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"We've found that 'gaydar' has quite a bit, if not perfect, accuracy," said J Michael Bailey, a Northwestern University psychology professor who has researched people's ability to guess other people's sexuality. "We've done studies where we've brought people into the lab, videotaped them describing the weather in Chicago, and then brought in other people to watch the video and judge them. And they're always right. In a 2008 study, Bailey found that gay and straight people who viewed the videos correctly identified straight people 87 per cent of the time and correctly identified homosexual people 75 per cent of the time. The research, involving about 50 subjects and 50 raters, also found that gay and lesbian people don't have much of an advantage over straight people when it comes to guessing whether a person is gay or straight. Many who judged Ricky Martin's sexuality certainly based their opinions on his behaviour as a performer, as well as other mannerisms they would see in interviews. Bailey agreed that most of those perceptions are based on stereotypes of gay men."Stereotypes are often at least partly based in truth," Bailey said. "It reflects what we call gender non-conformity in gay and lesbian people. On average, gay men tend to be a bit feminine and lesbians a bit masculine. That's on average and not every case, of course. There are gay and lesbian interest patterns.

smh.au
April 14 2010