Bisexuality Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Bisexuality, including details on male and female, statistics, trends, psychology.

A gender- and sexual orientation-dependent spatial attentional effect of invisible images.

Jiang Y, Costello P, Fang F, Huang M, He S

*Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, 75 East River Parkway, Minneapolis, MN 55455.

Human observers are constantly bombarded with a vast amount of information. Selective attention helps us to quickly process what is important while ignoring the irrelevant. In this study, we demonstrate that information that has not entered observers' consciousness, such as interocularly suppressed (invisible) erotic pictures, can direct the distribution of spatial attention. Furthermore, invisible erotic information can either attract or repel observers' spatial attention depending on their gender and sexual orientation. While unaware of the suppressed pictures, heterosexual males' attention was attracted to invisible female nudes, heterosexual females' attention was attracted to invisible male nudes, gay males behaved similarly to heterosexual females, and gay/bisexual females performed in-between heterosexual males and females.

Published 8 November 2006 in Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 103(45): 17048-52.
Full-text of this article is available online (may require subscription).

© 2004-2008 Bisexuality Research Today. All Rights Reserved.