Their eyes met across a crowded room. The party chatter ebbed away, and the music slowed. That first lovers' glaze is the staple of the romantic novelist, and scientists believe they have now revealed the true nature of its true attractive power.
他们的目光相遇在满屋的人群中。聚会的闲聊声渐渐退去，音乐也慢了下来。一见钟情历来是浪漫小说家的素材，科学家则相信他们现在发现了这种吸引力的本质。
According to new research, romance has very little do to with it. That "look" is all about sex and ego.
一项最新研究表明：浪漫与此无关。“目光”只与性和自恋有关。
"It does seem to be a sort of narcissistic thing. People are attracted to people who are attracted to them," said Ben Jones in the Face Research Laboratory at the University of Aberdeen.
阿伯丁大学面部研究实验室的本·琼斯说：“看起来这确实是一种自恋情结。人们喜欢那些同样喜欢他们的人。”
"It's really a very basic effect that we are all, at some level at least, aware of - which is that if you smile at people and you maintain eye contact, it makes you more attractive."
“至少从某种程度而言，所有人都清楚这是一种本能力量--如果你对别人露出笑脸并保持目光交流，你会看起来更具吸引力。”

He said the work challenges most previous studies of facial attractiveness that have focused on physical characteristics, such as a preference for symmetrical faces or masculine versus feminine features.
琼斯称阿伯丁大学面部研究实验室的研究对以往重视外表特征的面部吸引力学说提出了异议。面部吸引力学说称较之于女性特征，人们更喜欢脸部对称和具男性化特征的面孔。
"Social signals about how attracted someone else is to you actually seem to be quite important," he said. "You are attracted to people who are attracted to you, and that shows attractiveness is not just about physical beauty."
琼斯说：“对人们而言，他人如何被你吸引的社交暗示实际上非常重要。你喜欢那些被你吸引的人，这表明吸引力涉及的不仅是外表美。”
Dr Jones and his colleagues say they have shown that attraction is based on social cues that say, "I'm interested in you". The most important cue seems to be whether someone is looking directly at you.
琼斯博士和他的同事称，他们发现吸引建立在社交暗示的基础上，这就是说，“我对你有兴趣”。最重要的暗示似乎在于是否有人直视你。
The team put together four different sets of digital images - women looking happy, women looking disgusted, men looking happy and men looking disgusted. In each case, the scientists made up pairs of images which were identical except that in one the person was looking directly at the camera and in the other their gaze was averted. Volunteers then rated the relative attractiveness of the images in each pair.
研究小组将四组不同的数码图像放在一起——表情欢快的女性、表情生气的女性、表情欢快的男性以及表情生气的男性。每一次，科学家都将表情完全相同的两张图像放在一起，只是其中一张图中人的目光直视镜头，另一张中的人则转移了目光。随后由志愿者对每组图像的相对吸引力进行判定。
The team found that a direct stare is attractive only if the person giving it looks as if they like you. This preference was even higher if the face in the picture was of the opposite sex.
研究成员发现只有当这个人的目光看上去像喜欢上你的时候，直视才具吸引力。如果图像中的人是异性的话，吸引力会更强。
"What we found at the most basic level is that people like faces with direct gaze more than they like the same faces with averted gaze," said Dr Jones. "In other words, people find it more attractive when they are being looked at."
琼斯博士说：“我们最根本的发现是对于同一张脸，人们更喜欢直视的目光而非转移的目光。换句话说，人们认为自己被注视更具吸引力。”
The results are published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society.
这一研究结果刊载于《英国皇家学会学报》。
Dr Jones said the results make sense from an evolutionary perspective. "It takes quite a lot of effort to attract a mate and what you want to do is allocate that effort in a more efficient way, in other words in a way that is more likely to help you secure a mate."
琼斯博士称，研究结果从进化论角度来看颇具意义。吸引配偶需要费一番功夫，人们想以更有效的方式分配求偶过程中付出的努力。换言之，就是用一种更有可能帮助自己找到配偶的方法。
So it seems there is no point wasting your time on someone who is just not interested.
所以将时间花在那些对你并不感兴趣的人身上毫无意义。