An Eye-movement Research On Facial Cues Of Male Sexual Orientation Judgment

Sexual orientation refers to the individual has persistently psychological orbehavioral differences in preference on different gender. To understand other’s sexualorientation is important to establish a relationship or communication. Previous workhas found that sexual orientation can be judged with surprising accuracy by guessingfrom facial cues in abroad, but it is still not sure which facial features information thepeople pay more attention in the process of judgment. This study aims to verifywhether people can judge sexual orientation from facial cues, points out that the focusof attention on sexual orientation judgment task, explores the accuracy and reactiontime differences between homosexuals and heterosexuals of sexual orientationjudgment task, and focus on understanding the similarities and differences betweenhomosexuals and heterosexuals.In this study,96college students from Jiangxi Normal University are selected asthe research objects. With the applying of eye movement technique, explore theaccuracy and reaction time of sexual orientation judgment, and explore whatinformation is extracted from the face in delineating sexual orientation. This studyincludes two sub studies, the first of which investigates the accuracy and reaction timeof sexual orientation judgment. The second sub study using eye tracker probes whatinformation is extracted from the face in delineating sexual orientation. Key findingsare listed as follow:1. Participants can judge other’s sexual orientation from facial cues, and homosexualsjudge sexual orientation more accurately than heterosexuals do.2. In the task of judgment sexual orientation from facial cues, homosexuals takelonger than heterosexuals. But in the eye movement research of judgment sexualorientation from facial cues, there is no significant difference between the two groups.3. There are differences in different interest areas’ fixation, fixations from more to lessbe eye-eyebrow, nose, mouth and other in order. And homosexuals’ fixations on thepart of eye-eyebrow are more than heterosexuals. The fixations on the part of nose inthe homosexual pictures are more than in the heterosexual pictures.4. There are differences in different interest areas’ fixation duration, fixation durationfrom long to short be eye-eyebrow, nose, other and mouth in order. And homosexuals’ fixation duration on the part of eye-eyebrow is more than heterosexuals. The fixationduration on the part of eye-eyebrow in the homosexual pictures is shorter than in theheterosexual pictures.