ABSTRACT
Las investigaciones sobre el papel de los sentidos en la elección de pareja que hacen hombres y mujeres han confirmado la presencia de procesos a nivel neurofisiológico cuya influencia va más allá de las decisiones conscientes que pudieran tomarse en cuanto a la pareja con la que deciden estar. Sin embargo, la mayoría de las investigaciones realizadas hasta ahora tienen un enfoque en parejas heterosexuales y son pocos los estudios que examinan el papel de los sentidos en la elección de pareja que hacen las personas homosexuales. El objetivo del estudio realizado fue evaluar la importancia y la relación que tienen el olfato y la visión en la atracción de hombres homosexuales hacia hombres, tanto hetero como homosexuales. Un grupo de 14 hombres homosexuales evaluó el atractivo de fotografías y camisetas (remera de algodón de mangas cortas) provenientes de hombres hetero y homosexuales. Los resultados indicaron que el olor de las camisetas utilizadas por hombres homosexuales resultó significativamente más atractivo que el olor de las camisetas utilizadas por hombres heterosexuales en las evaluaciones realizadas. Por otra parte, se realizaron análisis de regresión múltiple y sus resultados mostraron que el atractivo del olor de las camisetas utilizadas por hombres homosexuales predice significativamente el atractivo global de estos hombres. Estos resultados sugieren la presencia de una capacidad en hombres homosexuales para distinguir inconscientemente a hombres heterosexuales de hombres homosexuales a partir de estímulos olfativos, lo que a su vez apunta a una constitución neurofisiológica en particular, invitando a realizar más investigaciones en el tema.
Previous works about the role of the senses in mating choices made by men and women have confirmed the existence of neurophysiologic processes which influence our decisions about whom we'd like to have a relationship with, well beyond our conscious capacity to select. Most of these works, however, are developed from a focus on Evolutionary Psychology, whose theoretical axis is the transmission of genes from one generation to another by means of reproduction. Therefore, they have centered exclusively on the evaluations of attractiveness made by heterosexual people, thus disregarding the role of the senses in the mating choices of their homosexual counterparts. Our goal in the present study was to evaluate the relationship between smell and sight, as well as their influence on the attraction felt by homosexual men towards heterosexual and homosexual men. A group of 14 homosexual men assessed the attractiveness of a series of stimuli that came from homosexual and heterosexual males. Subjects ranged from 16 to 26 years of age (M = 21.21; SD = 2.6), participated voluntarily and were selected through accidental, non probability sampling. All of them were recruited in a meeting of the Jóvenes LGBT México Group, thanks to the support of one of its coordinators, with the objective of accommodating the schedules of the population under study. The stimuli consisted of facial pictures of homosexual and heterosexual men, as well as cotton tee shirts previously worn by the same subjects. All stimuli were collected from 10 men between 21 and 25 years of age (M = 22.3; SD = 1.49), acquaintances of the researchers. Invitations were sent via e-mail. Participants were informed that the objective of the study was to assess the importance of the senses in the mating choices of human males. Findings may be summarized as follows: the olfactory attractiveness of the tee shirts and the visual attractiveness of the pictures did not correlate for either of the two groups; only the olfactory attractiveness of the tee shirts differed significantly depending on the sexual orientation of the wearers; both the visual attractiveness of the pictures and the olfactory attractiveness of the tee shirts predicted the global attractiveness of heterosexual subjects, though the visual attractiveness of the pictures did so more significantly; and, finally, only the olfactory attractiveness of the tee shirts predicted the global attractiveness of homosexual subjects. In other words, the smell of the tee shirts worn by homosexual men resulted significantly more attractive to the homosexual evaluators than did the smell of the tee shirts worn by heterosexual men. On the other hand, only the attractiveness of the smell of the tee shirts worn by homosexual men predicted significantly the global attractiveness of those men. This suggests that the homosexual men who participated as evaluators were able to distinguish, without being conscious of it, the sexual orientation of the men who wore the shirts, parting from their olfactory attractiveness. The most important implication of our findings is that homosexual people may function in a different neurophysiologic manner than their heterosexual counterparts, at least in regards to the influence of sensory perception on the mating choices they make. In particular, that factors independent from reproduction may have a role in human mating choices. Therefore, in future research conducted on the matter, the sexual orientation of the subjects should be considered, additionally to their biological sex.