Gay Or Straight? Body Type And Motion Reveals Sexual Orientation, Study Suggests

Science Daily/University of California, Los Angeles. ^ | September 12, 2007

[presidio9]

An individual's body motion and body type can offer subtle cues about their sexual orientation, but casual observers seem better able to read those cues in gay men than in lesbians, according to a new study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

"We already know that men and women are built differently and walk differently from each other and that casual observers use this information as clues in making a range of social judgments," said lead author Kerri Johnson, UCLA assistant professor of communication studies. "Now we've found that casual observers can use gait and body shape to judge whether a stranger is gay or straight with a small but perceptible amount of accuracy."

Johnson and colleagues at New York University and Texas A&M measured the hips, waists and shoulders of eight male and eight female volunteers, half of whom were gay and half straight. The volunteers then walked on a treadmill for two minutes as a three-dimensional motion-capture system similar to those used by the movie industry to create animated figures from living models made measurements of the their motions, allowing researchers to track the precise amount of shoulder swagger and hip sway in their gaits.

Based on these measurements, the researchers determined that the gay subjects tended to have more gender-incongruent body types than their straight counterparts (hourglass figures for men, tubular bodies for women) and body motions (hip-swaying for men, shoulder-swaggering for women) than their straight counterparts.

In addition, 112 undergraduate observers were shown videos of the backsides of the volunteers as they walked at various speeds on the treadmill. The observers were able to determine the volunteers' sexual orientation with an overall rate of accuracy that exceeded chance, even though they could not see the volunteers' faces or the details of their clothing. Interestingly, the casual observers were much more accurate in judging the orientation of males than females; they correctly categorized the sexual orientation of men with more than 60 percent accuracy, but their categorization of women did not exceeded chance.

The findings build on recent research that shows that casual observers can often correctly identify sexual orientation with very limited information. A 1999 Harvard study, for example, found that just by looking at the photographs of seated strangers, college undergraduates were able to judge sexual orientation accurately 55 percent of the time.

"Studies like ours are raising questions about the value of the military's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy," Johnson said. "If casual observers can determine sexual orientation with minimal information, then the value in concealing this information certainly appears questionable. Given that we all appear to be able to deduce this information to some degree with just a glance, more comprehensive policies may be required to protect gays against discrimination based on their sexual orientation."

The findings also are part of mounting evidence suggesting that sexual orientation may actually be what social scientists call a "master status category," or a defining characteristic that observers cannot help but notice and which has been scientifically shown to color all subsequent social dealings with others.

"Once you know a person's sexual orientation, the fact has consequences for all subsequent interactions, and our findings suggest that this category of information can be deduced from subtle clues in body movement," Johnson said.

Reference: Kerri L. Johnson, Simone Gill, Victoria Reichman, and Louis G. Tassinary "Swagger, Sway, and Sexuality: Judging Sexual Orientation From Body Motion and Morphology", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 93, No. 3, pp. 321–334.

Video available at: http://www.apa.org/journals/supplemental/psp_93_3_321/Supplement1.mov

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by University of California, Los Angeles.

[rfp1234]

Priceless!

[Bender2]

Re: Larry Craig was misunderstood. He is NOT gay. He is bi-partisan. He was the kind of Senator who brought men together....a uniter, not a divider.

Yeah, like when Harvey Firestone... had the rubber met the road!

Or KD Lang... when she said she only sang Country & Western...

Or Vic Mature's Doc Holiday... was your first Huckleberry....

Or that poor old rummy, Eddie, was... the first dead bee you ever stung...

Or as if you didn't take care of... the first Mini Me...

Gadzooks, Eric! Even... Phil wrote your number on the stall wall!

However, being the 'Fair & Balanced' type of guy I am... I accept you are what you are...

Whatever... that may be!

[Eric Blair 2084]

That is a perfect example of something being taken out of context.

The lyricist, lead singer and band members in Dire Straits were obviously called “faggots” for having earings and long hair.

This is their way of getting back at those people by saying
“screw you, my album just made platinum and my video is on MTV! I live in a huge house, drive a Ferrari and have a harem of beautiful female groupies...so who is the “faggot” now punk?????”

Think about their motives and art before taking things at face value.

[Eric Blair 2084]

Phil wrote my number on the stall wall 20 years too late. He should have done it in 1986.

[Eric Blair 2084]

Sorry, see 145. I’m responding to myself. That’s what happens when nobody calls you even though your number is on a bathroom stall.

[Eric Blair 2084]

Much like the movie advertisments use dot, dot, dot ... liberally to spin the review of their movie, you are doing the same thing:

Just remembering the lyrics, they went on to say

The little faggot’s got his own jet airplane,
The little faggot he’s a millionaire

They are OBVIOUSLY talking about themselves. Their heterosexual selves.

[Tired of Taxes]

My thoughts exactly. Maybe they were biased in selecting “gay” and “straight” subjects. I’ve come across straight men who are considered effeminate and gay men who act macho.

Even if every “gay” person could be determined by body type and walk, that doesn’t support the born-gay theory. We learn to walk a certain way. And body shape can be influenced by diet and amount and type of exercise or lack thereof.

It makes more sense that someone can be influenced into thinking he or she is “different” (gay) because other people tell them they “walk gay” or “look gay”, and they grow up believing it.

[Tired of Taxes]

Yes, I too am angry that universities are doing these studies. I'm even more angry that these studies are considered valid. But, we can see the obvious bias of the researchers in this quote:

Studies like ours are raising questions about the value of the military's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy," Johnson said. "If casual observers can determine sexual orientation with minimal information, then the value in concealing this information certainly appears questionable. Given that we all appear to be able to deduce this information to some degree with just a glance, more comprehensive policies may be required to protect gays against discrimination based on their sexual orientation."

The irony is: this "study" doesn't prove the born-gay theory. (See my post #147 above.)

[thefactor]

absolutley no relevance. i just love the picture!

[IYellAtMyTV]

It’s starting to worry me that so many folks have these photos all ready to go for a thread like this. LOL.

Why, for occasions just like this of course!

[xc1427]

Revenge of the Gay Javelin Throwers!!!!

[Dick Vomer]

[trisham]

LOL! Actually, one of them is the Mom. Our two original neighbors married not quite three years ago. About a year later, another woman moved in. Then the mother of one of the first two moved in about six months ago. :)

[Titan Magroyne]

It’s (five) Pat(s)!

[Neoliberalnot]

Homosexual males in San Fran used to be easily identified by the fecal residue around the mouth and the smears on their clothes, not to mention the odor.

[Slings and Arrows]

I’m scared.

[BJClinton]

[Frank Sheed]

Shame on your team! Shame!

An angry Jets fan... ;-o)

[Wuli]

"It makes more sense that someone can be influenced into thinking he or she is “different” (gay) because other people tell them they “walk gay” or “look gay”, and they grow up believing it."

Too simple and, in my example, only applied to certain very narrow aspects of behavior - the walk. Who we are (our conscious identity) is more complex and sexuality is certainly one of the complex aspects of that identity, like many others.

For instance, even in one "simple" matter: Most people have a favorite color that if asked to chose among many colors, they will nearly always pick that one, or at least colors in the same line. Why has a certain color been your favorite color for as long in your life as you can remember? Try to explain its origins. By the time you think of it, by the time you question it, it already exists and you did not notice, cannot recall some very instant when it began, or if it even had a precise single instance or only came to your decision gradually. Why is that? We are complex creatures and even though we exhibit (darwinists would say "share") many "behaviors" with some lower species, we are the height of God's complexity here on this Earth and likely never will be able to explain all of ourselves to ourselves.

I don't think we can ever know how much ("gay") is genetic, hormonal in the mothers womb (another theory), life experience, or myriad other forms of nature and or nurture. I think for most who study it and try to explain it, its a "which came first, the chicken or the egg" question, by the time you have either the chicken or the egg in front of you to examine.

I have chastized people in both gay and straight communities for claiming absolute certainty as to how ones sexuality is constructed, by the time one thinks about it. To the extent that genetics, or hormones in the womb have made any influence (if they have), if even not to certainty but only to predisposition, how would one know that (you can't - it is impossible for it to enter the awakened focus of your consciousness). To the extent that some aspect of nurture is said to be a driving factor for being "gay", everyone of those anecdotal aspects is counter-weighted by equal anecdotal evidence of persons with those same aspects in nurture who are not "gay". To my mind, there can only be a combination, a complex and imperfect combination of factors of nature and nurture and like your favorite color, by the time someone asks themselves why its is their favorite, it is already self-recognized as part of them. I don't think there is an easy and simple answer to it.

[EveningStar]

TaЯd ping!

"Tard" refers to the ping list members and not to the subject of the thread.