Posted: 24 May 2011 05:06 AM PDT
To reach this conclusion, researchers at Ohio State University had a group of men (some heterosexual and some homosexual) record a series of one-syllable words beginning and ending with a consonant - words like "mass," "sell," and "food." Another group listened to either the initial consonant, the sounds of the first two letters, or the entire word, and then were asked to make a decision about the speaker's sexual orientation.
The listeners' gaydar wasn't particularly accurate when they heard only the first consonant of a word, according to a written statement released in conjunction with the study. But when they listened to the sound of the first two letters, they were right a remarkable 77 percent of the time. When they listened to the entire word, they were even more accurate.
The finding confirms previous research showing that listeners need only hear a single monosyllabic word to determine a speaker's sexual orientation, according to an abstract of the study.
What explains this ability? Study author Eric C. Tracy, a cognitive psychologist at the university, said it wasn't clear, HealthDay reported. But, he said, "This is a phenomenon that occurs every day," adding that "We believe that listeners are using the acoustic information contained in vowels to make this sexual orientation decision."
The study was scheduled to be presented in Seattle on May 23 at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America. [ source ]
~~thanks to Michael at gaytwogether.com
5 comments:
I can't beging to tell you how many times I have done this!! I can be in the kitchen cooking and have the TV on and just listening and tell that a male is homosexual. A peek at the TV often confirms it. How do I do it?? I have no idea. Now I have to find the journal article.
wow..i guess it is/might be working....???
GOOGLE still having problems!
Did Rock Hudson sound gay? My background is radio and I knew heaps of gay announcers who didn't sound gay. But then their voices (including mine) were, cultivated.
I think the study might be confusing being effeminate with being gay, and the two can be quite separate.
hmmm... i don't hear the sounds very well, but i often can pick out s.o. jus by body language. I won't get into auras, too off subject!
As for the voice test, i'd have to believe it is true, but i don't feel most ppl are very good listeners.
You didn't say how those key words were pronounced by gays. How do they pronounce them?
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