Facial Hts Sharpen People's 'Gaydar' | Sexual Orientatn | Live Science

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.

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.

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

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.

ROW OVER AI THAT 'INTIFI GAY FAC'

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.

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.

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

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%. "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". "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.

SCIENTISTS DISVER SHAPE DIFFERENC BETWEEN FAC OF GAY AND STRAIGHT MEN

"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. 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.

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).

GAY PEOPLE LOOK DIFFERENT, WALK DIFFERENT THAN STRAIGHT PEOPLE

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. 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).

GAY MEN LIKE MANLY FAC, WHILE STRAIGHT PREFER FEME

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.

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.

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

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. The data and experimental materials om this article are available publicly at 2Means and standard viatns for Studi 1-5Study 1AStudy 1BStatementsGay PicsStraight PicsAll PicsGay PicsStraight PicsAll PicsGay-Stereotypic57%(28.

To explore this possibily, we nducted Studi 2A (fac) and 2B (fac and hairstyl) g pictur that retaed the picture qualy difference we found between gay and straight men’s datg profile pictur onle.

GAY OR STRAIGHT?

Picture qualy mediatn analys The prent analys ed three variabl: the orientatn of the pictured man (straight = 0, gay = 1), each picture’s mean gay tegorizatn rate, and each picture’s mean qualy ratg. Although Study 2 replited prr monstratns of face-based gaydar, our ternal analys revealed that this effect was driven by picture qualy differenc, not facial differenc between gay and straight men. For both male (Study 3) and female (Study 4) targets, perceivers uld not distguish orientatn om the pictur when the stimuli have been matched for appears that “face-based” gaydar aris as an artifact of the qualy of the datg webse pictur and that orientatn is not visible om the face, for male targets at least.

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

To plete our asssment of purportedly “face-based” gaydar, Study 4 we tted whether a picture qualy nfound might drive this effect for female targets as 4StimuliWe llected pictur of self-intified straight (n = 70) and lbian women (n = 70) and cropped them, followg the procre reported Study 1 (see also Rule et al., 2009).

Given that female targets show this pattern as well, we favor stead a mory stat explanatn—bee lbian women and gay men are small mory groups, their datg pools are much smaller than those of their straight unterparts. If te physgnomic face differenc existed between straights and lbians/gays, qualy matchg the stimuli would be unlikely to wash them out (see also Todorov & Porter, 2014) gaydar myth We return now to our exploratn of whether the folk ncept of “gaydar” serv the role of a legimizg myth (Pratto et al., 1994). We tted our specific proposal that the gaydar myth perpetuat stereotypg to fer orientatn Study 5We manipulated participants’ belief gaydar before they pleted the stereotypg tegorizatn task om Studi 1B and 2B.

If the ia of gaydar serv the functn of a legimizg myth, then thentitg the gaydar myth by tellg participants that “gaydar is real” should crease gay stereotypg relative to the ntrol group, and dispellg the gaydar myth by tellg participants that “gaydar is stereotypg” should crease stereotypg relative to the ntrol group. In other words, pared to the ntrol participants, participants the “Gaydar is Real” ndn will be more likely, and participants the “Gaydar is Stereotypg” ndn will be ls likely, to gus that fictnal men scribed wh gay-stereotypic statements are gay. MethodParticipants and sign In our laboratory, 233 unrgraduate participants (162 female, 198 Whe, 225 straight) were randomly assigned to one of the three Gaydar Belief ndns (Gaydar is Real n = 78, Control n = 76, Gaydar is Stereotypg n = 79).

GAY MEN PREFER MASCULE-FACED MEN, STUDY SUGGTS

Procre After troducg the study, the “Gaydar is Real” ndn, the experimenter said, “Studi like this have shown that ‘gaydar, ’ the abily to sense whether a person is gay, is a real perceptual abily. Dispellg the gaydar myth by intifyg gaydar as a stereotypg procs, however, unrmed reliance on stereotypic cu to fer orientatn: Participants the “Gaydar is Stereotypg” ndn were equally likely to gus that gay-stereotypic men were gay or straight, t (78) = 0. After beg told that gaydar is real, participants gused that gay-stereotypic men were gay much more often than straight, and this difference was much larger than for participants the ntrol group.

The send is a base rate fallacy, which people wrongly ignore base rate rmatn (Kahneman & Tversky, 1973) illtrate, suppose the stereotype that gay men like shoppg is highly accurate: 100% of gay men and only 10% of straight men enjoy shoppg. Th, even if gay men are ten tim more likely to like shoppg, men who like shoppg are still twice as likely to be straight as to be gay, bee straight men outnumber gay men 19 to 1 (see Figure 4). G., gay men posss attribute X), as the top panel, mt be adjted for the base rate of gay men the populatn (middle panel), before we n timate the accuracy of the nverse Attribute → Group stereotype (e.

Mathematilly, orr for a stereotype, or any cue, to yield higher-than-chance accuracy about a target beg gay, gay men mt be over 20 tim more likely to posss that characteristic than straight men. The sorts of rearch signs nnot, however, rm our unrstandg of whether people n accurately intify who is gay or lbian daily life, unls the sign has real-world base rat built to (for extend versns of this argument, see Olivola & Todorov, 2010 and Plörl, 2014). Further Implitns of The Gaydar Myth and Stereotypg to Infer OrientatnThe very notn of gaydar would require that gay men and lbians each posss some mon sence that differentiat them om their straight unterparts and mak their orientatn perceptible.