The Neuroscience of ‘Curb’

Image by <<graham>> via Flickr

A while back, we looked at the Neuroscience of “30 Rock” (Emmy! Woo!). Today, let’s take another comedy way too seriously: “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

On last night’s season premier, among other trouble, Larry gets into hot water for telling his girlfriend’s doctor, essentially (and affably), “Hey, I didn’t know you were gay!”

It’s a reaction any straight person can probably relate to, upon finding out someone you didn’t know was gay… is gay. For most of us these days, it’s certainly not a negative thing. But it’s a notable thing to learn about somebody, and seems worthy of note. But there’s really no way to note it — at least not to the person in question, without things turning extremely awkward. (When my freshman year roommate in college was gay, I noted it by asking, “So, you’re gay, right?” It was the “Rent” soundtrack that tipped me off.)

Well, putting aside the fact that some gay men are readily identifiable by various mannerisms (Am I going to get in trouble like Larry, here? Is anyone going to dispute this?), it turns out science has something to say on this topic. That’s right: science.

According to a study (abstract) from 2007, people can tell whether a man is gay in 1/20th of one second, with 70% accuracy, just by looking at a picture of his face. What’s more, this 1/20th of a second judgment is as accurate as if you had a minute to examine the face.

Now, 70% isn’t 100%, but it’s damn high over chance. And it apparently doesn’t matter if the “judge” is gay, straight, man, or woman.

What markers are people picking up?

It’s not clear. Many gay people themselves attribute their “gaydar” to having a better knowledge of or feel for gay culture — but that’s clearly not what’s going on here. These are grayscale photos with no facial hair, no piercings — just face. There are clearly biological markers that make gay men different (by definition, otherwise presumably they’d be straight men). But I’ve certainly never seen a study of what that means in terms of facial features.

Will there someday be a statistical way to describe the gay face? Is there any reason to solve such a problem? Couldn’t we just rely on MIT’s Project Gaydar? Are gays the new Jews? “He doesn’t look gay.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that.