magazine issue 7 2017 / Issue 34

Straight talk about gaydar: How do individuals guess others’ sexual orientation?

• written by Fabio Fasoli & Peter Hegarty
• edited by Julia Rohrer

Besides the fact that gaydar may be accurate or not, how does it happen? What information do we draw on when we apply gaydar to others? The first thing to keep in mind is semantic—it is no accident that this ability is called gaydar and not straightdar. Lick and Johnson (2016) have recently reported studies demonstrating that gaydar is guided by a tendency to categorize individuals as straight first, and only to afterwards categorize them as gay. A similar bias towards presuming people are straight until proven gay was found in studies of auditory gaydar cues (Sulpizio et al., 2015). Most speakers were categorized as straight, while judgments that speakers were gay were characterized by uncertainty and “last minute” judgments. In Lick and Johnson’s studies, the participants seemed to assume that the experimenters would show them about 75% straight faces and 25% gay faces. Cultural scholars have long discussed heteronormativity; the belief system that assumes everyone is – or should be – straight (Rich, 1980; Warner, 1991). This assumption is the backdrop against which gaydar is applied, as when Bender corrects Leela’s heterosexual assumption, for example. However, this heterosexual assumption has not always informed the design of studies testing the accuracy of gaydar; most of these studies ask participants to make judgments about people who have been sampled such that 50% of them are gay and 50% straight. If Leela had been looking for dates in that sort of bar, then Bender’s gaydar judgment might have seemed much less insightful to her.

What information leads people to update their prior assumption that someone is straight? In reality, facial features, movements and speech styles all vary among people of diverse sexualities, making gaydar judgments very difficult to justify, sustain, or use effectively (see Podesva, Roberts, & Campbell-Kibler, 2001). In studies of visual and auditory gaydar, judgments that a person is homosexual are driven most consistently by the conclusion that their characteristics deviate strongly from the norm for their gender. Gender expression is very much linked with societal perceptions of what makes individuals masculine or feminine. Gaydar depends, often, upon the common stereotype that gay men are somewhat similar to straight women, and lesbian women are somewhat similar to straight men (Blashill & Powlishta, 2009; Kite & Deaux, 1987). Judgments of a person’s masculinity or femininity and their sexual orientation are correlated (Lyons, Lynch, Brewer, & Bruno, 2014; Munson, 2007; Valentova & Havlíček, 2013). In studies where participants rate the masculinity and femininity of gay/lesbian and straight people, those who are considered most gender atypical are most likely to be categorized as lesbian or gay (Rieger, Leinsenmeier, Gygax, Garcia, & Bailey, 2010). People are rated as gay or lesbian more often when their faces (Freeman, Johnson, Ambady, & Rule, 2010), voices (Munson, 2007) or body movements (Johnson, Gill, Reichman, & Tassinary, 2007) are consistent with this gender-inversion stereotype. That is, for instance, when a man has a feminine-sounding voice or a hip sway, or a woman has a masculine-sounding voice, short hair, or a tubular body moving with shoulder swagger, then gaydar is activated. Other, more specific stereotypes, also matter. Individuals who speak with a formal and clear speech style or “lisp” are more likely to be perceived as gay-sounding (Babel & Johnson, 2006; Mack & Munson, 2012; Munson, McDonald, DeBoe, & White, 2006; Smyth, Jacobs, & Rogers, 2003).

In describing gaydar as a consequence of gender-based inferences, perhaps we have made you feel less comfortable about using it? Is there something wrong about applying gaydar to strangers, as people are asked to do in these experiments, and as Bender did in the bar? Gaydar may be used commonly, but not everyone uses it equally. For instance, liberals are less likely to use gender stereotyping when making gaydar judgments than conservatives are (Stern, West, Jost, & Rule, 2013).

Indeed, telling people that gaydar exists and works pretty well – hence supporting and legitimizing gaydar – leads people to rely on gaydar more than telling them that gaydar depends on inaccurate stereotypes (Cox, Devine, Bischmann, & Hyde, 2016). Bender’s gaydar seems wise to gay culture, and in reality, heterosexual men who report to have more negative attitudes toward gay men are the ones who are less accurate in judging sexual orientation (Rule et al., 2015). But at the same time, these men are more willing to label other men as gay and more confident about their judgments (Brewer & Lyons, 2016). Similarly, those people who interact less and know fewer gay people personally believe themselves to have more accurate gaydar, and are more confident in guessing others’ sexuality (Brambilla, Riva & Rule, 2013). Hence, it is possible that more prejudiced individuals and those who are more ignorant of real gay and lesbian people may rely more on gender atypicality when guessing others’ sexual orientation (see Stern, West, & Rule, 2015; Lick & Johnson, 2016 for this process).