Study: Straight women judge emotions and thoughts better than lesbian women
A paper published earlier today found that heterosexual women were found to judge women’s emotions and thoughts more accurately than lesbian women.
The study, published in the Cognition & Emotion journal, exposed a group of straight and lesbian women to videotapes of 9 targets. The women were then required to make judgements about the targets’ thoughts, emotions, personality and sexual orientation.
It was found that straight women were significantly more accurate at judging thoughts of the women in the video tape compared to the lesbian sample.
In addition, the straight women were more likely to judge the emotions of the targets’ correctly, compared to the lesbian judges.
However, the study also revealed that lesbian women were able to judge sexual orientation more readily than the straight sample.
The article suggested that straight women appear more interested in thoughts and emotions, and less so on the sexual orientation of the individual.
Whereas, lesbian women tend to place importance on the orientation of the individual, highlighting how one’s own sexual orientation can guide the perceptions of other individuals.
The research is one of the first of its kind, with prior literature tending to focus solely on males. The authors urged for more research on how their findings could be affected by other factors, such as communication methods and residential location.
