This psychologist’s “gaydar” rearch mak unfortable. That’s the pot. - Vox

Contents:

• 'I WAS SHOCKED WAS SO EASY': ​MEET THE PROFSOR WHO SAYS FACIAL REGNN ​​N TELL IF YOU'RE GAY
• ROW OVER AI THAT 'INTIFI GAY FAC'
• FACE TO FACE : GAY AND LBIAN CLERGY ON HOLS AND LIFE TOGETHER
• GAY DATG HANNOVER | FACE-TO-FACE DATG
• THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985
• THIS PSYCHOLOGIST’S “GAYDAR” REARCH MAK UNFORTABLE. THAT’S THE POT.
• FACE TO FACE: GAY AND LBIAN CLERGY ON HOLS AND LIFE TOGETHER
• LATENT CLASS OF BIDIRECTNAL FACE-TO-FACE AND CYBER INTIMATE PARTNER VLENCE AMONG LBIAN, GAY, AND BISEXUAL EMERGG ADULTS: THE ROLE OF MORY STRSORS
• FACIAL HTS SHARPEN PEOPLE'S 'GAYDAR'
• STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY AND STOCK FOOTAGEALL IMAGE TYPALL IMAGE TYPPHOTOGRAPHSILLTRATNCLIP ARTVECTOR ONLYA GAY UPLE FACE TO FACE STOCK IMAGE

'I WAS SHOCKED WAS SO EASY': ​MEET THE PROFSOR WHO SAYS FACIAL REGNN ​​N TELL IF YOU'RE GAY

Weeks after his trip to Mosw, Kosski published a ntroversial paper which he showed how face-analysg algorhms uld distguish between photographs of gay and straight people.

”In a paper published last year, Kosski and a Stanford puter scientist, Yilun Wang, reported that a mache-learng system was able to distguish between photos of gay and straight people wh a high gree of accuracy. Prented wh two pictur – one of a gay person, the other straight – the algorhm was traed to distguish the two 81% of s volvg imag of men and 74% of photographs of women.

Human judg, by ntrast, were able to intify the straight and gay people 61% and 54% of s, rpectively. “I was jt shocked to disver that is so easy for an algorhm to distguish between gay and straight people, ” Kosski tells me.

ROW OVER AI THAT 'INTIFI GAY FAC'

’ Photograph: Jason Henry/The GuardianNeher did many other people, and there was an immediate backlash when the rearch – dubbed “AI gaydar” – was previewed the Enomist magaze.

) There was also anger that Kosski had nducted rearch on a technology that uld be ed to persecute gay people untri such as Iran and Sdi Arabia, where homosexualy is punishable by ath.

FACE TO FACE : GAY AND LBIAN CLERGY ON HOLS AND LIFE TOGETHER

His fdgs are nsistent wh the prenatal hormone theory of sexual orientatn, he says, which argu that the levels of androgens foet are exposed to the womb help terme whether people are straight or gay. “Th, ” he wr his paper, “gay men are predicted to have smaller jaws and chs, slimmer eyebrows, longer nos and larger foreheads...

He be prickly when I prs him on Rsia, potg to s dire rerd on gay rights.

GAY DATG HANNOVER | FACE-TO-FACE DATG

(A uple of days later, Kosski tells me he has checked his slis; fact, he says, he didn’t tell the Rsians about his “AI gaydar”.

Whout beg aware of , most people n accurately intify gay men by face aloneAlthough I've always wanted this particular superhuman power, I've never been very good at tectg other men's sexual orientatn. Fdgs om a recent study published the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, however, suggt I may be unrtimatg my gaydar abili.

The January 2008 study vtigated people's abily to intify homosexual men om pictur of their fac alone. In an ial experiment, rearchers Nicholas Rule and Nali Ambady om Tufts Universy pesed onle datg s and refully selected 45 straight male fac and 45 gay male fac. The 90 fac were then shown to 90 participants random orr, who were asked simply to judge the target's "probable sexual orientatn" (gay or straight) by prsg a button.

THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

Surprisgly, all participants (both men and women) sred above chance on this gaydar task, rrectly intifyg the gay fac.

Then, they did a send search to fd other Facebook ers who had posted photos of the gay men their own profile. "Th, " the thors wrote, "by g photos of gay and straight dividuals that they themselv did not post, we were able to remove the fluence of self-prentatn and much of the potential selectn bias that may be prent photos om personal advertisements. Aga, the thors superimposed the male fac (this time 80 gay and 80 straight) onto a whe background.

THIS PSYCHOLOGIST’S “GAYDAR” REARCH MAK UNFORTABLE. THAT’S THE POT.

And even wh the more strgent ntrols, the participants were able to intify the gay fac at levels greater than chance—aga even on those trials where the fac were flickered on the screen for a mere 50 lisends. For example, when shown only the eye regn ("whout brows and cropped to the outer nthi so that not even "crow's-feet" were visible"), perceivers were amazgly still able to accurately intify a man as beg gay. Curly, most of the participants unrtimated their abily to intify gay fac om the featur alone.

That is to say, people seem to have honed and librated their gaydar whout knowg they've done so. But they also acknowledge that 's impossible to know om the fdgs what exactly is about the facial featur that give gays away.

FACE TO FACE: GAY AND LBIAN CLERGY ON HOLS AND LIFE TOGETHER

I was cur enough about Rule's fdgs to look up "gay face" the Urban Dictnary, a popular Web se that offers rmal, er-ntributed fns of everyday (often crass) saygs. There were several fns of "gay face, " cludg this rogatory doozy:. "A man, ually homosexual, wh a distctly effete facial stcture wh some very specific featur; a strong jawle [sic] that lacks promence, space between the ey that rell people wh down syndrome [sic], and a slopg, long forehead.

LATENT CLASS OF BIDIRECTNAL FACE-TO-FACE AND CYBER INTIMATE PARTNER VLENCE AMONG LBIAN, GAY, AND BISEXUAL EMERGG ADULTS: THE ROLE OF MORY STRSORS

Now, that one's rather silly and sensatnalized—even polilly spect—and there's certaly no scientific evince support of the claims about the "mongoloid" featur of homosexual men's fac. But perhaps there is a kernel of tth to another fn of "gay face" the Urban Dictnary:. "Gay men do not differ om straight men the size and shape of any facial feature.

Sce effemate gay men utilize siar facial exprsns as women, they velop female agg and mcle ntractn patterns their face. For example, gay face clus tightns around the mouth om pursg the lips, a facial exprsn mon to gay men and women—but not to heterosexual men. Also, gay men are more emotnally exprsive, leadg to a general 'tightns' and mcular activatn throughout the entire face.

Gay face clus an eye exprsn that is both surprised-lookg and predatory.

FACIAL HTS SHARPEN PEOPLE'S 'GAYDAR'

There is often a slightly tan and/or leathery look to the sk, pecially among olr gay men. Lbians also have a versn of gay face that emulat the facial mcular age patterns of straight men. For example, the send experiment, participants uld still ferret out the gay face when shown the eye regn sans eyebrows and cropped to the outer nthi.

In addn, ntrary to this urban fn, there may ed be subtle, yet prently unknown, differenc between gay and straight fac.

(For example, one of my PhD stunts, David Harnn-Warwick, has a sual hunch that gay men may have sharper, clearer iris than straight men. It was only a few years ago that rearchers disvered that, unlike straight men, gay men tend to have hair whorl patterns that n a unterclockwise directn.

STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY AND STOCK FOOTAGEALL IMAGE TYPALL IMAGE TYPPHOTOGRAPHSILLTRATNCLIP ARTVECTOR ONLYA GAY UPLE FACE TO FACE STOCK IMAGE

Image source, Stanford UniversyImage ptn, The study created pose fac judged most and least likely to belong to homosexualsA facial regnn experiment that claims to be able to distguish between gay and heterosexual people has sparked a row between s creators and two leadg LGBT rights Stanford Universy study claims s software regnis facial featur relatg to sexual orientatn that are not perceived by human work has been acced of beg "dangero" and "junk science" the scientists volved say the are "knee-jerk" reactns. Details of the peer-reviewed project are due to be published the Journal of Personaly and Social jawsFor their study, the rearchers traed an algorhm g the photos of more than 14, 000 whe Amerins taken om a datg ed between one and five of each person's pictur and took people's sexualy as self-reported on the datg rearchers said the rultg software appeared to be able to distguish between gay and heterosexual men and women. In one tt, when the algorhm was prented wh two photos where one picture was fely of a gay man and the other heterosexual, was able to terme which was which 81% of the women, the figure was 71%.