The Theories behind ‘Gaydar’

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Dr Qazi Rahman, assistant professor in Cognitive Biology at Queen Mary University of London, tells Claudia Hammond how gender culture may have an impact on how we perceive another person's sexuality. He explains that homophobes may be more sensitive to certain triggers and are therefore 'better' at correctly identifying whether someone is gay or straight. Psychologists at Queen Mary University of London are, for the first time, trying to isolate the individual signals and patterns in somebody's face, in order to work out exactly what motivates us to make a snap decision about sexuality. He hopes his research will challenge stereotypes and prejudice by increasing awareness of how quickly, and often inaccurately, people classify each other.