Female sexual orientation and menstrual influences on person perception q Katherine Brinsmead-Stockham a , Lucy Johnston b, * , Lynden Miles b , C. Neil Macrae c a Department of Psychology, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK b Department of Psychology, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand c School of Psychology, William Guild Building, University of Aberdeen, AB24 2UB, UK Received 4 September 2006; revised 8 May 2007 Available online 23 May 2007 Abstract Heterosexual women have previously been shown to display enhanced sensitivity to information that is both reproductively- and sex- ually-relevant (e.g., sexually mature male faces) during phases of high fertility. In the present study, homosexual women who maintained a regular menstrual cycle and did not use hormonal contraceptives completed a sex-categorization task at periods of high and low fertility within their menstrual cycle. For homosexual women there is a separation between reproductively-relevant (i.e., sexually mature males) and sexually-relevant (i.e., sexually mature females) targets. Our participants showed enhanced sensitivity to sexually-relevant informa- tion (i.e., female faces) at high fertility but showed no fluctuation in sensitivity to reproductively-relevant information (i.e., male faces) across testing sessions. These findings are considered in terms of adaptive person perception and the impact of sexual desire on mate preferences. Ó 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Sexual orientation; Person perception; Menstrual cycle Given the limited reproductive capacity of females, both across the lifespan and within each menstrual cycle, it would be adaptive for reproductively capable females to be especially attuned to information relevant to the pro- curement of a mate during periods of relatively high-con- ception probability (i.e., at ovulation). Support for this heightened attunement comes from evidence of faster iden- tification of males, greater preference for masculine males, and increased sexual desire and activity at ovulation than during other stages of the menstrual cycle. In the present research we considered the impact of sexual orientation on such attunement. On a sex-based categorization task, heterosexual females are faster at ovulation than during menstruation to cor- rectly identify unknown sexually mature males, but not females, (Johnston, Arden, Macrae, & Grace, 2003; Mac- rae, Alnwick, Milne, & Schloerscheidt, 2002), indicating that at high fertility women are especially sensitive to infor- mation that identifies targets as potential reproductive partners. In addition, there is an extensive literature show- ing that heterosexual females display greater preference at ovulation than at other phases of the menstrual cycle for masculine features, such as more masculinized male faces (Fink & Penton-Voak, 2002; Penton-Voak & Perrett, 2000; Penton-Voak et al., 1999), faces that have features associated with better health (Rhodes, Chan, Zebrowitz, & Simmons, 2003), as well as higher immunological compe- tence and genetic fitness amongst males (Følstad & Karter, 1992; Møller & Thornhill, 1997; Roney, Hanson, Durante, & Maestripieri, 2006; Thornhill & Gangestad, 1996). The cycle-dependent sensitivity of females to information spec- ifying the masculinity and fitness of males does, then, show 0022-1031/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2007.05.003 q The reported research was completed as an honors dissertation project by the first author whilst she was a visiting student in the Social Perception Laboratories at the University of Canterbury. The authors thank Paul Walton for writing the software used in the reported research. This research was supported by Grant D3336 from the University of Canterbury. * Corresponding author. Fax: +64 3 364 2181. E-mail address: lucy.johnston@canterbury.ac.nz (L. Johnston). www.elsevier.com/locate/jesp Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 44 (2008) 729–734