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'Gaydar' is real, Boston study finds

Fri 22 Aug 2008 In: International News View at Wayback

Not only does 'gaydar' exist, suggests a study from Boston's Tufts University, but it can work pretty fast. Some people say they can tell the sexual orientation of folks with little information, and now a study gives them data to back up their claims. Published in July's Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, the study claims that people could guess fairly accurately ("better than chance") whether men were gay or straight by looking at photos of their faces, reports Courant.com. For the study, 15 undergraduate students, both male and female, were shown photos of faces of 90 men, evenly divided between gay and straight. The photos were taken from Internet personal ads and from Facebook. The study's lead author, graduate student Nicholas Rule, says men were used in this study for convenience, because they have a greater presence on the internet than women. The researchers found that subjects could accurately determine in 50 milliseconds — one-twentieth of a second — whether the men were gay or straight about 60% of the time. Rule says all the subjects were accurate 55-70% of the time. This story continues on the link below.    

Credit: GayNZ.com News Staff

First published: Friday, 22nd August 2008 - 10:30am

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