Sexual minorities refer to individuals whose sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or sexual behavior differ from the societal majority. Among these groups, homosexual individuals constitute the major proportion. The global population of homosexual individuals has exceeded 100 million. Despite their large number, this community continues to experience discrimination in both work and life. However, this fact is in sharp contrast to the popularity of homosexual themes in the virtual world such as comics, animation, and novels. The present study aims to investigate differences in people's attitude toward real homosexual individuals versus animated homosexual characters. Meanwhile it also explores the moderating role of the individual's gender. Images of animated characters and real-world individuals were used as visual stimuli, including homosexual couples and same-gender friends. The eye-tracking technology was introduced to record participants' gaze trajectories while viewing these images. Gaze patterns could serve as indicators of attentional bias and underlying psychological processes. The results revealed that both sexual orientation and the character's gender significantly influenced participants' visual attention. Images of lesbian couples got significantly longer first fixation duration. The potential mechanism is lesbian identity tends to be sexualized in patriarchal society. Moreover, the image type (animated vs. real-world) affected the speed of attention orientation. Participants fixated more rapidly to real-world homosexual couples, whether lesbian or gay. The corresponding fact suggests people may have implicit bias towards homosexual individuals. At the same time, real-world scenarios are considered as “high-risk” stimuli. Overall, this study sheds light on early-stage attentional responses toward homosexual individuals and offers potential methods for developing innovative anti-discrimination interventions through the use of animated representations.

Hu Jinyan. Visual Attention to Homosexual Stimuli: Effects of Presentation Type and Character's Gender. The Frontiers of Society, Science and Technology (2025), Vol. 7, Issue 7: 91-96. https://doi.org/10.25236/FSST.2025.070714.

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