{"id":1107,"date":"2014-04-30T15:17:31","date_gmt":"2014-04-30T19:17:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/?p=1107"},"modified":"2014-05-19T07:12:26","modified_gmt":"2014-05-19T11:12:26","slug":"whos-that-chick-how-you-identify-and-recognize-the-hotties-around-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/2014\/04\/30\/whos-that-chick-how-you-identify-and-recognize-the-hotties-around-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Who’s That Chick? How You Identify and Recognize the Hotties Around You"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Gaga-640x641\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It happens to everyone: you\u2019re walking around campus when all of a sudden you see \u201cHottie Number One\u201d or \u201cHot Girl Number Three,\u201d or \u201cHot Dude From Dana.\u201d We are students on a small campus; therefore, we start to recognize people after just a few weeks of being here. But why do we recognize some people more than others? Based upon personal interactions, people from all aspects of the sexuality spectrum seem to say that they run into \u201cHottie Number One\u201d more often than they do other people. Perhaps even more interesting is that people seem to recognize potentially compatible hotties \u2013 straight people tend notice straight hotties whereas gay people tend to notice gay hotties. What makes us recognize the hotties better than we do other people? And how do we manage to focus on potentially compatible hotties? What about the hotties with non-compatible sexual orientations?<\/p>\n

Cognitive psychologists Brambilla, Riva, and Rule set out to answer these questions in 2013. They asked 84 straight male participants to look at photos of male faces and state whether they thought the men in the photos were gay or straight. There were 90 photos, 45 of which featured straight men and 45 of which featured gay men. Each participant was asked to rate his confidence in his categorization and was given an assessment to measure his familiarity with gay men. The team found that confidence was unrelated to accuracy; in fact, increased familiarity with gay men increased one\u2019s accuracy but decreased his confidence. The reason for this is unclear; however, the team postulates that sexual orientation recognition is unconscious, meaning that people who are more familiar with gay men are accurate in their responses but may not recognize their accuracy. This may be due to the notion that people tend to lean on the side of labeling someone heterosexual, making them feel as if they are guessing.<\/p>\n

So how does this relate to your recognizing \u201cHottie Number One?\u201d As the team discusses, what happens when you see \u201cHottie Number One\u201d for the first time is important for understanding why you repeatedly recognize him or her. As soon as you see an individual, you gather certain information about him or her \u2013 you infer the person\u2019s gender, race, and sexual orientation. This process is automatic, a notion understood by cognitive psychologists to mean that it is effortless and occurs at the same time as another action (in this case, it occurs as you are simply looking at the person); thus, as soon as you see someone, you have an idea about whether or not you and this person have compatible sexual orientations.<\/p>\n

One theory as to why you recognize hotties of compatible sexual orientations better than you do the random guy who sits next to you in bio deals with the notion of in-group vs. out-group. To be in your in-group, a person must share certain qualities with you. For example, to be in your racial in-group, a person must be of the same race; your gender in-group, the same gender; your sexual orientation in-group, the same sexual orientation. If a person does not share the key quality with you, then he or she is in your out-group.<\/p>\n

People are better at recognizing members of their in-group. For example, it is well documented that people are better able to recognize individuals from the same race because they have more practice differentiating between members of that group \u2013 someone who is Asian and associates himself largely with his Asian relatives will have an easier time discriminating between other Asian individuals than will a person who just met someone from this group for the first time (Meissner & Brigham, 2001). In terms of sexual orientation, people are better able to judge someone\u2019s sexuality if they are exposed to more sexual diversity. Thus, someone who has a lot of gay friends is more likely to recognize a gay man than someone who is less exposed to gay people is. This increased familiarity with individuals of compatible sexual orientations combined with an overlapping membership in sexual orientation in-group contributes to your recognizing people with matching sexual orientations. If you are gay, you will notice gay hotties because they are in your in-group and because, being gay yourself, you are most familiar with that group. If you are straight, you will notice straight hotties because they are in your in-group and because you have the most familiarity with that group.<\/p>\n

So say you are a gay girl. \u201cHottie Number One\u201d probably stands out not only because of her looks, but also because she is (likely) into girls. You would be able to recognize this mutual interest as soon as you see her face, due to both the automatic nature of sexual orientation recognition and your familiarity with the queer community. Thus, you label her not only as attractive but also as potentially available. The same would be true if you were a gay guy \u2013 \u201cHottie Number One\u201d would also likely be a gay guy. If you were straight, you would be able to recognize \u201cHottie Number One\u201d because she is in your sexual orientation in-group and because you are familiar with the straight community. Thus, you recognize the hotties who are potentially compatible more readily than you do those who are not because they are in your sexual orientation in-group, which is also the group you are most familiar with.<\/p>\n

It is important to note that Brambilla, Riva, and Rule (2013) only investigated the impact that familiarity with gay men has on facial recognition among men, and thus further research could be conducted on how women\u2019s familiarity with a group impacts their recognizing individuals. If you are interested in learning about how men and women take note of different individuals, please see my peer Kimberly Bourne\u2019s post, Who\u2019s That Hottie? The Importance of Sexual Orientation in Facial Recognition.<\/a><\/p>\n

Brambilla, M., Riva, P., & Ruble, N. O. (2013). Familiarity increases the accuracy of\u00a0categorizing male sexual orientation. Personality and Individual Differences, 55, 193-<\/i>195.<\/i><\/p>\n

Meissner, C. A., & Brigham, J. C. (2001). Thirty years of investigating the own-race bias in\u00a0memory for faces: A meta-analytic review. Psychology, Public Policy, & Law<\/i>, 7, 3-35.<\/p>\n

Charlene. (2013, January 15). . Retrieved April 30, 2014, from\u00a0http:\/\/www.staceyreid.com\/news\/?tag=charlene&paged=13<\/p>\n

Image:<\/p>\n

Charlene. (2013, January 15).\u00a0<\/i>\u00a0Retrieved April 30, 2014, from http:\/\/www.staceyreid.com\/news\/?tag=charlene&paged=13<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It happens to everyone: you\u2019re walking around campus when all of a sudden you see \u201cHottie Number One\u201d or \u201cHot Girl Number Three,\u201d or \u201cHot Dude From Dana.\u201d We are students on a small campus; therefore, we start to recognize people after just a few weeks of being here. But why do we recognize some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80219,80218],"tags":[150206,130382,130381,130411],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1107"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5610"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1107"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1543,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1107\/revisions\/1543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}