It only takes a 50ms glimpse (that's one twentieth of a second) of a man's face for people to recognise his sexual orientation.
Nick Rule and
Nalini Ambady said such an ability could have evolved for reasons relating to sex or may simply reflect a more general human ability to detect the characteristics of others with impressive efficiency. Past research for example has shown that
trustworthiness is judged in less than a tenth of a second and that a company's profits can be discerned from the
appearance of its chief executive.
Twenty-two male and sixty-eight female undergrads were presented with photos of 90 men's faces (half were homosexual) for either 33ms, 50ms, 6500ms or 10,000ms. The anonymous photos were taken from an
internet dating site where posters stated their sexual orientation. Any photos featuring facial hair, glasses or jewelery were not used.
At 33ms, the presentation was too quick for the students to consciously 'see' the faces and, perhaps unsurprisingly, their ability to determine the men's sexuality was no better than if they were simply guessing. However, at 50ms - just long enough for the faces to be consciously seen - the students' accuracy grew to 57 per cent, which is significantly better than chance performance. Accuracy didn't increase with the longer exposure times, suggesting that all the relevant information for making the judgment had already been extracted by 50ms.
In a second study, the researchers guarded against the possibility that the men in the dating photographs had deliberately accentuated their sexuality. This time photos were taken from the social website
Facebook, where they had been posted by people other than the subjects of the photos (so deliberate accentuation of sexuality was less likely). Hairstyles were also removed from the photos. Again, from just a 50ms exposure to men's faces, the 15 undergraduate participants were able to recognise the men's sexual orientation with an accuracy better than chance.
"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."
译文:
男人的性取向只需一转眼的功夫就可以识别
男人看人只需花50微秒（也就是一秒的20分之一）的一瞥就可以确定自己的性取向。Nick Rule 和 Nalini Ambady认为这种能力可能涉及到关于性或者简单的反映出人类高效率检验别人个性的原因。比如以往的研究表明可信耐性可由少于一秒的十分之一来判断正如一个公司的利润可以从它的董事长来判断。
90个男人的图像（其中一半是同性恋)被放到21岁男大学生和68岁的女大学生的面前，不管是放33微秒，50微秒，6500微秒还是10000微秒。这些匿名的图像全来自网上粘贴陈述他们性取向的约会网站。任何关于毛发，眼睛或者珠宝的图像都没有用到。
在30微秒之内，同学们觉得仔细看清楚那些面孔的时间太短了，可能更令人惊奇的是，他们辨别男人性取向的能力还不如他们简单的乱猜。然而，在50 微秒之内--足够他们仔细看清楚那些面孔--同学们的准确度达到57%，明显的好于机会乱猜。准确度并没有因为长时间的看图片的次数而增加，假设所有为做判断的相关信息早已被萃取了50微秒。
在另一研究中，研究者们谨慎的堤防男性的约会图片过于有意强调他们的性别的可能性。这一次图片全来自由一般人而不是相片的主人在一般社会脸谱网站上发布的图片（因此有意强调性别的可能性将大大减少）。发型依然不包括在相片内。又一次，15位大学生参与者可以在50微秒之内从男人的脸相更好的判断出男人的性取向。
“男人的性取向能在短短的几秒之内察觉出来的研究结果是惊人的，”研究者说道。“虽然先前的研究表明我们可以在几秒之内从研究人的行为中提取关于人的有关信息，但是还是不如短短的50微秒。