Abstract
A vast body of recent research has shown that women tend to outperform men in tests of olfactory abilities. Further, homosexual individuals often show gender atypical traits.
We hypothesised that in men sexual orientation would be positively correlated with olfactory scores and odour awareness whilst in women the correlation was expected to be negative. The Sniffin'' Sticks test battery was used to assess the olfactory threshold, discrimination and identification of 40 homosexuals (F=20) and 40 heterosexuals (F=20) aged 20-35.
Further, self-report Gender Nonconformity Scale (GN) and Odour Awareness Scale (OAS) were administered. A General Linear Model analysis was performed with the three olfactory measures and the OAS score as dependent variables; sex and sexual orientation as categorical factors, and gender nonconformity as a covariate, which yielded a significant sex difference (F = 2,50; p = ,04) as well as a sex*sexual orientation interaction (F = 2,62; p = ,04).
Subsequent post-hoc tests revealed that this was due to the difference in the olfactory threshold, with heterosexual men being less sensitive than heterosexual women (p = ,017); the total olfactory score (TDI), with heterosexual men scoring less than both homosexual men (p = ,009) and heterosexual women (p = ,016) and, finally, in the OAS score, with heterosexual men scoring less than heterosexual women (p = ,038). Furthermore, it was found that the self-reported sexual orientation correlated with the identification score and the total TDI score in men, as did the GN score, with homosexual individuals and those tending towards nonconformity outperforming the conformist ones.
In women, the GN score was found to correlate with the TDI and the olfactory threshold, with the conformist ones outperforming those tending towards nonconformity.