Encefalus

BPS RESEARCH DIGEST: Men’s sexual orientation recognised in a fraction of a second.

The above link points to a very interesting research (Brief exposures: Male sexual orientation is accurately perceived at 50 ms). The experimenters showed a series of faces to the subjects and the subjects could identify with 57% accuracy which of them were homosexual. The homosexual photos were taken from a gay dating site. To check their results, they included a second round where they included photos from Facebook, finding the same results.

The authors conclude that

“The finding that male sexual orientation can be accurately perceived in such a short period of time is striking,” the researchers said. “Although previous work has shown that ‘thin slices’ of behaviour are remarkably rich in providing information about people, none have sliced as thin as 50ms.”

What is obviously so intriguing about this research is the fact that 50 ms are enough to judge someone’s sexual orientation. We’ve all experienced our reflexives to work faster than our conscious thoughts when we try to avoid an obstacle, but we want to believe that are thoughts about the others are more rational.

Of course, readers of Encefalus already know that people don’t always act rationally (The Cookie Effect, Lotteries, poverty and social implications). BPS Research Digest also mentions two more researches (Your trustworthiness is judged in a tenth of a second, or less, A company’s profits are linked to the facial appearance of its chief executive)

Once again, we must mention again what we said in the Cookie Effect. That humans are not very rational creatures. However, the subject of  this research concerns a very hot social topic: Homosexuality.

Surely someone might argue that in a real life situation we get many more cues about one’s orientation (clothing, movements etc.) and that this research ignores the social factor. This doesn’t change the fact, however, that people still make judgments about other people’s sexuality in 57ms and that many times they are correct. And also, when the researchers added as a factor the percentage of homosexuality in the society the accuracy actually increased.

Your conscious mind is just the tip of an iceberg

The point I’m trying to make here, is that we are watching psychology moving away from social explanations to more individualistic ones. Of course this debate hasn’t appeared just now. It can be seen again and again various contexts. However, what I believe has changed now, is the very fact that psychology has progressed as a science, so that we can make experiments and create theories on the individual that hold a great amount of truth and can be seen to be applied in a complete context in some decades that includes inter-group and intra-group interaction.

Intra-group interaction gone awry

Many would consider this to be a withdrawal from social explanations, but I believe it to be a focus on explanations that can be measured and quantified, away from nebulous sociological theories. The social part can be introduced inside the theory once we have built a solid foundation.

I’m not trying to bash sociological explanations here, I’m just expressing my optimism about the appeareance of researches that engage hot social topics via a psychological perspective.

In that context we will discuss the next article on homosexuality published in Scientific American Mind

Bisexual Species: Unorthodox Sex in the Animal Kingdom: Scientific American

Penguins in love, but…wait a minute…they’re both male!

This article starts with the love story of two male penguins, reporting that there have been found 1500 homosexual species. The authors then go on to pose their own theory, which holds an evolutionary perspective, as to the roots of homosexuality. The conclusions are the following:

1. Many species are bisexual

2.Sexual identity might be just a social construct

3.Homosexuality offers the following advantages: diffusion of social tensions, better protection of the young, maintenance of fecundity in the absence of opposite sex, and, finally, maybe sex is just fun

The first fact is something that we cannot disagree upon.

The second is a little more complex and a tricky one. This argument has been used many times to attack the existence of gender in our culture and to support feministic arguments. It has even been postulated that the segregation between male and female is something of no use, that promotes only the sexism that exist in our society.

I believe that this argument can only be solved under the third conclusion. That is, the evolutionary explanation.

Evolution gone awry, too

For those who don’t know, evolutionary psychology is a very ambiguous subject. Some say it promotes social darwinism or it eliminates the social factor. It has even been accused for not providing a good explanation for homosexuality, something which seems to be false

Evolutionary psychology simply tries to apply the principles of evolution on psychology. Adaptive behaviours are passed on by the genes and become a part of the gene pool. It’s a very interesting subject, but in this post we’ll focus on our subject and we’ll not digress (evolutionary psychology will be covered in future posts).

Evolutionary psychology had been accused of not being able to explain homosexuality, since a homosexual would not mate with the other sex to pass on his genes. However, this explanation above provides an alternative, and a very good one indeed. It just says that we are all bisexual and provides a series of evolutionary benefits concerning this behavior.

The article also gives the example of human athletes, where in a research mentioned, 40% of the subjects had been involved in homosexual behavior, even if they did not consider themselves as homosexuals. This behavior is considered to improve bonding between the members of the group, and thus be positive.

A gene pool doesn’t look exactly like that

The reason that the segragation between male and female is important, is that our ancestors that made this segragation simply survived. Indeed, it is hard for anyone that knows the principles of evolution to imagine how it could be any different, since the base of evolution in mammals is reproduction. It only seems instictive that people make instictive judgments about other people’s sex and sexuality.

Of course, I’m not addressing here the issue of sexism which is an entirely different issue. I’m just attacking extreme social constructivistic behaviors which try to replace the basic scientific principles of evolution. I’m sorry fellas, but this just can’t be done

To conclude, in the final paragraph the article mentions captivity and stress to be one more reason to engage in homosexual behavior. This fact is interesting, considering the occurences of homosexual behavior in prisons. However, an analysis of the rehabilitation system escapes the scope of this article, but it’s an important issue and we ought to mention it.

As always feel free to comment on anything

Further Reading:

Homosexuality on wikipedia

Podcast: Psychiatry and Homosexuality

The Bieber study: A review revisited

40 Years Since Homosexuality Decriminalized

Northern Ireland health chief, homosexuality an illness

Homosexuality - Nature vs. Nurture - Psychology - Debate

Handedness, hair whorls, and homosexuality

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 31st, 2008 at 5:24 pm and is filed under Cognitive, Socio-Political. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.