A study carried out by the scientific journal PLoS One revealed that most people can unconsciously identify who is gay or lesbian.
To reach this conclusion, the authors exposed images of several faces of men and women, homosexuals and straights, so that the interviewees could differentiate them.
In total, 129 students analyzed 96 random photos. In relation to women, the accuracy rate was 65%. When it came to identifying gay men, the number of correct answers dropped a little, but it was still high, reaching 57%. The photos did not bear any identification that could refer to the LGBT universe.
"It might be similar to the way we don't have to think about whether someone is male or female, or black or white," says Joshua Tabak, a psychology graduate student at the University of Washington and leader of the research.
Tabak also believes that some people have a more acute sense of their "gay radar." "People from other generations or different cultures, who didn't grow up knowing they were interacting with gay people, may be less accurate in noting differences," he says.
Now, isn't this radar actually our famous "hot spot", which delivers instantly, whether just for a photo, whether the person is gay or not?
