Rule and colleagues at Tufts University put 40 Tufts undergraduate women - all of whom were heterosexual and ovulating - through three experiments designed to test their hypothesis that women pay more attention to men’s sexual orientation when they’re extremely fertile.įirst, the participants were asked to look at 80 images of men’s faces half the photos - which were similar in terms of expression and attractiveness - belonged to gay men, while the other half featured straight men. MORE: One-Night Stands Explained: Men Prefer Hot Bods to Pretty Faces “They come out of the experiment completely frustrated and say, This is so hard, no one can do this, and then we look at the data and they’re doing amazingly well.” “We consistently find that people have no idea they are able to do this,” says Nicholas Rule, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and the study’s lead author.
Not only does it facilitate pregnancy - though sperm are in no short supply, the ephemeral egg appears just once a month - but new research finds that it also helps a woman select potential partners by enhancing her “gaydar.”Īll this complex sexual decision-making is going on behind the scenes, according to a study published online this week in the journal Psychological Science that found that straight women at their peak period of fertility are far more accurate than non-ovulaters at sussing out who’s gay and who’s not just by looking at a man’s face. Follow is a really useful biological function.