Sexual orientation biases attentional control: a possible gaydar mechanism
- 1
Cognitive Psychology Unit, Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands
- 2
Amsterdam Center for the Study of Adaptive Control in Brain and Behaviour (Acacia), Psychology Department Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
- 3
Social Psychology Unit, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands
Homosexuals are believed to have a “sixth sense” for recognizing each other, an ability referred to as gaydar. We considered that being a homosexual might rely on systematic practice of processing relatively specific, local perceptual features, which might lead to a corresponding chronic bias of attentional control. This was tested by comparing male and female homosexuals and heterosexuals – brought up in the same country and culture and matched in terms of race, intelligence, sex, mood, age, personality, religious background, educational style, and socio-economic situation – in their efficiency to process global and local features of hierarchically-constructed visual stimuli. Both homosexuals and heterosexuals showed better performance on global features – the standard global precedence effect. However, this effect was significantly reduced in homosexuals, suggesting a relative preference for detail. Findings are taken to demonstrate chronic, generalized biases in attentional control parameters that reflect the selective reward provided by the respective sexual orientation.
Keywords:
sexual orientation, attention, global precedence
Citation:
Colzato LS, van Hooidonk L, van den Wildenberg WPM, Harinck F and Hommel B (2010) Sexual orientation biases attentional control: a possible gaydar mechanism. Front. Psychology 1:13. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2010.00013
This article was submitted to Frontiers in Cognition, a specialty of Frontiers in Psychology.
Received: 22 February 2010;
Paper pending published: 06 April 2010;
Accepted: 13 April 2010;
Published online: 07 May 2010
Edited by:
Anna M. Borghi, University of Bologna, Italy
Reviewed by:
Costantini Marcello, University of Chieti, Italy
Antonino Raffone, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
Copyright:
© 2010 Colzato, van Hooidonk, van den Wildenberg, Harinck and Hommel. This is an open-access article subject to an exclusive license agreement between the authors and the Frontiers Research Foundation, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited.
*Correspondence:
Lorenza S. Colzato, Cognitive Psychology Unit, Department of Psychology, Leiden University, Postbus 9555, 2300 RB Leiden, Netherlands. e-mail: colzato@fsw.leidenuniv.nl