“Gaydar,” that innate ability gay people supposedly have to zero in on other gays even in a crowd, may really exist.
A group of Dutch researchers recently looked at whether straight and gay people focus their attention differently when faced with a problem.
A total of 42 men and women were shown pictures of outlines of large squares and rectangles, each of which was packed with smaller shapes, London’s Daily Mail reports.
Our brains are wired to take in the bigger picture, meaning that if we are shown a square filled with rectangles and asked what is inside, we can easily be fooled into saying ‘squares’.
When the men and women were asked similar questions, the heterosexuals replied more quickly but were less accurate, the journal Frontiers in Cognition reports.
The homosexuals took longer but got more answers right, particularly when asked about the smaller shapes, suggesting they were able to see the small details as well as the bigger picture.
“This is the first time that scientific proof has been found for the existence of a gaydar mechanism amongst homosexuals,” said Dr. Lorenzo Colzato of Leiden University in the Netherlands.
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“This perceptual skill allows homosexuals to recognize other gay people faster and we think it’s because they are much more analytic than heterosexuals,” she added.
