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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsStudy Finds 'Gaydar' Up to 80 Percent Accurate on Sexuality
By Jason Koebler
May 16, 2012 RSS Feed Print
"Gaydar," the ability to detect sexual orientation as if through radar, is real. And some people can guess with 80 percent accuracy, according to a new study.
In a study of college students at the University of Washington, most people were able to identify a person's sexuality with greater-than-chance accuracy based on black-and-white photo flashes of them for just 50 millisecondsfaster than the blink of an eye. Photos used in the study were digitally altered to remove hair, jewelry, and other "self-presentational" aspects of a person, suggesting there may be such a thing as a "gay face," according to researcher Joshua Tabak, a doctoral candidate at the university and lead author of the paper.
"The world's best lie detection experts top out at around 80 percent accuracy," he says. "Being at 80 percent accuracy on this type of judgmentjust seeing a picture of a face in grayscalethat's pretty amazing."
But not everyone's "gaydar" is exactly on point. Some weren't able to guess sexuality at all, while others scored above 80 percent accuracy at identifying 96 randomly ordered gay and straight people. Overall, people were about 57 percent accurate at identifying the self-identified sexual orientation of subjects.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/05/16/study-finds-gaydar-up-to-80-percent-accurate-on-sexuality
MisterP
(23,730 posts)there's actually no electromagnetic interactions involved
obxhead
(8,434 posts)"Overall, people were about 57 percent accurate at identifying the self-identified sexual orientation of subjects."
On average people are right slightly more than half of the time.
snooper2
(30,151 posts)The one that only one man can truly achieve
onehandle
(51,122 posts)If a guy uses the word 'dude' too often, then he is gay.
He didn't say possibly or likely gay, he said, 'that guy is gay.'
bluestateguy
(44,173 posts)I better just leave it at that.
xfundy
(5,105 posts)At least I wear them.