Inferenc About Sexual Orientatn: The Role of Stereotyp, Fac, and The Gaydar Myth - PMC

Contents:

• FACIAL HTS SHARPEN PEOPLE'S 'GAYDAR'
• GAY AND STRAIGHT MEN MAY HAVE DIFFERENT FACIAL SHAP, NEW STUDY SUGGTS
• ROW OVER AI THAT 'INTIFI GAY FAC'
• INFERENC ABOUT SEXUAL ORIENTATN: THE ROLE OF STEREOTYP, FAC, AND THE GAYDAR MYTH
• SCIENTISTS DISVER SHAPE DIFFERENC BETWEEN FAC OF GAY AND STRAIGHT MEN
• GAY PEOPLE LOOK DIFFERENT, WALK DIFFERENT THAN STRAIGHT PEOPLE
• GAY MEN LIKE MANLY FAC, WHILE STRAIGHT PREFER FEME
• 'I WAS SHOCKED WAS SO EASY': ​MEET THE PROFSOR WHO SAYS FACIAL REGNN ​​N TELL IF YOU'RE GAY
• GAY OR STRAIGHT?
• BRAS OF GAY PEOPLE REMBLE THOSE OF STRAIGHT PEOPLE OF OPPOSE SEX
• GAY MEN PREFER MASCULE-FACED MEN, STUDY SUGGTS

FACIAL HTS SHARPEN PEOPLE'S 'GAYDAR'

People n judge wh surprisg accuracy whether someone is gay or straight — even when they're lookg at a black-and-whe photograph, cropped of hair and intifyg marks, and prented upsi fdgs om a Universy of Washgton study suggt people e a batn of clu om dividual facial featur and om the way those featur f together to make snap judgments about sexual orientatn, said rearcher Joshua Tabak, a graduate stunt psychology.

But even upsi down, people are good at procsg dividual facial and his -thor exploed this quirk of the bra by prentg photographs of 111 gay men, 122 straight men, 87 gay women and 93 straight women to 129 stunt volunteers. That suggts both facial featur (which n be procsed upsi-down and right-si-up photos) and facial nfiguratn provi hts to orientatn, the rearchers report Wednday (May 16) the journal PLoS remas to be seen how or if people e "gaydar" real life, when they have more to go on than a glimpse of a photograph, Tabak said. Th, our rults showed that differenc facial morphology of homosexual and heterosexual men do not simply mirror variatn femy, and the stereotypic associatn of feme lookg men as homosexual may nfound judgments of sexual orientatn.

GAY AND STRAIGHT MEN MAY HAVE DIFFERENT FACIAL SHAP, NEW STUDY SUGGTS

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. "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. 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.

ROW OVER AI THAT 'INTIFI GAY FAC'

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.

"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. Sign up for a full digt of all the bt opns of the week our Voic Dispatch emailSign up to our ee weekly Voic newsletterA new study analysg the facial differenc between homosexual and heterosexual men has found "signifint morphologil differenc". A study nducted by rearchers om the Center for Theoretil Study at Charl Universy Prague and The Amy of Scienc of the Czech Republic examed the possible differenc facial shape between homosexual and heterosexual dividuals and found "signifint" shape differenc fac of heterosexual and homosexual rults found that homosexual men were rated as more stereotypilly 'mascule' than heterosexual men, which they said unrmed stereotypil notns of gay men as more feme the first part of their study, rearchers looked at the morphologil differenc between gay and straight the send part, the team looked at whether an dividual's sexual orientatn n be rrectly termed solely based on facial featur.

The team, led by Jarka Valentova, reced 40 gay and 40 straight whe, Czech men for the first study and 33 gay and 33 straight men aged their early 20s for the pictur were taken of the men the first study g a Canon mera. Homosexual men showed relatively wir and shorter fac, smaller and shorter nos, and rather massive and more round jaws, "rultg a mosaic of both feme and mascule featur", the thors of the study female and 40 male stunts om Charl Universy were then asked to rate the sexual orientatn of the 66 participants the send study by rankg their masculy or femy on a sle on one to seven. One dited very mascule and seven dited very face shap of homosexual men were emed more mascule on this sle, and raters were unable to rrectly intify each participants sexual orientatn jt om lookg at their face.

INFERENC ABOUT SEXUAL ORIENTATN: THE ROLE OF STEREOTYP, FAC, AND THE GAYDAR MYTH

The fact that we have found some signifint morphologil differenc between homosexual and heterosexual men do not mean that any of the groups is easily regnizable on the street (and our Study 2 actually shows that 's not that easy to gus anyone's sexual orientatn whout knowg ), or that anythg like that should be done (like potg on people wh our illtratns and gusg who is who). ”She add that the study would need be replited wh different ethnic groups and bigger sample siz orr to strengthen s thors nclud: "Our rults showed that differenc facial morphology of homosexual and heterosexual men do not simply mirror variatn femy, and the stereotypic associatn of feme lookg men as homosexual may nfound judgments of sexual orientatn. 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.

SCIENTISTS DISVER SHAPE DIFFERENC BETWEEN FAC OF GAY AND STRAIGHT MEN

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%.

"But their software did not perform as well other suatns, cludg a tt which was given photos of 70 gay men and 930 heterosexual asked to pick 100 men "most likely to be gay" missed 23 of s summary of the study, the Enomist - which was first to report the rearch - poted to several "limatns" cludg a ncentratn on whe Amerins and the e of datg se pictur, which were "likely to be particularly revealg of sexual orientatn".

GAY PEOPLE LOOK DIFFERENT, WALK DIFFERENT THAN STRAIGHT PEOPLE

"This rearch isn't science or news, but 's a scriptn of bety standards on datg s that ignor huge segments of the LGBTQ (lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr and queer/qutng) muny, cludg people of lour, transgenr people, olr dividuals, and other LGBTQ people who don't want to post photos on datg s, " said Jim Halloran, chief digal officer of Glaad, a media-monorg body. "The 'subtle' differenc uld be a nsequence of gay and straight people choosg to portray themselv systematilly different ways, rather than differenc facial appearance self, " said Prof Benedict Jon, who ns the Face Rearch Lab at the Universy of was also important, he said, for the technil tails of the analysis algorhm to be published to see if they stood up to rmed cricism. Published fal eded form as:PMCID: PMC4731319NIHMSID: NIHMS706356AbstractIn the prent work, we vtigate the pop cultural ia that people have a sixth sense, lled “gaydar, ” to tect who is gay.

GAY MEN LIKE MANLY FAC, WHILE STRAIGHT PREFER FEME

Furthermore, the folk ncept of gaydar serv as a legimizg myth: Compared to a ntrol group, people stereotyped more when led to believe gaydar, whereas people stereotyped ls when told gaydar is an alternate label for stereotypg. G., Allport, 1954; Cox & Deve, 2014; Dotsch, Wigbold, & van Knippenberg, 2011), but Sefeld’s observatn also reflects a broar cultural notn that people believe they have a special abily to terme who is gay or lbian.

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

In popular culture, this special abily has been referred to as “gaydar, ” a kd of sixth sense or tun that uniquely rms orientatn judgments (Bronski, Pellegri, & Ami, 2013; Rter, 2002; Shelp, 2002). Siar to the notn of “gaydar” as a special tun for tectg gay people, stereotyp often operate unr the guise of an tun that aids quick judgments about others (Pettigrew, 1979; Uhlmann & Cohen, 2007).

Specifilly, the prent work we tted whether the gaydar myth perpetuat the e of gay stereotyp by givg the stereotypg procs a more socially and personally acceptable is important to note that the term “myth” self do not dite tth or falsy; merely suggts that the ia— this se, the ia that people have gaydar—is wily known and believed by many as a self-apparent tth (Pratto et al., 1994). Lastly, we addrs issu of judgment accuracy, and lay out why neher stereotyp nor face cu are likely to give rise to pragmatilly accurate ferenc about and Stereotyp as Cu to OrientatnAcrdg to some recent work, gay and straight men’s fac, and lbian and straight women’s fac, are distct visibly perceptible ways that n be ed by perceivers to accurately intify the orientatn of others (e.

Rule and lleagu argue that this procs is tomatilly activated (Rule, Macrae, & Ambady, 2009) and that occurs across cultur (Rule, Ishii, Ambady, Rosen, & Hallett, 2011) alternative acunt of stereotype-based gaydar is more nsistent wh Sefeld’s observatn and suggts that social stereotyp play a cril role perceivers’ orientatn ferenc.

GAY OR STRAIGHT?

Ined, we suggt that addn to the classilly-emphasized functns of stereotyp culture, such as jtifyg prejudice and opprsn (Deve & Sherman, 1992; Pratto et al., 1994; Riggs, 1987), stereotyp about gays and lbians serve a tegorizatn functn (see also Rso, 1987).

BRAS OF GAY PEOPLE REMBLE THOSE OF STRAIGHT PEOPLE OF OPPOSE SEX

G., gay/lbian inty, same-sex attractn) are not highly visible, gay and lbian stereotyp veloped—and persist— culture specifilly to create a set of highly visible cu that make seem that the social groups are visibly intifiable.

Ined, an abundance of self-report, rrelatnal, and experimental evince has shown that people rely on stereotypic attribut, such as fashn, hairstyle, or femy/masculy, to make judgments about orientatn (self-report: Matthews & Hill, 2011; Shelp, 2002; rrelatnal: Ambady, Hallahan, & Conner, 1999; Freeman, Johnson, Ambady, & Rule, 2010, Studi 2 & 3; Gd, 1994; Johnson, Gill, Reichman, & Tassary, 2007, Study 3; Rieger et al., 2010; Smyth, Jabs, & Rogers, 2003; Van Borsel, & Van Putte, 2014; experimental: Cox & Deve, 2014; Dotsch et al., 2011, Study 3; Freeman et al., 2010, Study 1; Johnson et al., 2007, Studi 1 & 2) have speculated that the face-based gaydar discsed earlier may self reflect a form of stereotypg (Freeman et al., 2010, p. Participants therefore judged a mix of six typ of fict target men (men nstcted wh a gay man’s picture and a gay-stereotypic statement, men nstcted wh a gay man’s picture and a stereotype-ntral statement, etc.

GAY MEN PREFER MASCULE-FACED MEN, STUDY SUGGTS

Bee retag this difference qualy uld have created untend systematic variance participants’ judgments, we selected 21 pairs of gay and straight pictur that were matched by their mean qualy ratgs.

Thirty-six unrgraduat (after droppg 1 participant who rpond wh the midpot for every em) rated the statements a random orr on a 7-pot Likert sle (1 = very gay, 4 = neher gay nor straight, 7 = very straight). We ed the ratgs to choose the statements, selectg statements that relayed rmatn likely to be found on an onle social workg profile, to f our ver story (see all chosen statements Table 1) 1Gay-Stereotypic, Stereotype Ntral, and Straight-Stereotypic StatementsStatementMSDStatementMSDStatementMSDGay-Stereotypic3. Participants read on the puter screen that they were participatg a study on terpersonal perceptn and that we “retrieved pictur of real Gay and Straight men and rmatn about them om their onle profil.