Surprisingly, all participants (both men and women) scored above chance on this gaydar task, correctly identifying the gay faces. These 90 faces were then shown to 90 participants in random order, who were asked simply to judge the target's 'probable sexual orientation' (gay or straight) by pressing a button. To control for context, the faces were also cut and pasted onto a white background for the study. All of these photos were matched for orientation (only faces shown looking forward were used) and facial alterations (none of the images contained jewelry, glasses or facial hair). In an initial experiment, researchers Nicholas Rule and Nalini Ambady from Tufts University perused online dating sites and carefully selected 45 straight male faces and 45 gay male faces.
The January 2008 study investigated people's ability to identify homosexual men from pictures of their faces alone. Findings from a recent study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, however, suggest I may be underestimating my gaydar abilities. Although I've always wanted this particular superhuman power, I've never been very good at detecting other men's sexual orientation.
