A joint study by the departments of psychology at The University of Washington in Seattle and Cornell University recently looked into the science behind "gaydar."
In one experiment, participants were asked to view facial photographs of men and women and then categorize each face
A joint study by the departments of psychology at The University of Washington in Seattle and Cornell University recently looked into the science behind "gaydar."
In one experiment, participants were asked to view facial photographs of men and women and then categorize each face as gay or straight. Joshua A. Tabak and Vivian Zayas, two psychologists involved in the experiment, told the New York Times on Friday that “the photographs were seen very briefly, for 50 milliseconds, which was long enough for participants to know they’d seen a face, but probably not long enough to feel they knew much more. In addition, the photos were mostly devoid of cultural cues: hairstyles were digitally removed, and no faces had makeup, piercings, eyeglasses or tattoos."
Participants demonstrated a 60% ability to accurately describe each face as gay or straight - well above the margin of error.
In a second experiment, researchers flipped the faces