Evidence against a Relationship between Dermatoglyphic Asymmetry and Male Sexual Orientation

Bibliographic Data

ID6067347
AuthorsValter Forastieri (Universidade Federal da Bahia), Cristiane Pinto Andrade, Adriana Lima V Souza, Monica Santana Silva, C N El-Hani (0000-0002-2308-3983), Lília Maria De Azevedo Moreira (0000-0001-9768-3466), Luiz R B Mott, Renato Zamora Flores
Year2002
Volume74
Issue6
Pages861-870
Publication date2002-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHuman Biology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-7143 • E-ISSN: 1534-6617
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/hub.2003.0002
PMID12617494
OpenAlexW1971717343
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited13

Hall and Kimura (1994) studied the relation between dermatoglyphic asymmetry and male sexual orientation in a sample of 66 homosexual and 182 heterosexual men. They found that more homosexual men possessed a leftward dermatoglyphic asymmetry than did heterosexual men. In this paper, we report a comparative study about the relationship between sexual orientation and dermatoglyphic characteristics, including 60 homosexual men, 76 heterosexual men, and 60 heterosexual women, recruited from the general population, and also from a gay-rights nongovernmental organization, in Salvador, Brazil. Ulnar loops were the most frequent dermatoglyphic pattern in all groups, followed by whorls, arches, and radial loops. A chi-square analysis comparing the frequencies of the patterns in the three groups only showed an excess of ulnar loops in women (p < 0.05) and arches in men (p < 0.01), but did not reveal significant differences between homosexuals and the other groups studied. There was no significant difference between gay and straight men on total ridge count. We found a preponderance of rightward asymmetry in homosexual and heterosexual men, as well as in heterosexual women. Our results do not agree with Hall and Kimura's data indicating that more gay men possessed the minority leftward asymmetry than did straight men. There was no significant difference in leftward asymmetry in the sample studied. The results reported in this paper do not support any relation between dermatoglyphic asymmetry and male sexual orientation, and, thus, any hypothesis concerning a biological intrauterine contribution to adult sexual orientation somehow associated with dermatoglyphic development

Asymmetry · Biology · Dermatoglyphics · Heterosexuality · Homosexuality · Population · Sexual difference · Sexual orientation · Sociology · Biometric Identification and Security · Demography · Dermatoglyphics and Human Traits · Medical and Biological Sciences · Psychology · Social Psychology

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