Survey suggests gaydar does exist
A small survey of gay and straight people has suggested that ‘gaydar’ does exist.
The term means a sixth sense for guessing who is gay.
According to the Dutch researchers who carried out the study, gay people have better attention to detail than their straight counterparts.
They surveyed 42 men and women, showing them pictures of outlines of large squares and rectangles filled with smaller shapes.
Human brains are wired to see the bigger picture, meaning they can easily be fooled into saying that saying ‘squares’ when asked what is inside a square filled with rectangles.
When participants were asked similar questions, straight men and women replied faster but were more likely to be wrong. Gay participants took more time to respond but were more accurate.
Researchers theorised this made gay people better at picking out small clues to the sexual orientation of others.
Researcher Dr Lorenza Colzato, of Leiden University in the Netherlands, told the Daily Mail: “This is the first time that scientific proof has been found for the existence of a gaydar mechanism amongst homosexuals.
“This perceptual skill allows homosexuals to recognise other gay people faster and we think it’s because they are much more analytic than heterosexuals.”
