'I was shocked was so easy': ​meet the profsor who says facial regnn ​​n tell if you're gay | Artificial telligence (AI) | The Guardian

Contents:

• GAY AND STRAIGHT MEN MAY HAVE DIFFERENT FACIAL SHAP, NEW STUDY SUGGTS
• THIS PSYCHOLOGIST’S “GAYDAR” REARCH MAK UNFORTABLE. THAT’S THE POT.
• 'I WAS SHOCKED WAS SO EASY': ​MEET THE PROFSOR WHO SAYS FACIAL REGNN ​​N TELL IF YOU'RE GAY
• THE FAMO AI GAYDAR STUDY WAS REPEATED – AND, NO, N'T TELL IF YOU'RE STRAIGHT OR NOT JT OM YOUR FACE
• LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, TRANSGENR, AND QUEER MUNY
• PHYSIL, BEHAVRAL, AND PSYCHOLOGIL TRAS OF GAY MEN INTIFYG AS BEARS
• FACIAL HTS SHARPEN PEOPLE'S 'GAYDAR'

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. Fdgs om a recent study published the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, however, suggt I may be unrtimatg my gaydar abili.

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.

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

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

But they also acknowledge that 's impossible to know om the fdgs what exactly is about the facial featur that give gays away. 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. "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.

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

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. 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. 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.

THE FAMO AI GAYDAR STUDY WAS REPEATED – AND, NO, N'T TELL IF YOU'RE STRAIGHT OR NOT JT OM YOUR FACE

(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. 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.

LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, TRANSGENR, AND QUEER MUNY

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. When choosg between a pair of photos, the rultg program accurately intified a gay man 81 percent of the time and a gay woman 71 percent of the time.

PHYSIL, BEHAVRAL, AND PSYCHOLOGIL TRAS OF GAY MEN INTIFYG AS BEARS

More ntroversially, Kosski and Wang’s paper claimed that the program based s cisn on differenc facial stcture; that gay men’s fac were more feme and lbian women’s fac were more mascule.

A smart person wh a puter and accs to the ter n judge sexual orientatn of anyone the world, or lns of people simultaneoly wh very ltle effort, which mak liv of homophob and opprsive regim jt a ty b more easy. 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.

FACIAL HTS SHARPEN PEOPLE'S 'GAYDAR'

“I was jt shocked to disver that is so easy for an algorhm to distguish between gay and straight people, ” Kosski tells me. ’ 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.