Judgments of Sexual Orientation and Masculinity-Femininity Based on Thin Slices of Behavior : A Cross-Cultural Comparison
Abstract
Studies of North Americans suggest that laypeople can judge the sexual orientation of otherswith greater than chance accuracy based on brief observations of their behavior (i.e.,''gaydar''exists). One factor that appears to contribute to these judgments is targets'' degree ofmasculinity-femininity.
However, behaviors related to sexual orientation and to masculinity- femininity mightvary across cultures. Thus, cross-cultural work is needed to test whether judgments of sexual orientation aremore accurate when targets and raters are fromthe same culture.
American and Czech male targets, 38 homosexual and 41 heterosexual,were videotaped and brief segments of the videotapes were presented to American and Czech raters. Overall, raters'' judgments of targets'' sexual orientation were related to targets'' self-reported sexual orientation.
However, the relationship was strongerwhen targets were judged by raters from their owncountry. Ingeneral, results suggest that there areboth crosscultural similarities anddifferences in gaydar and in cues related to sexual orientation.