Abstrakt
The present study addresses the relation of olfactory abilities, declared sexual orientation and gender nonconformity. We hypothesised that homosexual men would not only outperform heterosexual men on olfactory tests (whilst on a par with heterosexual women) but also be better aware of odours in their everyday lives, and that this would not be the case with homosexual women. 40 homosexuals (F=20) and 40 heterosexuals (F=20) aged 20-35 years participated in the study.
The Sniffin'' Sticks test was performed to assess the olfactory threshold, discrimination and identification, and the following self-report tools were administered: Childhood Gender Nonconformity Scale, Continuous Gender Identity Scale and Odour Awareness Scale (OAS). A General Linear Model analysis was performed with the three olfactory measures and the OAS score as dependent variables; sex and sexual orientation as categorical factors, and childhood and continuous gender nonconformity as covariates, which yielded a significant sex difference (F = 2,50; p = ,04) as well as sex*sexual orientation interaction (F = 2,62; p = ,04).
Subsequent post-hoc tests revealed that this was due to the difference in the olfactory threshold, with heterosexual men being less sensitive than heterosexual women (p = ,017); the total olfactory score (TDI), with heterosexual men scoring less than both homosexual men (p = ,009) and heterosexual women (p = ,016) and, finally, in the OAS score, with heterosexual men scoring less than heterosexual women (p = ,038). Furthermore, it was found that the declared sexual orientation correlated with the identification score and the total TDI score in men, as did childhood and continuous gender nonconformity, with homosexual individuals and those tending towards nonconformity outperforming the conformist ones.
In women, both childhood and continuous gender nonconformity were found to correlate with TDI, with the conformist ones outperforming those tending towards nonconformity.