Testing "Gaydar"

Matt Kaplan is ScienceNOW:

Talk about "gaydar." In just a fraction of a second, people can accurately judge the sexual orientation of other individuals by glancing at their faces, according to new research. The finding builds on the growing theory that the subconscious mind detects and probably guides much more of human behavior than is realized.

Humans are remarkably good at making snap judgments about others. In a hallmark study conducted by psychologists Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal in 1994, people shown 2-second video clips of professors teaching formed opinions about the professors' teaching abilities that were uncannily similar to evaluations written by students at the end of a semester. The results led psychologists to begin questioning what else people might detect in a glance.

Ambady and colleague Nicholas Rule, both at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, wondered about sexual orientation. They showed men and women photos of 90 faces belonging to homosexual men and heterosexual men for intervals ranging from 33 milliseconds to 10 seconds. When given 100 milliseconds or more to view a face, participants correctly identified sexual orientation nearly 70% of the time. Volunteers were less accurate at shorter durations, and their accuracy did not get better at durations beyond 100 milliseconds, the team reports in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. "What is most interesting is that increased exposure time did not improve the results," says Ambady.

Comments

[Richard]

This is quite familiar. Malcolm Gladwell's book 'Blink' is one long argument for respecting the power of the snap judgement. He makes a very convincing case, so I am glad to see some scientists backing it up with lab testing.

[Carlos]

Gladwell also offers the contrary argument in his analysis of the case of Amadou Diallo. Snap judgments can be horribly mistaken. Snap judgments, based on training and experience, are more accurate by and large, than those made in the dark, but even then, your gut'll git ya now and again.

[Jesse M.]

If facial physiognomy can be used to guess sexual orientation, that would seem relevant to the question of whether orientation is innate (unless people are just judging by hairstyle or expression...might be useful to do the experiment with subjects asked to assume neutral expressions and their hair covered up, if this hasn't been done already). Would also be interesting to feed people's facial features into one of those computer programs that stores them mathematically in terms of various facial landmarks (like this one) and see if there were statistical differences between heterosexuals and homosexuals.

[Doug l]

Interesting findings, though I think that focusing on our ability to determine sexual orientation is a bit of a stretch in that our concept of sexual orientation is a social construct since our sexual orientation, just like our brains, which determine or sexual preferrences, are plastic and able to change throughout life unless social restriction are in effect that deny or limit those changes.
The human mind is the product of its evolution and like so many of our primate cousins our survival depends on our abilities to visually asses a situation for threats, opportunities and status within the context of a social structure which is itself instintctually guided.

[thegayrecluse]

This study and most others like it are flawed to the extent that people associate stereotypical characteristics (generally, effeminate with gay men; butch/masculine with gay women) with sexual orientations; I guarantee you the results would be much different if you took a sampling of "straight-acting"/closeted men and women (i.e., the kind who would never allow themselves to be used in a study).

[mind]

Thanks for the great and motivating post! I fully agree with you especially on letting your subconscious mind help you achieve success. Do check out http://www.subconscious-mind.org, they have a whole host of interesting and helpful articles.

[anonymous]

To "thegayrecluse":

why wouldn't "straight-acting" gay men allow themselves to be used in a study like this? Are you assuming that a gay man who doesn't live up to steretype must be ashamed and self-hating?