Posted on 06/22/2011 7:59:54 PM PDT by Pharmboy
TORONTO, ON – A new study by psychologists at the University of Toronto and Tufts University shows that a woman can more accurately identify a man's sexual orientation when looking at his face, when she is closest to her time of peak ovulation. Further, having romantic thoughts or a mating goal heightens a woman's ability to discriminate between straight and gay men.
"This effect is not apparent when a woman is judging another female's orientation," says Professor Nicholas Rule of the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto, lead author of a new study published in Psychological Science. "This suggests that fertility influences a heterosexual woman's attention to potential mates rather than merely increasing sensitivity to sexual orientation or nonverbal cues more generally."
In the first of three experiments, 40 undergraduate women judged the sexual orientation of 80 images of men's faces. Forty of the photos were of self-identified gay males while the other 40 were of straight men. The men did not differ in emotional expression or attractiveness, and the female participants were encouraged to use their intuition in making judgments. In addition, the women reported the length of time since their last menstrual cycle and its average duration; none were using any systemic contraceptive medications.
The researchers correlated the participants' accuracy in judging sexual orientation with the point at which the women were in their fertility cycle, and found that the nearer women were to peak ovulation, the more accurate they were at judging each male's sexual orientation.
The second experiment featured 34 women who viewed a similar series of female faces, 100 of whom were self-identified lesbians while another 100 were straight. The researchers found no relationship between fertility and accurate judgments of the women's sexual orientation.
"Together, these findings suggest that women's accuracy may vary across the fertility cycle because men's sexual orientation is relevant to conception and thus of greater importance as women are nearer to ovulation."
The researchers tested this hypothesis further with a third experiment in which female participants were primed with a mating goal in order to manipulate reproductive relevance. Half of the 40 participants were asked to read a story which described a romantic encounter while the other half did not, before performing the same tasks in the two previous studies. Rule and his colleagues found that the women primed with a mating goal were significantly more accurate in their judgments than the women who were not, implying that inducing romantic or mating-related thoughts improved accuracy in identifying men's sexual orientations.
The findings are presented online in a paper titled "Mating Interest Improves Women's Accuracy in Judging Male Sexual Orientation", published in Psychological Science.
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MEDIA CONTACTS:
Nicholas Rule Department of Psychology University of Toronto rule@psych.utoronto.ca
Sean Bettam Communications, Faculty of Arts & Science University of Toronto 416-946-7950 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 416-946-7950 end_of_the_skype_highlighting s.bettam@utoronto.ca
Jessica Lewis Communications, Faculty of Arts & Science University of Toronto 416-978-8887 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 416-978-8887 end_of_the_skype_highlighting jessica.lewis@utoronto.ca
So, women can go either way depending upon the environment?
I’m willing to bet it was $100,000CAN.
There isn’t any guess work if she is looking at a real man. This is a sad commentary on the young metrosexual men of today. My two twenty-something sons aren’t iffy either.
But if necessary, and the problem is on the female side, I guess I could wear my “I’m straight and single” sign. Come and get me girls!
Universities seem to have a lot of researcher money to burn.
Watch any college football game during the year.
Pay attention to the students in the stands.
Guess what? They all want to get laid tonight.
Should I post this or not? But true.
So, birth control pills amount to gaydar jamming, lol?
Yep...it wasn’t a cheap study. They must have an excess of cash these days.
Ha...nice one!
The chances are 100 to 1 - who cares?
Talk about your Faustian bargains. Presumably free to have sex without getting pregnant, but without the ability to distinguish who’s interested.
Well, now that I think about it, doesn’t this explain a few things about the state of modern society?
I’ve been attracted to gay men before. I think my gaydar only works if the man is flamingly obvious.
next week’s consensus. based on less than 100 people.
There is no survival value in females making an “orientation” judgement
about other females. That doesn’t perpetuate the species. Finding an
interested mate of the opposite sex can generate progeny. The genetic
heritage of those not interested in producing offspring will be deleted from the gene pool.
Can anyone explain how important this study is to the future of mankind?
When you are spending OPM (other people money) you can study anything and reach a conclusion.
Oh man. If I had known that I would have been giving standing ovulations instead of merely clapping.
Wouldn’t you be happy if your daughter or younger sister make good decision with regard to their prospective husband?
To the extent that there was any cost at all however, it's not hard to imagine who would like to finance it - gays. The import of the survey suggests that homosexuality manifests itself not just in behavior, but in other physiological and/or anatomical characteristics. That would further suggest that homosexuality isn't a choice, but a biological disposition. You can imagine how such a survey would benefit homosexuals, politically.
Maybe that’s why 66% to 90% of women are the ones to initiate divorce! They were taking those gaydar jamming pills and ended up marrying a metrosexual or homosexual that end up hating! Makes perfect sense to me!
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