What do gay look like? Science keeps tryg to figure that out - Los Angel Tim

Contents:

• HOW TO LOOK GREAT AS A GAY MAN
• WHAT DO GAY LOOK LIKE? SCIENCE IS WORKG ON
• A HANDY GUI TO ALL GAY MEN
• GAY PEOPLE LOOK DIFFERENT, WALK DIFFERENT THAN STRAIGHT PEOPLE
• PHYSIL, BEHAVRAL, AND PSYCHOLOGIL TRAS OF GAY MEN INTIFYG AS BEARS
• WHAT DO GAY LOOK LIKE? SCIENCE KEEPS TRYG TO FIGURE THAT OUT
• HOW TO GET A MAN (FOR GAY MEN)
• STEP-BY-STEP INSTCTNS FOR SHOOTG YOUR SHOT WH GAY GUYS
• AM I GAY?

HOW TO LOOK GREAT AS A GAY MAN

Partly bee of this, gay men often put more effort to their appearanc pared to their straight unterparts.

WHAT DO GAY LOOK LIKE? SCIENCE IS WORKG ON

Whout beg aware of , most people n accurately intify gay men by face aloneAlthough I've always wanted this particular superhuman power, I've never been very good at tectg other men's sexual orientatn. Fdgs om a recent study published the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, however, suggt I may be unrtimatg my gaydar abili.

In an ial experiment, rearchers Nicholas Rule and Nali Ambady om Tufts Universy pesed onle datg s and refully selected 45 straight male fac and 45 gay male fac. The 90 fac were then shown to 90 participants random orr, who were asked simply to judge the target's "probable sexual orientatn" (gay or straight) by prsg a button. Surprisgly, all participants (both men and women) sred above chance on this gaydar task, rrectly intifyg the gay fac.

A HANDY GUI TO ALL GAY MEN

Then, they did a send search to fd other Facebook ers who had posted photos of the gay men their own profile. "Th, " the thors wrote, "by g photos of gay and straight dividuals that they themselv did not post, we were able to remove the fluence of self-prentatn and much of the potential selectn bias that may be prent photos om personal advertisements. And even wh the more strgent ntrols, the participants were able to intify the gay fac at levels greater than chance—aga even on those trials where the fac were flickered on the screen for a mere 50 lisends.

For example, when shown only the eye regn ("whout brows and cropped to the outer nthi so that not even "crow's-feet" were visible"), perceivers were amazgly still able to accurately intify a man as beg gay. But they also acknowledge that 's impossible to know om the fdgs what exactly is about the facial featur that give gays away. I was cur enough about Rule's fdgs to look up "gay face" the Urban Dictnary, a popular Web se that offers rmal, er-ntributed fns of everyday (often crass) saygs.

GAY PEOPLE LOOK DIFFERENT, WALK DIFFERENT THAN STRAIGHT PEOPLE

"A man, ually homosexual, wh a distctly effete facial stcture wh some very specific featur; a strong jawle [sic] that lacks promence, space between the ey that rell people wh down syndrome [sic], and a slopg, long forehead. Now, that one's rather silly and sensatnalized—even polilly spect—and there's certaly no scientific evince support of the claims about the "mongoloid" featur of homosexual men's fac. Sce effemate gay men utilize siar facial exprsns as women, they velop female agg and mcle ntractn patterns their face.

For example, gay face clus tightns around the mouth om pursg the lips, a facial exprsn mon to gay men and women—but not to heterosexual men.

Also, gay men are more emotnally exprsive, leadg to a general 'tightns' and mcular activatn throughout the entire face. For example, the send experiment, participants uld still ferret out the gay face when shown the eye regn sans eyebrows and cropped to the outer nthi. In addn, ntrary to this urban fn, there may ed be subtle, yet prently unknown, differenc between gay and straight fac.

PHYSIL, BEHAVRAL, AND PSYCHOLOGIL TRAS OF GAY MEN INTIFYG AS BEARS

(For example, one of my PhD stunts, David Harnn-Warwick, has a sual hunch that gay men may have sharper, clearer iris than straight men.

WHAT DO GAY LOOK LIKE? SCIENCE KEEPS TRYG TO FIGURE THAT OUT

It was only a few years ago that rearchers disvered that, unlike straight men, gay men tend to have hair whorl patterns that n a unterclockwise directn. John McCa dropped by “Saturday Night Live, ” drawg lghs om his promise, if elected print, to fight expensive feral projects -- such as, he spoofed, a Department of Defense vice to “jam gaydar. But some scientists are, a way, workg on gaydar, the supposed abily to discern whether a person is homosexual by readg subtle cu om their appearance.

Some born tras might be expected if homosexualy is -- as most scientists believe -- rooted blogy, and they might provi clu about the blogil origs of sexual orientatn. (A lk between male homosexualy and fger lengths isn’t holdg up, and a claim that gays have distctive fgerprt ridge patterns is largely discreded.

Study after study -- cludg one of 87, 000 Brish men published last year -- has found that gay men have more olr brothers than straight men do. Lbians don’t show such numbers: Each olr brother will crease a man’s chanc of beg gay by 33%, says Ray Blanchard of the Universy of Toronto, an expert on the “big-brother effect.

HOW TO GET A MAN (FOR GAY MEN)

A man’s chance of beg gay is pretty low to beg wh -- perhaps as low as 2% (lowered om 10% by rearchers the early 1990s). Might mean: Psychologil fluenc are probably not at work, bee the pattern holds even for gay men who weren’t raised wh their olr brothers. Acrdgly, you’d expect the percentage of gay men a society to vary pendg on mographic differenc fay size: One study lculated that a one-child-per-fay law would rce male homosexualy by about 29% om current levels.

The hand you e to sign your name might have somethg to do wh what genr you are drawn numbers: More lefti -- or at least more somewhat-ambixtro folks -- crop up the gay populatn than among straight people, several studi have shown. An analysis of more than 23, 000 men and women om North Ameri and Europe 2000 found that beg non-right-hand seems to crease a man’s chanc of beg gay by about 34%, and a woman’s by about might mean: One gus is that different-than-normal levels of ttosterone the womb -- wily theorized to play a role termg eventual sexual orientatn -- uld nudge a fet toward bra anizatn that favors left-handns as well as same-sex attractn.

STEP-BY-STEP INSTCTNS FOR SHOOTG YOUR SHOT WH GAY GUYS

This might reflect your sexual numbers: A 2004 study of nearly 500 men -- 272 on Delaware’s Rehoboth Beach, popular wh gay men, 200 on a beach whout that reputatn -- found that hair on the heads of men on the gay beach was 3. If exposure to ttosterone the womb fluenc sexual orientatn, scientists reckon that straight and gay people would differ body parts strongly affected by ttosterone, such as the numbers: Anthony Bogaert of Brock Universy Ontar and his lleagu re-analyzed data on 5, 000 gay and straight men om sexologist Aled Ksey’s famo fil, llected om the 1930s to the 1960s. The rults, published 1999, showed that gay men had longer, thicker penis than did straight men: on average, about 6.

As to whether gay or straight men are more likely to exaggerate about penis size, “It would be an tertg master’s this project, ” Bogaert m. However, the next ontier this kd of rearch seems to lie elsewhere -- wh subtle differenc how gay and straight bras navigate new ci, rpond to erotic movi and react to the scent of sweat and ure.

AM I GAY?

Here they like the world at large may stereotype gays as mcg wrist flippers wh great taste bent on givg everyone they meet a make over. That said, when the gays see a fellow homosexual the public sphere, we try to plug them to the nvenient taxonomy the muny has ma for self.