion.
Psychologists have long been interested in the relationship between physical attractiveness and visual attention. In other words, why do certain people, or certain features, attract our gaze more readily than others?
A 2014 study published in Frontiers in Psychology found that attractive faces could capture and influence visual attention even when participants were concentrating on an entirely different task. In effect, the brain appeared to be distracted by something it considered visually appealing, regardless of whether it had been asked to pay attention to it.
This is encouraging.
It suggests that my wandering eyes might not have been the result of some deep-seated moral deficiency. They could simply have been responding to a stimulus that had temporarily hijacked my attention.
Of course, this doesn’t necessarily excuse anything. But it’s nice to have a scientific explanation available when one’s behaviour requires defending.
Research by Silva and colleagues, published in 2016, went a little further. Using eye-tracking technology, they discovered that participants looked more frequently at attractive faces than less attractive ones. Interestingly, these images also produced more recognition errors, suggesting that attraction can influence not only where we look but how we remember what we’ve seen.
Which is fascinating when you think about it.
I can remember the names of every rider in a 1978 speedway book yet struggle sometimes to remember why I’ve walked into a room. Apparently, the brain has a rather selective filing system. It might be able to retain information about attractive people, but don’t ask it to remember the anniversary of your wedding.
There is also something known as the attractiveness halo effect. This is the psychological tendency to associate physical attractiveness with other positive qualities. We unconsciously attribute characteristics such as intelligence, confidence, warmth, and sociability to people simply because we find them attractive.
In other words, beauty can persuade us that someone is a thoroughly decent human being before they’ve even opened their mouth.
It’s a rather convenient arrangement for attractive people and a thoroughly unfair one for the rest of us.
But perhaps the most interesting aspect of this research is the suggestion that our visual attention isn’t always under conscious control. Our brains are constantly processing information, filtering stimuli, and deciding what deserves our attention. Some things simply get priority.
Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be a corresponding mechanism that reminds us to take the bins out.
So, where does that leave me?
Having considered the available evidence, I’m inclined to believe that my behaviour at the reunion was probably a combination of natural human curiosity, visual stimulation, and an imperfectly regulated attention system.
I could, of course, be making excuses.
There is a difference between noticing someone attractive and staring at them as though you’ve just discovered a previously undocumented species. And I suspect that somewhere between those two positions lies the territory occupied by most of us.
The real question is whether we should feel guilty about noticing beauty in the first place.
I don’t think so. We are visual creatures. We notice things. We make judgements, sometimes instantaneously, and occasionally get them spectacularly wrong. Attraction is part of being human, although the ability to exercise a little discretion is probably part of being civilised.
Perhaps that’s the distinction. We can’t always control what catches our eye, but we can exercise some control over what we do next.
And that, I suppose, is where the research meets real life.
I’m still a relatively gormless individual whose attention span can be commandeered by a photograph, an interesting conversation, or a pair of particularly distracting anatomical features. I remain capable of forgetting important dates and overlooking everyday responsibilities.
But at least I now have a scientific explanation for some of it.
Whether that explanation will stand up in a police reunion environment is another matter.
Perhaps the real lesson is that the human brain is an extraordinary piece of equipment, capable of remarkable intellectual achievements, complex emotional responses, and sophisticated social interaction.
It can also be spectacularly thick.
And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from a lifetime of observing people, it’s that we’re all rather more complicated, distracted and occasionally ridiculous than we care to admit.
As for me, I’ll continue to observe the world with interest, although perhaps with a little more discretion.
And I’ll try to remember to put the bins out.
Although if someone posts a photograph of the 1979 Hull Vikings team, all bets are off.
© Ian Kirke 2026
@ iankirke.bsky.social
Title image: Photo by Anna Tarazevich on Unsplash