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Study Confirms Existence of Gaydar; Easier to Detect in Women

Posted by on May 16, 2012 in Health | 7 comments

A new study from the University of Washington’s graduate psychology department confirms the existence of gaydar, or the ability to correctly assess a person’s homosexuality just by seeing their face for a split second.

In the study, 129 college students viewed 96 photos each of young adult men and women who identified themselves as gay or straight. Concerned that facial hair, glasses, makeup and piercings might provide easy clues, the researchers only used photos of people who did not have such embellishments. They cropped the grayscale photos so that only faces, not hairstyles, were visible.

For women’s faces, participants were 65 percent accurate in telling the difference between gay and straight faces when the photos flashed on a computer screen. Even when the faces were flipped upside down, participants were 61 percent accurate in telling the two apart.

At 57 percent accuracy, they had a harder time differentiating gay men from straight men. The participants’ accuracy slipped to 53 percent – still statistically above chance – when the men’s faces appeared upside down.

Curiously, the lower accuracy in guessing men’s sexualities was due to over, not under-guessing men’s gayness. Either participants were falsely attributing homosexuality to straight men’s faces, or in Dr. Unicornas Bootyton’s scientific opinion, so-called straight men are often dishonest about their homosexual attractions.

Lead author Joshua Tabak also notes that some folks are just clueless, and possess absolutely zero ability to distinguish a person’s sexuality.

Very, very interesting.

How’s YOUR gaydar?

(via Science Codex)