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People can judge with surprising accuracy whether someone is gay or straight — even when they ’re look at a black - and - white pic , cut back of fuzz and name marks , and presented upside down .
The finding from a University of Washington study suggest people use a combination of clew from individual facial features and from the way of life those features fit together to make snap judgments aboutsexual orientation , said researcher Joshua Tabak , a graduate student in psychological science .
Gay or straight? The face may tell.
" We may be doing this so efficiently that we may not even have to taste to make this judgment , " Tabak told LiveScience .
imagine sexual orientation
Tabak ’s is not the first study to encounter that people can correctly guess a person ’s intimate preference from a photograph more often than just by chance . This " gaydar " is n’t infallible : The pace of right guesses is usually in the gamey 50 percent to mid-60 percentage range , Tabak state .
Still , that ’s pretty impressive , he said , given that researchers utilize cropped faces without whisker , jewelry or other possible hints about sexual orientation . [ 5 myth About Gay People expose ]
What earlier study had not done was to badger out how people make these snap sexuality judgment . They might base it on single facial features — nozzle or eye — or they might look at how the features conform to together in the face , such as how far apart the eyes are . Or it could be some combination of both .
Looking at face upside down is bed to mess up hoi polloi ’s processing of how faces primed together . In one democratic ocular illusion calledthe Thatcher essence , it ’s tough to tell even when the eye or oral cavity are flipped the incorrect way around in an upside - down cheek . But even upside down , people are good at processing case-by-case facial feature .
Tabak and his co - writer exploited this oddity of the learning ability by show photographs of 111 queer man , 122 square man , 87 gay woman and 93 neat women to 129 student Tennessean . Some of the pupil saw upside - down faces , and others were shown the faces correct - side up . In either case , the black - and - lily-white cropped photo were present for only 50 msec .
Lesbian advantage
As in previous field of study , people were better than probability at guess whether the faces belong to gay or straight multitude . In a first for studies of this kind , the researchers were able to directly equate how citizenry did when judging the intimate orientation of men versus women . They found that people were good at gauge women aright . There were few " assumed alarms " than when looking at men , Tabak said , meaning illustration when a straight person was pass judgment gay .
" Why this is we can only excogitate , " he said . " It ’s really interesting to hypothesize that there might be this ironic effect that because we ’re more familiar with theconcept of jolly men[in the medium ] , mayhap we ’re more liberal with labeling a humans gay . "
When looking at upside - down face , people were still able to pretend their sexual preference correctly at charge per unit better than prospect — although not quite as accurately as when the faces were correct - side up . That suggests both facial feature ( which can be sue in upside - down and right-hand - side - up photograph ) and facial configuration provide trace into orientation , the investigator describe Wednesday ( May 16 ) in thejournal PLoS ONE .
It stay to be see how or if people practice " gaydar " in real life , when they have more to go on than a glance of a pic , Tabak said . He and his workfellow are now using brain imaging to monitor brain action as people look at pictures of gay and true individuals without make out their sexual orientation course . The result will facilitate clarify whether these sexuality judgments are automatic , much like the judgment we make about people ’s gender .
" You do n’t think about label whether someone is a man or a woman , " Tabak say . " You just know . "
