Gay Men Navigate Like Women
CognitiveScience Sunday, May 8, 2005 . This is a SciScoop post by Chad
The journal article, entitled “A Specific Sexual Orientation-Related Difference in Navigation Strategy,” (with an abstract available here) describes two navigation strategies: landmark and orientation. The landmark strategy relies on the use of landmarks to navigate—”turn left at the hardware store, continue to the stop sign, then go right.” The orientation strategy relies more on compass directions and distances—”head East for 2.3 miles, then North for another three.” It is widely accepted that women, on average, tend to use the landmark strategy while men tend to use orientation.
The results of the study were as follows:
- Heterosexual women favored landmark navigation.
- Homosexual women favored landmark navigation.
- Heterosexual men favored orientation navigation.
- Homosexual men used a combination of landmark and orientation navigation.
A “plain-English” summary of the report may be found at this link.
- sexuality
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6 Responses to Gay Men Navigate Like Women
gypsysoul
May 9th, 2005 at 10:51 am
I honestly thought I was malfunctional on the EAST/WEST business. What a relief to know that’s at least somewhat a female trait. The hardware store, left or right, has worked well for me all these years.
:-)
Anonymous
May 9th, 2005 at 4:27 pm
I’m a m2f transsexual and I find that I use a mix of both for areas I know but when I’m in a new area I can become disorientated direction wise then start to rely on landmarks exclusively. I wouldn’t make a good subject for a case study on this subject as I delivered pizza for many years and finely honed my navigation skills.
Drifter855
May 11th, 2005 at 1:12 am
I’m straight as an arrow, but I rely on landmarks!!
I’m a visual person…can’t remember names, but NEVER forget a face. Same way with directions. I don’t even know the number of the street I live on, but I can tell you every house, every tree, every bend on the road from here to town.
Does that make me gay?!?!?!
May 11th, 2005 at 9:59 am
There was a news article out yesterday discussing the sensitivity of women and gay men to a particular pheromone/hormone that has no effect on straight men, maybe the researchers will devise a test for people who can find their way using landmarks but nevertheless aren’t sure about which way they go. <g>
Who nose? Story
chad
May 12th, 2005 at 6:53 am
Please realize that these statements deal with averages, not stereotypes. It’s perfectly accurate, for example, to say that the typical man is stronger than the typical women–but it’s possible to find many man/woman pairs where the woman is stronger than the man. This is why stereotypes can be highly inaccurate when applied across the board.
May 12th, 2005 at 8:21 am
These kinds of studies also tend to have small sample sizes so who’s to say that any of those being “tested” aren’t outriders. A similar thought crossed my mind on reading the news about the sexuality-pheromone issue. Isn’t it possible that some of the people in the group tested were previously conditioned by the pheromone during their life. There surely can be no direct correlation between a particular response to one’s sexuality, there are presumably far too many factors to make it that simple.