This time, the researchers demonstrated that perceivers were able to do this even when they were shown only individual features of the target's face. For example, when shown only the eye region ('without brows and cropped to the outer canthi so that not even 'crow's-feet' were visible'), perceivers were amazingly still able to accurately identify a man as being gay. The same happened when shown the mouth region alone.
Curiously, most of the participants underestimated their ability to identify gay faces from these features alone.
That is to say, people seem to have honed and calibrated their gaydar without knowing they've done so.įrankly, these findings are a little puzzling to me. Rule and his co-authors mention a few lackluster evolutionary reasons why it would be biologically adaptive for women to know which men aren't worth the trouble and for men to know who's not really a sexual competitor.
