No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
The relationship between anti-gay prejudice and the categorization of sexual orientation
Abstract
A relatively large literature has demonstrated that sexual orientation can be judged accurately from a variety of minimal cues, including facial appearance. Untested in this work, however, is the influence that individual differences in prejudice against gays and lesbians may exert upon perceivers’ judgments. Here, we report the results of a meta-analysis of 23 unpublished studies testing the relationship between anti-gay bias and the categorization of sexual orientation from faces. Aggregating data from multiple measures of bias using a variety of methods in three different countries over a period of 8 years, we found a small but significant negative relationship between accuracy and prejudice that was homogeneous across the samples tested. Thus, individuals reporting higher levels of anti-gay bias appear to be less accurate judges of sexual orientation.
... Finally, our third goal was to assess whether explicit trait evaluations toward homosexual targets differentiate categorization patterns. Although a meta-analysis (Rule et al., 2015) reported a negative correlation between accurate perception of sexual orientation and self-reported prejudice against homosexual individuals, it is unclear whether the same relationship would appear when targets feature nothing but verbal sexual orientation cues. ...
... Accordingly, it seems reasonable to infer that the encoding of sexual orientation is not related to explicit stigmatization tendencies toward homosexual individuals in the current study. Although a meta-analysis (Rule et al., 2015) confirmed a small but significant negative correlation between anti-homosexual prejudice and judgment performance of sexual orientation, both the strength (e.g., Brewer & Lyons, 2017) and the direction (e.g., Walker & Antaki, 1986) of this association varied based on measures (e.g., self-report vs. implicit) and information channels (e.g., facial features vs. movement) used in the studies. In the present study, we intended to measure homonegativity toward target individuals and drew upon evaluative words, which was quite different from the prevalent instruments in the literature mostly designed to measure anti-homosexuality bias in general (see Rule et al., 2015, for a collection of instruments). ...
... Although a meta-analysis (Rule et al., 2015) confirmed a small but significant negative correlation between anti-homosexual prejudice and judgment performance of sexual orientation, both the strength (e.g., Brewer & Lyons, 2017) and the direction (e.g., Walker & Antaki, 1986) of this association varied based on measures (e.g., self-report vs. implicit) and information channels (e.g., facial features vs. movement) used in the studies. In the present study, we intended to measure homonegativity toward target individuals and drew upon evaluative words, which was quite different from the prevalent instruments in the literature mostly designed to measure anti-homosexuality bias in general (see Rule et al., 2015, for a collection of instruments). Unlike other studies, our objective was to find out whether the categorization of sexual orientation is associated with the negative attributions toward identical target stimuli (homosexual clients), not with the general negativity about homosexual individuals or homosexuality. ...
Even though an abundant amount of research has demonstrated the ability to identify others' sexual orientation via minimal nonverbal cues, few studies, if any, have investigated the role of verbal information sources on the social cognition of sexual orientation. Herein, we aimed to explore whether verbal cues (gendered names) are adequate for triggering social categorization processes. Additionally, whether participant gender, target gender, and attributions toward homosexual targets differentiate sexual orientation-based categorization was examined. Our data showed that (1) participants categorized targets based on sexual orientation via semantic information, (2) female participants' categorization tendencies were marginally stronger than the males', and (3) negative attributions toward homosexual targets did not influence the categorization levels. Accordingly, the results contribute to the existing literature indicating the automatic detection of sexual orientation and clarify that perceivers not only use numerous nonverbal sources to extract categorical information about sexual orientation but also verbal cues.
... Given these associations, it stands to reason that negative attitudes toward gay men (i.e., homophobia) could also influence women's perception of sexual orientation. Some research has examined this association, finding that greater homophobia lowers accuracy in detecting male sexual orientation (Brewer & Lyons, 2017;Rule et al., 2015). Individual variation in sociosexuality and homophobia may be related to women's capacity to detect male sexual orientation, and this ability more broadly helps women avoid investing in potential mates who harbor no attraction to women (i.e., gay men). ...
... The first was to directly replicate women's ability to detect male sexual orientation in a large sample, predicting that they would do so better than chance (e.g., . Past research has found that negative attitudes toward gay men are associated with lower accuracy in sexual orientation ratings (Brewer & Lyons, 2017;Rule et al., 2015), so we predicted the same here. Additionally, we predicted that women's sociosexuality would positively relate to accurate detection of male sexual orientation. ...
... The correlation and regression analyses accord with this interpretation, noting that age is positively related to accuracy (but see Tskhay et al., 2016). This association may reflect more lifetime opportunities to interact with gay men, from which women can then make face-based inferences about sexual orientation (e.g., Rule et al., 2015). This ability need not be conscious, as previous research has shown that perceivers' objective accuracy does not relate to their perceived accuracy (Rule et al., 2008, Study 4) and that accuracy is maintained even for faces viewed for a fraction of a second . ...
Previous research has demonstrated that women can correctly distinguish between gay and heterosexual men’s faces significantly better than chance. This ability appears to be heightened during the most fertile portion of their ovulatory cycle. Here, we sought to replicate and extend these findings in a large sample of undergraduate women (N = 1960). Although women correctly identified men’s sexual orientation significantly better than chance (62% average accuracy), a subsample of naturally cycling women (n = 426) did not judge men’s sexual orientation from faces more accurately when in the fertile phase of their ovulatory cycle. These results further replicate the visibility of male sexual orientation, but do not show that this ability has strong links to estimated fertility.
... Despite the lack of minority-group advantage in judging sexual attraction, we nonetheless observed some differences between heterosexual and nonheterosexual participants in their categorizations of targets' sexual orientation. Specifically, nonheterosexual perceivers were somewhat more willing, compared to heterosexual perceivers, to rate targets as own-gender attracted in Study 1 and to categorize women's faces as "not straight" in Study 2. This aligns with studies showing that sexual minority perceivers and individuals from cultures with more accepting attitudes towards nonheterosexual behavior are more likely to categorize targets as gay (Brewer & Lyons, 2016;Rule et al., 2007;Rule et al., 2011). Future research could explore whether this categorization threshold varies according to other individual differences, such as political affiliation or homophobic attitudes (see Brewer & Lyons, 2017;Rule et al., 2015). ...
... Specifically, nonheterosexual perceivers were somewhat more willing, compared to heterosexual perceivers, to rate targets as own-gender attracted in Study 1 and to categorize women's faces as "not straight" in Study 2. This aligns with studies showing that sexual minority perceivers and individuals from cultures with more accepting attitudes towards nonheterosexual behavior are more likely to categorize targets as gay (Brewer & Lyons, 2016;Rule et al., 2007;Rule et al., 2011). Future research could explore whether this categorization threshold varies according to other individual differences, such as political affiliation or homophobic attitudes (see Brewer & Lyons, 2017;Rule et al., 2015). Furthermore, among nonheterosexual perceivers, women categorized as "not straight" reported less own-gender attraction than men categorized as "not straight," indicating these participants' greater inclination to categorize women, compared to men, as nonheterosexual. ...
... Likewise, targets and perceivers here originated primarily from Western nations, leaving the question of whether sexual attraction may be perceived similarly across cultures. Previous work finds cross-cultural consensus in categorizations of sexual orientation from facial appearance, but also cultural differences in accuracy and response bias (Rule et al., 2011), indicating that there may be cultural variations in sexual attraction perception. It furthermore remains possible that perceivers from cultures less accepting of nonheterosexuality might show a more logistic pattern in their perceptions of sexual orientation because the intergroup lines may be more tightly policed. ...
Although people can categorize others’ sexual orientation (e.g., gay/lesbian vs. straight) from their facial appearance, not everyone defines their sexual orientation categorically. Indeed, many individuals within the same sexual orientation category experience different degrees of own‐ and other‐gender attraction. Moving beyond sexual orientation categories, we found that perceivers’ judgments of individuals’ sexual attraction correlated with those individuals’ self‐reported degrees of attraction to women and men. Similar to past work on sexual orientation categories, facial affect cued sexual attraction in men whereas gender typicality cued sexual attraction in women. Moreover, asking participants to categorize the targets as ‘not straight’ versus ‘straight’ revealed a linear pattern distinct from the discrete category thresholds typical of other social groups (e.g., race). Facial appearance thus reveals nuances in sexual attraction that support sexual orientation categorizations. These findings refine understanding of social categorization more broadly.
... predicts SO categorization and accuracy (Brewer & Lyons, 2017;Rule et al., 2015), but not how essentialist beliefs about SO cues relate to prejudice and stigma. As Gertler and Thorpe (2014) documentary makes clear, belief in auditory gaydar presumes voice discreteness; the belief that LG and heterosexual speakers have categorically different voices. ...
... More prejudiced heterosexuals endorse the beliefs that SO is discrete and that it is not immutable (Hegarty, 2020), and believe in their own gaydar to a greater extent (Brewer & Lyons, 2016;Rule et al., 2015). Listeners who perceive that the speakers are in control of their voices, and can thus emphasize or conceal their stigmatized identity, stigmatize speakers more strongly (Gluszek & Dovidio, 2010). ...
... Building on studies showing that heterosexuals discriminate against LG-sounding speakers (Fasoli et al., 2017;Fasoli & Hegarty, 2020), and that higher prejudice predicts lower gaydar accuracy (Brewer & Lyons, 2016;Rule et al., 2015), we demonstrated that heterosexuals who are most likely to stigmatize LG-sounding others believe that LG people's vocal differences are deep-rooted and that LG people sometimes modify their voices to conceal or to emphasize their SO. Voice essentialist beliefs may both engender heterosexuals' avoidance of LG-sounding people and justify their prejudice against people that sound LG. ...
Voice‐based sexual orientation (SO) judgements can prompt group‐based discrimination. However, the relationships between stigmatization and essentialist beliefs about vocal cues to SO have not been researched. Two studies examined heterosexuals’ and gay men’s and lesbian women’s essentialist beliefs about voice as a cue of SO to uncover essentialist beliefs’ role in the perpetration and experience of stigma. In Study 1 (N = 363), heterosexual participants believed voice was a better cue to SO for men than for women, and participants’ belief in the discreteness, immutability, and controllability of ‘gay‐sounding’ voices was correlated with higher avoidant discrimination towards gay‐sounding men. In Study 2 (N = 147), endorsement of essentialist beliefs about voice as a SO cue was associated with self‐perceptions of sounding gay amongst gay men and lesbians. Sexual minority participants, especially gay men, who believed that they sounded gay reported more anticipation of rejection and engaged in vigilance in response. Essentialist beliefs about vocal cues to SO are relevant to explaining both the perpetration of stigma by heterosexuals and the experience of stigma for lesbians and gay men.
... Given the nested structure of our data and the uncertainty regarding the true effect size, we did not conduct a priori power analyses. We based sample size considerations on prior sexual orientation categorization judgment work, and note that we recruited a sample size similar to or exceeding prior research (see Lick & Johnson, 2016;Rule, Tskhay, Brambilla, Riva, Andrzejewski, & Krendl, 2015). For the overall response bias within this sample, sensitivity analysis indicates that our sample size affords 80% power to detect an effect of d ϭ 0.32. ...
... As in Study 1, given the nested structure of our data and the uncertainty regarding the true effect size, we did not conduct a priori power analyses. We based sample size considerations on prior sexual orientation categorization judgment work and note that we recruited a sample size similar to or exceeding prior research (see Lick & Johnson, 2016;Rule et al., 2015). ...
For 70 years, the field of social perception has concluded that perceivers can determine others' social category memberships with remarkable accuracy. However, it has become increasingly clear that accuracy is only part of the story, as social category judgments are often systematically biased toward one category over another. For example, when categorizing sexual orientation, perceivers label others as straight more often than gay. This straight categorization bias is reliable, has an effect size larger than that for accuracy, and is not exclusively driven by the low base rate of sexual minorities in the population, yet we know little about its proximal causes. Here, we argue that one facet of this bias is a motivated reasoning process that avoids applying stigmatizing labels to unknown others. Specifically, we propose that perceivers ascribe heavy consequences to incorrect gay categorizations, compelling them to gather and integrate available information in a manner that favors straight categorizations. Studies 1 and 2 tested the dynamic nature of the bias, exploring decision ambivalence and the real-time accrual of visible evidence about a target throughout the perceptual process using mouse-tracking and diffusion modeling. Studies 3-5 tested motivational determinants for the bias, revealing that perceivers associate high costs with incorrect gay categorizations because those errors put other people in harm's way. Studies 6-9 tested the cognitive mechanisms perceivers engage as they search for information that allows them to avoid costly decision errors. Collectively, these studies provide a new framework for understanding a well-documented but poorly understood response bias in social categorization. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
... Specifically, a glance at a face conveys an impressive amount of information (Sutherland & Young, 2022;Zebrowitz, 2017). Notwithstanding people's ability to infer social category membership (e.g., ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation; Johnson et al., 2015;Rule & Sutherland, 2017;Rule et al., 2015), the face is also perceived as a cue of others' dispositions (Foo et al., 2021;Todorov et al., 2015). In a few milliseconds, people can form a facebased impression of others which, in turn, influences social interactions (e.g., Olivola & Todorov, 2010;Willis & Todorov, 2006). ...
Impressions of others are formed from multiple cues, including facial features, vocal tone, and behavioral descriptions, and may be subject to multimodal updating. Four experiments (N = 803) examined the influence of a target’s face or voice on impression updating. Experiments 1a-1b examined whether behavior-based impressions are susceptible to updating by incongruent information conveyed by the target’s face, voice, or behavior (within-participant manipulation). Both faces and voices updated impressions with comparable strength, but less than behaviors. Experiment 2, contrasting faces and voices only (between-participants manipulation), showed that voices outperformed faces regardless of how impressions were formed (i.e., via behavioral vs. non-behavioral information). Experiment 3 found no difference when comparing faces and voices in a within-participant design and controlling for stimulus attractiveness. Our work highlights the importance of multimodal cues for impression updating and shows that the relative power of faces and voices depends on contextual factors.
... Sin embargo, poco se ha estudiado este fenómeno desde una perspectiva psicoambiental, teniendo en cuenta al entorno físico como un factor fundamental en la construcción de la identidad social. La teoría de estos autores, ha sido un elemento teórico esencial para el estudio de los conflictos intergrupales, específicamente en el estudio del prejuicio, los estereotipos y la discriminación hacia diferentes grupos sociales (Deaux y Martin, 2003;Etchezahar, 2014;Rule at al., 2015). ...
Since the Spanish colonization of Latin America at the end of the 15th century, indigenous people have been displaced from their lands in an extremely violent manner. Currently, people who belong to indigenous communities in Argentina are subject to prejudice and discrimination, because they are perceived as a threat to Argentine social identity. The aim of this article is to analyze theoretically, from a psycho-environmental perspective, those factors that influence the development of blatant and subtle prejudice towards indigenous people in Argentina. For this, the sense of place that indigenous people give to their lands and how it is related to the attachment that they have towards their territory will be considered. In addition, it is argued that these factors are fundamental for the construction of the social identity of indigenous people. Finally, it is proposed that designing and implementing intervention programs that include a psycho-environmental perspective based on historical memory and promotion of social peace can help reduce prejudice and discrimination towards indigenous people.
... Contrary to race and gender, sexual orientation categorization is based on a mere ambiguous process. Sex and race are often easily inferred from visual cues, but there are no evident physical traits that could reliably identify a person as having a particular sexual orientation (Rule et al. 2015). ...
Prior research in the UK and the USA found that heterosexual identity was perceived as more easily compromised than gay identity: a finding dubbed the “Fragile Heterosexuality” effect. However, there is as yet no evidence that this effect occurs outside the USA and UK. With representative samples from Germany ( N = 1236) and Italy ( N = 1249), we investigated the fragile heterosexuality effect using participants’ agreement with gender-neutral statements about the perceived fragility of sexual orientation of others. We found evidence supporting the fragile heterosexuality effect in both countries. We also investigated six possible moderators of the effect. Higher estimates of gay/lesbian population weakened the effect, and higher levels of anti-gay prejudice strengthened the effect. Contact (quantity/quality), right wing authoritarianism, and social dominance orientation did not moderate the effect. These findings contribute to previous literature by highlight that the fragile heterosexuality effect appears across countries of diverse LGBTQ friendliness and languages, and also suggest plausible explanations for the effect.
... In one study, participants judged male targets who had more female-shaped bodies who walked with a "sway" as gay, and women with more male-shaped bodies who walked with a "swagger" as lesbian (Johnson et al., 2007). Heterosexual women and men who bear these cross-gender markers are often erroneously categorized as lesbian or gay, with the most inaccurate judges of others' sexuality having perhaps greater anti-gay bias (Rule et al., 2015). ...
We present an integrated interdisciplinary review of people’s tendency to perceive sexual orientation as a fundamentally gendered phenomenon. We draw from psychology and other disciplines to illustrate that, across cultures and over time, people view and evaluate lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals through how they conform or fail to conform to traditional gender expectations. We divide the review into two sections. The first draws upon historical, anthropological, legal, and qualitative approaches. The second draws upon psychological and sociological quantitative studies. A common thread across these disciplines is that gender and sexual orientation are inseparable constructs in the mind of the everyday social perceiver.
... People spontaneously judge others from their faces (Todorov et al., 2015;Zebrowitz, 2017) and few milliseconds are sufficient to form a face-based impression about the person (Olivola & Todorov, 2010;Willis & Todorov, 2006). From a glance, we can nimbly infer a person's age, gender, ethnicity, feelings, political affiliation, or sexual orientation (e.g., Rule & Sutherland, 2017;Rule et al., 2015), and we can detect other's good or bad dispositions (Todorov et al., 2009(Todorov et al., , 2015. Moreover, face-based impressions can predict a great wealth of social outcomes, such as political voting (Ballew & Todorov, 2007;Olivola & Todorov, 2010) or court decisions (Wilson & Rule, 2015;see Todorov et al., 2015 for a review). ...
Research has shown that faces and voices shape impression formation. Most studies have examined either the impact of faces and voices in isolation or the relative contribution of each source when presented simultaneously. However, only a few studies have questioned whether and how impressions formed via one source can be updated due to incremental information gathered from the alternative source. Yet, cross-modal impression updating is key to shed light on person perception. Thus, we tested whether positive and negative face- and voice-based impressions could be updated by inconsistent cross-modal information. In Experiment 1 (N = 130), we tested whether face-based impressions could be updated by (in)consistent voices. In Experiment 2 (N = 262), we compared face-to-voice and voice-to-face impression updating. In Experiment 3 (N = 242), we favoured a more direct comparison of the two types of stimuli (i.e., the co-occurrence of both cue types when the new information is revealed). Results showed that voices have the greatest updating impact and that the updating effect of faces was halved when voices co-occurred for a second time. We discussed these results as evidence of the dynamical evolution of cross-modal impressions.
... For instance, sex, age and race are immediately perceived because their physical markers tend to be perceptually obvious (Bruce & Young, 2012). Other characteristics such as political orientation, social class or sexual orientation are more difficult to infer as they are perceptually ambiguous (Alaei & Rule, 2016;Rule et al., 2015;Tskhay & Rule, 2013). People also draw conclusions about others' personality characteristics such as competence and trustworthiness based on facial appearance (Hassin & Trope, 2000;Todorov et al., 2015;Zebrowitz & Montepare, 2008).Trustworthiness evaluation is one of the most relevant processes among face-based inferences due to the evolutionary importance of threat detection (Brambilla et al., 2018(Brambilla et al., , 2019b(Brambilla et al., , 2021. ...
The present work investigates pupillary reactions induced by exposure to faces with different levels of trustworthiness. Participants’ (N = 69) pupillary changes were recorded while they viewed white male faces with a neutral expression varying on facial trustworthiness. Results suggest that reward processing and pupil mimicry are relevant mechanisms driving participants’ pupil reactions. However, when including both factors in one statistical model, pupil mimicry seems to be a stronger predictor than reward processing of participants’ pupil dilation. Results are discussed in light of pupillometry evidence.
... In our studies, participants were similar in terms of demographics, but we did not assess listeners' individual differences. Since individuals' endorsement of sexual prejudice 63 or motivations to avoid labelling someone as LG 64 are associated with a stronger straight categorization bias, future research should consider these variables. ...
This research investigates voice-based categorization of speakers' sexual orientation, the so-called ‘auditory gaydar’, while considering stimuli length and the type of measures assessing gaydar judgments. In Study 1 (N = 80), heterosexual individuals listened to gay and heterosexual male speakers in short (single word), medium (single sentence), or long (two sentences) recordings. Next, they guess the speakers’ sexual orientation on a Kinsey-like and binary choice. Participants were overall inaccurate in recognizing gay speakers when gaydar judgments were provided on a binary choice. Gay speakers were rated as more gay on a Kinsey-like scale than their heterosexual counterparts, but only when short and medium recordings were listened to. Study 2 (N = 149) examined gaydar accuracy for both male and female speakers by using the same procedure. Gaydar judgments were overall inaccurate for gay and lesbian speakers. For male speakers, a difference between the perceived sexual orientation of gay and heterosexual speakers emerged when stimuli were long. For female speakers, such a difference occurred only in the short and medium recording conditions. Study 3 (N = 137) examined gaydar judgments for male and female speakers when stimuli length was manipulated as the number of words progressively presented in a sentence: short (article), medium (article + first word), long (sentence) stimulus. Overall, gaydar judgments were inaccurate. Gay and lesbian (vs. heterosexual) speakers tended to be rated as more gay on the Kinsey-like scale in the medium stimulus condition. These findings suggest that gaydar judgments can be influenced by the type of measure and stimuli.
... Limiting the scope of this study to transgender and queer international students is advantageous because the precise nature of prejudice based on sexual orientation might vary across different LGBTQ groups (Cox et al., 2016;Rule et al., 2015). Apart from a look at discrimination against the gender non-conforming identities, we discuss the foreigner identity as an additional disadvantage that queer and transgender international students have addressed in the transition to the labor market. ...
The concept of graduate employability has gained great prominence in international education. However, there still exists a gap in sexual orientation discrimination in graduate employability among transgender and queer (TQ) international students. In our qualitative study investigating graduate employability of transgender and queer students graduating from Australian and Canadian institutions, we have interviewed 14 international graduates with transgender and queer identity regarding their perceptions of sexual orientation and recruitment discrimination at the workplaces. Utilizing intersectionality as a conceptual framework, we have studied employability-related problems that these marginalized students with their foreigner identities have experienced in the labor market. The findings will be around the social, cultural, and political impacts of Canadian and Australian working and recruitment environments on the varying extent of discrimination, namely local attitudes toward queer and transgender international graduates, the manifestation of antidiscrimination laws, and the extent to which employers value stereotypically male heterosexual personality traits.
... Limiting the scope of this study to transgender and queer international students is advantageous because the precise nature of prejudice based on sexual orientation might vary across different LGBTQ groups (Cox et al., 2016;Rule et al., 2015). Apart from a look at discrimination against the gender non-conforming identities, we discuss the foreigner identity as an additional disadvantage that queer and transgender international students have addressed in the transition to the labor market. ...
This article examines national strategies on higher education internationalization in three East Asian countries: China, Japan, and South Korea. Specifically, through document analysis of five national educational documents since 2014, it examines what activities of higher education internationalization are underway and, more importantly, how nation states justify them. It finds that the three countries tend to associate internationalization with the countries’ global competitiveness and status. In addition, internationalization in the three countries focuses on regional cooperation, justified by its benefits for economic growth and national security. Drawing on the realist perspective in international relations, this article argues that Internationalization of higher education at the national level in East Asia is instrumentalized to benefit national economic competitiveness and development and political security, while the important aspect of teaching and learning is overlooked.
... These effects are often difficult to detect, especially with limited sample sizes in experimental settings. By including non-significant, as well as threshold-significant studies, in a mini meta-analysis, the overall sample size increases, and therefore, it is more likely to detect small significant effects (e.g., Rule et al., 2015;Young, Goldberg, Rydell, & Hugenberg, 2019). Moreover, the overall effect size obtained from a mini meta-analysis is more robust compared to effect size estimates of single studies. ...
The impact of stories in their ability to shape our view on the world has long been a central topic in communication science and media psychology. While reading a book or watching a movie, we are transported into story worlds and we identify with depicted protagonists. Several studies showed that high levels of transportation lead to greater story-consistent beliefs. Similar effects were found for identification. However, much less is known how and in which direction stories could affect the self. Five experimental studies were conducted and summarized in three manuscripts. Manuscript #1 explored the moderating role of transportation that could shift one’s self-perception towards traits of a depicted story character (assimilation) or away from him/her (contrast). Manuscript #2 focused on downward social comparisons with a protagonist and possible contrast effects on participants’ self-perception in relation to others, their motives and behavior. Thereby, the mediating role of transportation and identification were investigated. Finally, upward social comparison with a protagonist and related emotions (e.g., envy) that mediate possible effects on one’s self perception and behavioral intentions were investigated in manuscript #3. This dissertation project contributes to the literature on stories and the self. Consistent with previous work, assimilation effects were found for highly transported recipients. However, stories might also elicit contrast effects on recipients’ selves and behavioral intentions that are opposite to a depicted character. Extending prior research, there were evidence that transportation and envy are important process variables explaining assimilation vs. contrast effects.
... Studies have suggested that gender nonconformity is a predictor of prejudice against sexual minorities Lick et al., 2015;Rule, Bjornsdottir, Tskhay, & Ambady, 2016) and associated with negative attitudes towards gay and lesbian people (Blashill & Powlishta, 2009a, 2009bLehavot & Lambert, 2007). Perceived gender nonconformity (whether real or not) can lead to negative reactions because people violate role expectations (Gowen & Britt, 2006;Lick et al., 2013Lick et al., , 2015Rule et al., 2015) and make stereotypic inferences about health status such as believing gay sounding men had stereotypically gay or female diseases (e.g. HIV or Anorexia) . ...
There is a growing debate in the research literature and subsequently in the news media and public about the accuracy and utility of “gaydar.” Although many gaydar studies report that people can accurately and quickly guess a person’s sexual orientation without direct knowledge, there are others that suggest gaydar can be inaccurate and stereotype-based. Most recently, research on the use of gaydar in artificial intelligence (Wang & Kosinksi, 2018) sparked a public outcry about the application and production of gaydar research suggesting that the study of gaydar is a high stakes public issue in today’s world. The purpose of this article is to clarify and contribute to this debate by examining the opposing views and expanding the range of questions and interpretations typically addressed in published gaydar studies. The article discusses the conceptual, statistical and analytical issues present in the research literature. The discussion is organized around three central themes: (1) gaydar is conceptualized and operationalized in slightly different ways in the literature with minimal discussion about how different conceptualizations might affect the conclusions we draw about gaydar, (2) data analyses tend to emphasize accuracy over error, offer limited reporting and discussion of how accuracy varies, and neglect addressing the meaning of error and (3) some studies validate long held stereotypes about LGBTQ+ and gender nonconforming people with minimal discussion of their potential impact or significance. This article provides a nuanced discussion about the existence and meaning of gaydar in the context of this ongoing debate.
... Recent work has also found that anti-gay bias negatively relates to the accuracy of sexual orientation judgments (Rule, Tskhay, Brambilla, Riva, Andrzejewski, & Krendl, 2015). ...
Although studies have shown that sexual orientation can be judged from faces, this research has not considered how age-related differences in perceivers or targets affect such judgments. In the current work, we evaluated whether accuracy differed among young adults (YA) and older adults (OA) for young and old men’s faces by recruiting a sample of YA and OA in the lab, a community sample of sexual minority men, and a sample of online participants. We found that OA and YA judged sexual orientation with similar accuracy. Perceptions of gender atypicality mediated the difference in judging older and younger targets’ sexual orientation. Although participants used positive affect to correctly discern sexual orientation regardless of target age, perceptions of masculinity were valid only for judgments of YA.
... However, some perceivers are more accurate judges of sexual orientation than others. For example, heterosexual women perceive male sexual orientation more accurately when ovulating or when motivated to look for mates (Rule, Rosen, Slepian, & Ambady, 2011), individuals who are more familiar with gay men are more accurate at judging men's sexual orientation (Brambilla, Riva, & Rule, 2013;Rule, Ambady, Adams, & Macrae, 2007), and people who self-report greater levels of homophobia are typically less accurate at discriminating between gay and straight men and women (Rule et al., 2015). Additionally, some related research has demonstrated that gay men's own sexual role preferences and self-reported masculinity can affect their perception of other gay men's sexual role preferences (Tskhay, Re, & Rule, 2014). ...
Although researchers have explored the perceiver characteristics that make people accurate at identifying others' sexual orientations, characteristics of the targets remain largely unexplored. In the current study, we examined how individual differences in internalized homophobia among gay men can affect perceptions of their sexual orientation by asking 49 individuals to judge the sexual orientations of 78 gay men from photos of their faces. We found that gay men reporting higher levels of internalized homophobia were less likely to have come out of the closet and were, in turn, less likely to be perceived as gay. Thus, internalized homophobia and the concealment of one's sexual minority status can impact perceptions of sexual orientation.
This paper integrates evidence across a range of research programs to make the case that gender nonconformity and sexual orientation are interconnected in a way that reflects a degree of reality. One body of research concerns the accurate judgments of sexual orientation of adult targets based on nonverbal gendered cues, focusing on targets’ spontaneous presentation of the self that includes cues from body shape, movement, the face, and the voice. A second body of research examines the perceived gender atypicality of child targets who later come out as lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB) in adulthood. This research points to growing evidence concerning the reality of gender atypicality for members of the LGB community on the aggregate. The scope of this reality, as well as implications for the LGB community, are discussed.
We are constantly forming impressions about those around us. Social interaction depends on our understanding of interpersonal behavior - assessing one another's personality, emotions, thoughts and feelings, attitudes, deceptiveness, group memberships, and other personal characteristics through facial expressions, body language, voice and spoken language. But how accurate are our impressions and when does such accuracy matter? How is accuracy achieved and are some of us more successful at achieving it than others? This comprehensive overview presents cutting-edge research on this fast-expanding field and will be essential reading for anyone interested in the psychology of interpersonal perception. A wide range of experts in the field explore topics including age and gender effects, psychopathology, culture and ethnicity, workplaces and leadership, clinicians' skills, empathy, meta-perception, and training people to be more accurate in their perceptions of others.
We are constantly forming impressions about those around us. Social interaction depends on our understanding of interpersonal behavior - assessing one another's personality, emotions, thoughts and feelings, attitudes, deceptiveness, group memberships, and other personal characteristics through facial expressions, body language, voice and spoken language. But how accurate are our impressions and when does such accuracy matter? How is accuracy achieved and are some of us more successful at achieving it than others? This comprehensive overview presents cutting-edge research on this fast-expanding field and will be essential reading for anyone interested in the psychology of interpersonal perception. A wide range of experts in the field explore topics including age and gender effects, psychopathology, culture and ethnicity, workplaces and leadership, clinicians' skills, empathy, meta-perception, and training people to be more accurate in their perceptions of others.
Research has shown that pupil size shapes interpersonal impressions: Individuals with dilated pupils tend to be perceived more positively than those with constricted pupils. Untested so far is the role of cognitive processes in shaping the effects of pupil size. Two pre-registered studies investigated whether the effect of pupil size is qualified by partner’s attention allocation inferred from gaze orientation. In Experiment 1 (N=50) partners with dilated pupils were more liked when gazing toward the participant, but less liked when gazing toward a disliked other. Experiment 2 (N=50) unveiled the underlying mechanism of the pupil-gaze interplay. Pupillary changes led to inferences about the feelings held by the partner towards the gazed target: larger the pupils signaled positive feelings. Crucially, target identity moderated the response of the participants (i.e., liking toward the partner). This work shows the importance of considering the interplay of affective and cognitive eye-signals when studying person perception.
In the present work, we review a growing programme of research identifying deficits in race-based interpersonal sensitivity, specifically emotion detection, as a route to creating pitfalls in interracial interactions and generating race-based disparities. Most existing research examining race disparities takes a bias perspective – focusing on how stereotypes and prejudice can make judgements more positive or negative as a mechanism underlying race-based inequality. We review this literature, while also providing evidence that differential sensitivity – more accurately reading cues and signals of ingroup and majority group members than outgroup and minority group members – can also serve as a mechanism underlying race-based discrimination. We propose that an integrated perspective encompassing sensitivity and response bias as routes to intergroup inequality may offer researchers a novel approach to existing intergroup questions as well as a generative perspective on intergroup research programmes.
Research interest in perceivers’ memory for the appearance, nonverbal behaviors, and verbal statements of others (i.e., targets) is growing. This chapter describes the emergence of this new look in person-memory research from its historical roots in eyewitness accuracy to its current focus on adaptive memory processes. With respect to adaptive memory, special attention is given to potential markers of targets’ sexual/sociosexual orientation and how perceivers’ proximal states, such as their short- or long-term mating goals, impact the relative importance and memorability of specific target cues (viz., appearance, verbal statements). The functional significance of enhanced memory for targets’ cues is discussed in domains ranging from the mundane (social categorization) to the serious (finding a mate). Gender differences in person memory are covered as well.
Though many of people’s impressions about each other stem from qualities that are obvious or apparent, social perceptions also rely on a variety of subtle cues that guide judgment and behavior. For example, emerging work has increasingly elucidated the conditions and means by which individuals’ accuracy in judging others’ sexual orientation is better than chance. We discuss these here, focusing on four domains from which people draw cues to accurately perceive sexual orientation: how people adorn themselves (adornment), how they move (actions), how they sound (acoustics), and how they look (appearance). Moreover, we describe how certain factors, such as one’s own sexual orientation, can constrain or facilitate this accuracy and describe the various negative social and occupational consequences that may result from cues that someone is gay or straight.
We outline the need to, and provide a guide on how to, conduct a meta-analysis on one's own studies within a manuscript. Although conducting a “mini meta” within one's manuscript has been argued for in the past, this practice is still relatively rare and adoption is slow. We believe two deterrents are responsible. First, researchers may not think that it is legitimate to do a meta-analysis on a small number of studies. Second, researchers may think a meta-analysis is too complicated to do without expert knowledge or guidance. We dispel these two misconceptions by (1) offering arguments on why researchers should be encouraged to do mini metas, (2) citing previous articles that have conducted such analyses to good effect, and (3) providing a user-friendly guide on calculating some meta-analytic procedures that are appropriate when there are only a few studies. We provide formulas for calculating effect sizes and converting effect sizes from one metric to another (e.g., from Cohen's d to r), as well as annotated Excel spreadsheets and a step-by-step guide on how to conduct a simple meta-analysis. A series of related studies can be strengthened and better understood if accompanied by a mini meta-analysis.
Previous research has largely ignored the relationship between sexual orientation judgement accuracy, confidence, and attitudes towards homosexuality. In an online study, participants (N = 269) judged the sexual orientation of homosexual and heterosexual targets presented via a series of facial photographs. Participants also indicated their confidence in each judgement and completed the Modern Homonegativity Scale (Morrison & Morrison, 2002). We found that (i) homosexual men and heterosexual women were more accurate when judging photographs of women, as opposed to photographs of men, and (ii) in heterosexual men, negative attitudes towards homosexual men predicted confidence and bias when rating men’s photographs. Findings indicate that homosexual men and heterosexual women are similar in terms of accuracy in judging women’s sexuality. Further, especially in men, homophobia is associated with cognitive biases in labelling other men, but does not have a relationship with increased accuracy.
People derive considerable amounts of information about each other from minimal nonverbal cues. Apart from characteristics typically regarded as obvious when encountering another person (e.g., age, race, and sex), perceivers can identify many other qualities about a person that are typically rather subtle. One such feature is sexual orientation. Here, I review the literature documenting the accurate perception of sexual orientation from nonverbal cues related to one’s adornment, acoustics, actions, and appearance. In addition to chronicling studies that have demonstrated how people express and extract sexual orientation in each of these domains, I discuss some of the basic cognitive and perceptual processes that support these judgments, including how cues to sexual orientation manifest in behavioral (e.g., clothing choices) and structural (e.g., facial morphology) signals. Finally, I attend to boundary conditions in the accurate perception of sexual orientation, such as the states, traits, and group memberships that moderate individuals’ ability to reliably decipher others’ sexual orientation.
An article recently published in this journal (Cox, Devine, Bischmann, & Hyde, 2016) questioned the validity of existing research on the accurate judgment of sexual orientation from photographs of faces. Specifically, those authors reported a confound in their stimuli whereby the photos of sexual minorities (gay men and lesbians) were of higher quality than the photos of heterosexuals. Based on this finding, they concluded that the accuracy in judging sexual orientation from faces demonstrated in the broader literature is an artifact of stimulus quality differences. Here, we addressed this claim by systematically testing the numerous photo sets that we have used in 61 studies documenting accurate judgments of sexual orientation from facial cues published since 2007. Contrary to their claim, the overwhelming majority of studies (93%) showed no significant differences in photo quality according to sexual orientation. Of those that did show differences, most revealed that heterosexual targets’ photos were actually of higher quality than sexual minority targets’ photos – opposite of what Cox et al. found. In addition, we highlight additional research using stimuli equated for quality differences overlooked in the recent article by Cox et al., lending further support to the conclusion that sexual orientation is legible from multiple sensory cues.
Although studies have shown that sexual orientation can be judged from faces, this research has not considered how age-related differences in perceivers or targets affect such judgments. In the current work, we evaluated whether accuracy differed among young adults (YA) and older adults (OA) for young and old men’s faces by recruiting a sample of YA and OA in the lab, a community sample of sexual minority men, and a sample of online participants. We found that OA and YA judged sexual orientation with similar accuracy. Perceptions of gender atypicality mediated the difference in judging older and younger targets’ sexual orientation. Although participants used positive affect to correctly discern sexual orientation regardless of target age, perceptions of masculinity were valid only for judgments of YA.
Previous research has shown that perceivers can accurately extract information about perceptually ambiguous group memberships from facial information alone. For example, people demonstrate above-chance accuracy in categorizing political ideology from faces. Further, they ascribe particular personality traits to faces according to political party (e.g., Republicans are dominant and mature, Democrats are likeable and trustworthy). Here, we report three studies that replicated and extended these effects. In Study 1a, we provide evidence that, in addition to showing accuracy in categorization, politically-conservative participants expressed a bias toward categorizing targets as outgroup members. In Study 1b, we replicate this relationship with a larger sample and a stimulus set consisting of faces of professional politicians. In Study 2, we find that trait ascriptions based on target political affiliation are moderated by perceiver political ideology. Specifically, although Democrats are stereotyped as more likeable and trustworthy, conservative participants rated faces that were categorized as Republicans in Study 1a as more likeable and trustworthy than faces categorized as Democrats. Thus, this paper joins a growing literature showing that it is critical to consider perceiver identity in examining perceptions of identities and traits from faces.
The article aims to measure implicit sexual attitude in heterosexual, gay and bisexual individuals. A Many-Facet Rasch Measurement analysis was used to disentangle the contribution of specific associations to the overall IAT measure. A preference for heterosexuals relative to homosexuals is observed in heterosexual respondents, driven most by associating positive attributes with heterosexuals rather than negative attributes with homosexuals. Differently, neither the negative nor the positive evaluation of any of the target groups play a prominent role in driving the preference for homosexuals observed in gay respondents. A preference for heterosexuals relative to homosexuals is observed in bisexual respondents, that results most from ascribing negative attributes to homosexuals rather than positive attributes to heterosexuals. The results are consistent with the expression of the need for achieving a positive self-image and with the influence of shared social norms concerning sexuality.
Although individual differences are known to influence numerous aspects of social perception, such as person memory and individuation, little is known about how such variations may affect social categorization. Extending prior research, the present study tested one potential moderator: familiarity with group members. Specifically, straight participants (n = 84) reported their real-life experiences with gay men and categorized faces as gay or straight. Results showed that participants who reported greater familiarity with gay men were significantly more sensitive, or accurate, in judging the sexual orientations of men from their faces. These results are discussed in terms of their theoretical implications for social perception and future research directions are outlined.
Current theory and research suggests that stereotyping is inversely related to the allocation of attentional resources. For example, motivational factors (e.g., interdependence, accuracy goals) are argued to increase attentional investment and encourage individuation. Within this model, a neglected feature of the impression formation process is the role of the perceivers’ own self-definition. Based on self-categorization theory, it is argued that whether the salient self-other categorization is defined in interpersonal or group terms, respectively, will determine whether impressions will be more individuated or stereotypic. Two experiments are reported where the effect of interdependence (Experiment 1) and accuracy goals (Experiment 2) as well as the salient comparative context (interpersonal, intergroup) on impression formation were investigated. The results suggest that the nature of self-other categorizations does play a significant role in explaining variability in impression formation.
In the present research, we investigated whether, because of differences in cognitive style, liberals and conservatives would differ in the process of categorizing individuals into a perceptually ambiguous group. In 3 studies, we examined whether conservatives were more likely than liberals to rely on gender inversion cues (e.g., feminine = gay) when categorizing male faces as gay vs. straight, and the accuracy implications of differential cue usage. In Study 1, perceivers made dichotomous sexual orientation judgments (gay-straight). We found that perceivers who reported being more liberal were less likely than perceivers who reported being more conservative to use gender inversion cues in their deliberative judgments. In addition, liberals took longer to categorize targets, suggesting that they may have been thinking more about their judgments. Consistent with a stereotype correction model of social categorization, in Study 2 we demonstrated that differences between liberals and conservatives were eliminated by a cognitive load manipulation that disrupted perceivers' abilities to engage in effortful processing. Under cognitive load, liberals failed to adjust their initial judgments and, like conservatives, consistently relied on gender inversion cues to make judgments. In Study 3, we provided more direct evidence that differences in cognitive style underlie ideological differences in judgments of sexual orientation. Specifically, liberals were less likely than conservatives to endorse stereotypes about gender inversion and sexual orientation, and this difference in stereotype endorsement was partially explained by liberals' greater need for cognition. Implications for the accuracy of ambiguous category judgments made with the use of stereotypical cues in naturalistic settings are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).
Empirical evidence is presented from 7 samples regarding the factor structure; reliability; and convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity of separate measures of internal and external motivation to respond without prejudice. The scales reliably measure largely independent constructs and have good convergent and discriminant validity. Examination of the qualitatively distinct affective reactions to violations of own- and other-based standards as a function of the source of motivation to respond without prejudice provides evidence for the predictive validity of the scales. The final study demonstrated that reported stereotype endorsement varies as a function of motivation and whether reports are made in private or publicly. Results are discussed in terms of their support for the internal–external distinction and the significance of this distinction for identifying factors that may either promote or thwart prejudice reduction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Since the 1940s, social psychologists have conducted research testing whether it is possible to accurately identify members of perceptually ambiguous groups. This study quantitatively reviews the research on the perception of ambiguous groups to better understand the human capacity to accurately identify others based on very subtle nonverbal cues. Standard random-effects meta-analytic techniques were used to examine the distinctions between different target groups in terms of their identifiability, as well as to compare rates of accuracy across perceptual modalities (e.g., photographs, audio, video) and other study design differences. Overall, the accuracy of identifying targets was significantly better than chance guessing (i.e., 64.5%). Furthermore, stimulus modality was found to be a moderator of accuracy. Other moderators (e.g., time of exposure, analytic approach) were identified and examined. These data help to document and characterize broad trends in the proliferating and expanding study of the perception and categorization of ambiguous social groups.
An experiment was conducted to examine the impact of identification with the in-group on the categorization of pictures depicting in-group and out-group faces. Findings showed that high identifiers classified fewer pictures as in-group members than did low identifiers. High and low identifiers also differed in their categorization latencies. Whereas high identifiers seemed more concerned with erroneously including an out-group member in the in-group, low identifiers seemed concerned with accuracy. The results are discussed with regard to the motivations underlying social categorization as well as to other phenomena that have been discovered through research on social identity theory.
Studies of North Americans suggest that laypeople can judge the sexual orientation of others with greater than chance accuracy based on brief observations of their behavior (i.e., "gaydar" exists). One factor that appears to contribute to these judgments is targets' degree of masculinity-femininity. However, behaviors related to sexual orientation and to masculinity-femininity might vary across cultures. Thus, cross-cultural work is needed to test whether judgments of sexual orientation are more accurate when targets and raters are from the same culture. American and Czech male targets, 38 homosexual and 41 heterosexual, were videotaped and brief segments of the videotapes were presented to American and Czech raters. Overall, raters' judgments of targets' sexual orientation were related to targets' self-reported sexual orientation. However, the relationship was stronger when targets were judged by raters from their own country. In general, results suggest that there are both cross-cultural similarities and differences in gaydar and in cues related to sexual orientation.
Across cultures, people converge in some behaviors and diverge in others. As little is known about the accuracy of judgments across cultures outside of the domain of emotion recognition, the present study investigated the influence of culture in another area: the social categorization of men's sexual orientations. Participants from nations varying in their acceptance of homosexuality (United States, Japan, and Spain) categorized the faces of men from all three cultures significantly better than chance guessing. Moreover, categorizations of individual faces were significantly correlated among the three groups of perceivers. Americans were significantly faster and more accurate than the Japanese and Spanish perceivers. Categorization strategies (i.e., response bias) also varied such that perceivers from cultures less accepting of homosexuality were more likely to categorize targets as straight. Male sexual orientation therefore appears to be legible across cultures.
People can accurately infer others' traits and group memberships across several domains. We examined heterosexual women's accuracy in judging male sexual orientation across the fertility cycle (Study 1) and found that women's accuracy was significantly greater the nearer they were to peak ovulation. In contrast, women's accuracy was not related to their fertility when they judged the sexual orientations of other women (Study 2). Increased sexual interest brought about by the increased likelihood of conception near ovulation may therefore influence women's sensitivity to male sexual orientation. To test this hypothesis, we manipulated women's interest in mating using an unobtrusive priming task (Study 3). Women primed with romantic thoughts showed significantly greater accuracy in their categorizations of male sexual orientation (but not female sexual orientation) compared with women who were not primed. The accuracy of judgments of male sexual orientation therefore appears to be influenced by both natural variations in female perceivers' fertility and experimentally manipulated cognitive frames.
We found that judgments of a perceptually ambiguous social category, sexual orientation, varied as a function of a perceptually obvious social category, race. Sexual orientation judgments tend to exploit a heuristic of gender inversion that often promotes accuracy. We predicted that an orthogonal social category that is itself gendered, race, would impact both sexual orientation categorizations and their accuracy. Importantly, overlaps in both the phenotypes and stereotypes associated with specific race and sex categories (e.g., the categories Black and Men and the categories Asian and Women) lead race categories to be decidedly gendered. Therefore, we reasoned that race categories would bias judgments of sexual orientation and their accuracy because of the inherent gendered nature. Indeed, both gay and straight perceivers in the United States were more likely to judge targets to be gay when target race was associated with gender-atypical stereotypes or phenotypes (e.g., Asian Men). Perceivers were also most accurate when judging the sexual orientation of the most strongly gender-stereotyped groups (i.e., Asian Women and Black Men), but least accurate when judging the sexual orientation of counter-stereotypical groups (i.e., Asian men and Black Women). Signal detection analyses confirmed that this pattern of accuracy was achieved because of heightened sensitivity to cues in groups who more naturally conform to gendered stereotypes (Asian Women and Black Men). Implications for social perception are discussed.
We examined the cognitive processes that might account for the impact of cross-group friendship on novel intergroup situations. Study 1 demonstrated that closeness with outgroup members predicts an association of the outgroup with the self, both in terms of the group itself and the personality traits stereotypically associated with the group. In Studies 2 and 3, we manipulated the accessibility of either a same-group friendship or cross-group friendship. Participants who described a cross-group friend exhibited a greater association of the friend's ethnicity with the self, and this association mediated the effects of friendship accessibility on positive expectations for intergroup contact (Study 2) and adaptive hormonal responses during a real interaction with a novel outgroup member (Study 3). These findings imply that cross-group friendship improves novel intergroup experiences to the degree that outgroups become associated with the self.
Two studies demonstrate that a dispositional proneness to disgust ("disgust sensitivity") is associated with intuitive disapproval of gay people. Study 1 was based on previous research showing that people are more likely to describe a behavior as intentional when they see it as morally wrong (see Knobe, 2006, for a review). As predicted, the more disgust sensitive participants were, the more likely they were to describe an agent whose behavior had the side effect of causing gay men to kiss in public as having intentionally encouraged gay men to kiss publicly-even though most participants did not explicitly think it wrong to encourage gay men to kiss in public. No such effect occurred when subjects were asked about heterosexual kissing. Study 2 used the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Nosek, Banaji, & Greenwald, 2006) as a dependent measure. The more disgust sensitive participants were, the more they showed unfavorable automatic associations with gay people as opposed to heterosexuals. Two studies demonstrate that a dispositional proneness to disgust ("disgust sensitivity") is associated with intuitive disapproval of gay people. Study 1 was based on previous research showing that people are more likely to describe a behavior as intentional when they see it as morally wrong (see Knobe, 2006, for a review). As predicted, the more disgust sensitive participants were, the more likely they were to describe an agent whose behavior had the side effect of causing gay men to kiss in public as having intentionally encouraged gay men to kiss publicly-even though most participants did not explicitly think it wrong to encourage gay men to kiss in public. No such effect occurred when subjects were asked about heterosexual kissing. Study 2 used the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Nosek, Banaji, & Greenwald, 2006) as a dependent measure. The more disgust sensitive participants were, the more they showed unfavorable automatic associations with gay people as opposed to heterosexuals.
For clear and unambiguous social categories, person perception occurs quite accurately from minimal cues. This article addresses the perception of an ambiguous social category (male sexual orientation) from minimal cues. Across 5 studies, the authors examined individuals' actual and self-assessed accuracy when judging male sexual orientation from faces and facial features. Although participants were able to make accurate judgments from multiple facial features (i.e., hair, the eyes, and the mouth area), their perceived accuracy was calibrated with their actual accuracy only when making judgments based on hairstyle, a controllable feature. These findings provide evidence that suggests different processes for extracting social category information during perception: explicit judgments based on obvious cues (hairstyle) and intuitive judgments based on nonobvious cues (information from the eyes and mouth area). Differences in the accuracy of judgments based on targets' controllability and perceivers' awareness of cues provides insight into the processes underlying intuitive predictions and intuitive judgments.
An implicit association test (IAT) measures differential association of 2 target concepts with an attribute. The 2 concepts appear in a 2-choice task (2-choice task (e.g., flower vs. insect names), and the attribute in a 2nd task (e.g., pleasant vs. unpleasant words for an evaluation attribute). When instructions oblige highly associated categories (e.g., flower + pleasant) to share a response key, performance is faster than when less associated categories (e.g., insect & pleasant) share a key. This performance difference implicitly measures differential association of the 2 concepts with the attribute. In 3 experiments, the IAT was sensitive to (a) near-universal evaluative differences (e.g., flower vs. insect), (b) expected individual differences in evaluative associations (Japanese + pleasant vs. Korean + pleasant for Japanese vs. Korean subjects), and (c) consciously disavowed evaluative differences (Black + pleasant vs. White + pleasant for self-described unprejudiced White subjects).
Three studies examined the relationship between the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and explicit attitudes. In the 1st and all subsequent studies, the lack of any correlation between the IAT and explicitly measured attitudes supports the view that the IAT is independent from explicit attitudes. Study 2 examined the relationships among the IAT, explicit attitudes, and behavior and found that the explicit attitudes predicted behavior but the IAT did not. Finally, in Study 3 it was found that the IAT was affected by exposing participants to new associations between attitude objects, whereas the explicit attitudes remained unchanged. Taken together, these results support an environmental association interpretation of the IAT in which IAT scores reflect the associations a person has been exposed to in his or her environment rather than the extent to which the person endorses those evaluative associations.
This paper describes the psychometric properties of the Modern Homonegativity Scale (MHS), which measures contemporary negative attitudes toward gay men and lesbians (i.e., attitudes not based on traditional or moral objections to homosexuality). In Study 1 (N = 353), a preliminary version of the MHS was developed, and its psychometric properties were examined. Participants in Studies 2 and 3 (Ns = 308 and 233, respectively) completed the MHS and other attitudinal measures. The relationships among these variables were investigated to provide a more comprehensive assessment of the scale's construct validity. In Study 4 (N = 36), a behavioural expression of modern homonegativity was examined using the attributional ambiguity paradigm. The results of these studies indicate that the MHS is unidimensional, possesses a high degree of internal consistency, and is factorially distinct from a measure of old-fashioned homonegativity. As hypothesized, scores on the MHS correlated positively with political conservatism, religious behaviour, religious self-schema and modern sexism, but did not correlate significantly with social desirability bias. In addition, the MHS appears to be less susceptible to floor effects than a commonly used measure of old-fashioned homonegativity. Finally, the experimental study revealed that participants obtaining high scores on the MHS were less likely to sit beside individuals wearing T-shirts with pro-gay or pro-lesbian slogans when they could justify their seating choice on nonprejudicial grounds.
The facial expressions of fear and anger are universal social signals in humans. Both expressions have been frequently presumed to signify threat to perceivers and therefore are often used in studies investigating responses to threatening stimuli. Here the authors show that the anger expression facilitates avoidance-related behavior in participants, which supports the notion of this expression being a threatening stimulus. The fear expression, on the other hand, facilitates approach behaviors in perceivers. This contradicts the notion of the fear expression as predominantly threatening or aversive and suggests it may represent an affiliative stimulus. Although the fear expression may signal that a threat is present in the environment, the effect of the expression on conspecifics may be in part to elicit approach.
The present article presents a meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. With 713 independent samples from 515 studies, the meta-analysis finds that intergroup contact typically reduces intergroup prejudice. Multiple tests indicate that this finding appears not to result from either participant selection or publication biases, and the more rigorous studies yield larger mean effects. These contact effects typically generalize to the entire outgroup, and they emerge across a broad range of outgroup targets and contact settings. Similar patterns also emerge for samples with racial or ethnic targets and samples with other targets. This result suggests that contact theory, devised originally for racial and ethnic encounters, can be extended to other groups. A global indicator of Allport's optimal contact conditions demonstrates that contact under these conditions typically leads to even greater reduction in prejudice. Closer examination demonstrates that these conditions are best conceptualized as an interrelated bundle rather than as independent factors. Further, the meta-analytic findings indicate that these conditions are not essential for prejudice reduction. Hence, future work should focus on negative factors that prevent intergroup contact from diminishing prejudice as well as the development of a more comprehensive theory of intergroup contact.
Two experiments tested whether the relation between automatic prejudice and discriminatory behavior is moderated by 2 conscious processes: conscious egalitarian beliefs and behavioral control. The authors predicted that, when both conscious processes are deactivated, automatic prejudice would elicit discriminatory behavior. When either of the 2 processes is activated, behavioral bias would be eliminated. The authors assessed participants' automatic attitudes toward gay men, conscious beliefs about gender, behavioral control, and interactions with gay confederates. In Experiment 1, men's beliefs about gender were heterogeneous, whereas women's beliefs were mostly egalitarian; men's responses supported the predictions, but women's responses did not. In Experiment 2, the authors recruited a sample with greater diversity in gender-related beliefs. Results showed that, for both sexes, automatic prejudice produced biased behavior in the absence of conscious egalitarian beliefs and behavioral control. The presence of either conscious process eliminated behavioral bias.
People can accurately judge the sexual orientation of others, but the cues they use have remained elusive. In 3 studies, the authors examined how body shape and motion affect perceived sexual orientation. In 2 studies, participants judged the sexual orientation of computer-generated animations in which body shape and motion were manipulated. Gender-typical combinations (e.g., tubular body moving with shoulder swagger or hourglass body moving with hip sway) were perceived generally to be heterosexual; gender-atypical combinations were perceived generally to be homosexual. These effects were stronger for male targets. Body shape affected perceived sexual orientation of women, but motion affected perceived sexual orientation of both men and women. Study 3 replicated and extended these findings. Participants judged dynamic outlines of real people (men and women, both gay and straight) in which body shape and motion were measured. Again, gender-atypical body motion affected perceived sexual orientation and, importantly, affected accuracy as well.
This paper outlines the central role of intergroup contact in promoting successful social integration between members of different groups. The paper deals with six main issues: (1) the main types of intergroup contact, and whether they are effective; (2) under what conditions intergroup contact is most effective; (3) by what processes intergroup contact works; (4) the extensive effects of intergroup contact beyond changes in explicit attitudes towards outgroups; (5) the major policy implications of intergroup contact; and (6) criticisms of intergroup contact, and rejoinders to them. Finally, progress is summarised in the form of a new theoretical model, and conclusions are drawn about the centrality of 'meaningful contact' for improving intergroup relations.
Existing theories of prejudice formation focus primarily on the contents of social cognition (stereotypes, emotions) as laying the foundation for interpersonal animus. However, recent studies have revealed that experiential cues associated with the process of social cognition may also fuel prejudice. In particular, fluency—the metacognitive ease or difficulty of processing a stimulus—has emerged as an important factor contributing to prejudice. Across diverse operational definitions and at various levels of analysis, fluent processing is associated with positive social evaluations whereas disfluent processing is associated with negative social evaluations. Here, we review this burgeoning literature and highlight continued knowledge gaps to guide the next wave of research on the social consequences of fluency.
Although “gay rights” may be considered a contemporary issue in modern global society, history is replete with accounts of same-sex attraction and sexual behavior across a multitude of Western and non-Western cultures. The present chapter reviews the status of sexual orientation across cultures. We pay particular attention to how varying degrees of belief and public discourse about gender work in concert to shape the experiences of sexual minorities. We review this from two perspectives: (1) the ways in which sexual minorities are perceived and treated by heterosexuals and the broader culture, and (2) the influence that cultural context and gender expectations have upon the cognitions, behaviors, and social experiences of sexual minorities. Finally, we devote considerable discussion to the most recent advances in behavioral research examining the social, cognitive, and ecological impact of perceptions of sexual orientation. Specifically, we review the literature on the consensus and accuracy of judgments of sexual orientation from minimal cues (e.g., facial appearance, vocal cues, and nonverbal behavior), how this occurs in the minds of perceivers, and the consequences that the capacity to perceive sexual orientation holds for both perceivers (heterosexual and not) and targets. Importantly, we situate this within the context of culture, attending to how both intracultural and intercultural factors influence the conception, perception, and treatment of sexual minorities across and within nationally defined cultural groups.
To answer the question “Who's gay?”—and its logical follow-up, “Does it matter?”—researchers usually define homosexuality with reference to one of three components or expressions of sexual orientation: sexual/romantic attraction or arousal, sexual behavior, and sexual identity. Yet, the three components are imperfectly correlated and inconsistently predictive of each other, resulting in dissimilar conclusions regarding the number and nature of homosexual populations. Depending on which component is assessed, the prevalence rate of homosexuality in the general population ranges from 1 to 21%. When investigators define the homosexual population based on same-sex behavior or identity, they enhance the possibility of finding a biological basis for homosexuality and a compromised mental health (suicidality).
In recent years as public opinion polls have shown a decline in racist responses, white Americans have strongly resisted school desegregation and affirmative action programs. Hence, there has been a debate over the extent to which racism has really declined. The theory of modern racism addresses these issues, distinguishing between old-fashioned racial beliefs recognized by everyone as racism and a new set of beliefs arising from the conflicts of the civil rights movement. The theory proposes that antiblack feeling remains high and has been displaced from the socially undesirable old-fashioned beliefs onto the new beliefs where the racism is not recognized. Three experiments were performed; results showed that, regardless of context, the old-fashioned items were perceived as more likely to reveal prejudice. The results are discussed in terms of their significance for opinion polling and continuing racial conflict in America.
This paper discusses the basis for differences among heterosexuals in their reactions to gay people, with special emphasis on the issue of gender differences. Three studies conducted with students at six different universities revealed a consistent tendency for heterosexual males to express more hostile attitudes than heterosexual females, especially toward gay men. The same social psychological variables appear to underlie both males’ and females’ attitudes toward both gay men and lesbians: religiosity, adherence to traditional ideologies of family and gender, perception of friends’ agreement with one's own attitudes, and past interactions with lesbians and gay men. The role of these variables in shaping attitudes is discussed and areas for future research are proposed. Construction and validation of the Attitudes Toward Lesbians and Gay Men (ATLG) scale are also described.
Investigates an old controversy in ethnic identification from the perspective of information-gathering strategies. It was hypothesized that people would request a lot of positive information before deciding that someone is a member of the ingroup. First, a questionnaire measuring the typical features of likeable and unlikeable targets issuing from two linguistic groups (Flemish and Walloon) revealed the existence of four distinguishable sets. These sets corresponded to the orthogonal combination of valence and group membership, i.e. they were organized in terms of two independent dimensions, an evaluative one and descriptive one. The dimensional complexity and evaluative extremity of the ‘positive ingroup’ and ‘negative outgroup’ sets were not different. Second, characteristics in each set served to create personality profiles presumably describing real targets. Subjects read these profiles, one feature at a time up to 10 features, and were asked to decide whether the target was a member of their group. They also learned that they could make their decision as soon as they felt confident. In line with Yzerbyt and Leyens' (1991) results, data indicate that subjects requested more information when the evidence was positive or consistent with their ingroup membership than when it was negative or inconsistent. These findings shed new light on earlier work concerning ethnic identification. In the context of the more general question of intergroup relations and their role in person perception, the present results may be interpreted in terms of an ingroup overexclusion effect rather than a vigilance effect or response bias. Thus is added a new effect to the well-known phenomena of ingroup favouritism and outgroup homogeneity.
impression formation processes are assumed to be bottom-up, or data-driven, with an integrated representation of the individual person as the final product / challenges this prevailing view of the person perception process by proposing an alternative model of social cognition that incorporates top down processing as well as data-driven constructions
differences between these two modes of impression formation are elaborated
implications for how and when social cognition differs from object perception are discussed
comparison of processing stages
identification / automatic processing
typing / structure and format of person categories
person types / words or images
impression formation as category matching
individuation / intracategory differentiation
personalization / formation of person-based impressions (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Detection Theory is an introduction to one of the most important tools for analysis of data where choices must be made and performance is not perfect. Originally developed for evaluation of electronic detection, detection theory was adopted by psychologists as a way to understand sensory decision making, then embraced by students of human memory. It has since been utilized in areas as diverse as animal behavior and X-ray diagnosis. This book covers the basic principles of detection theory, with separate initial chapters on measuring detection and evaluating decision criteria. Some other features include: complete tools for application, including flowcharts, tables, pointers, and software;. student-friendly language;. complete coverage of content area, including both one-dimensional and multidimensional models;. separate, systematic coverage of sensitivity and response bias measurement;. integrated treatment of threshold and nonparametric approaches;. an organized, tutorial level introduction to multidimensional detection theory;. popular discrimination paradigms presented as applications of multidimensional detection theory; and. a new chapter on ideal observers and an updated chapter on adaptive threshold measurement. This up-to-date summary of signal detection theory is both a self-contained reference work for users and a readable text for graduate students and other researchers learning the material either in courses or on their own. © 2005 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.
The notion that an individual's sexual orientation can be ascertained through distinctive speech patterns abounds in popular culture. This article reviews the small but growing body of literature examining whether sexual orientation is conveyed and perceived through speech. These studies show some individuals speak in a way that conveys their sexual orientation to naïve listeners. Contrary to many popular-culture stereotypes, the phonetic parameters that convey gay, lesbian, or bisexual identities are not whole-sale approximation of opposite sex norms, nor does the perception of sexual orientation through speech appear to involve the simple perception of the sex typicality of a talker's voice. In addition to reviewing these studies, this article discusses their implications for research on language acquisition, language processing, and sociolinguistics.
Early literature found that holding more anti-Semitic attitudes positively predicted ability to discern whether a photograph
was of a Jewish or non-Jewish person. This contradicts the well established finding that interpersonal sensitivity is generally
associated with healthy psychological characteristics. In five new, previously unpublished studies we found that this relation
was negative, such that more prejudiced individuals were now less accurate than less prejudiced individuals at a similar task, consistent with the general finding. A meta-analysis of all
the studies showed that time was a significant moderator of the relation. Possible reasons for the temporal change are discussed.
This meta-analysis examines how interpersonal sensitivity (IS), defined as accurate judgment or recall of others’ behavior
or appearance, is related to psychosocial characteristics of the perceiver, defined as personality traits, social and emotional
functioning, life experiences, values, attitudes, and self-concept. For 215 independent studies reported in 96 published sources,
higher IS was generally associated with favorable or adaptive psychosocial functioning. Significant mean correlations were
found for 27 of the 40 categories of psychosocial variables; these categories covered many different personality traits, indicators
of mental health, and social and work-related competencies. Moreover, many additional studies that fell outside these conceptual
categories also showed significant positive relations between IS and numerous other psychosocial variables. Taken together,
the results support the construct validity of IS tests and demonstrate that IS is associated with many important aspects of
personal and social functioning.
People have proved adept at categorizing others into social categories, at least when the categorical distinction is perceptually obvious (e.g., age, race, or gender). There remain many social groups whose boundaries are less clear, however. The current work therefore tested judgments of an ambiguous social category (male sexual orientation) from faces shown for durations between 33 ms and 10,000 ms. The sexual orientation of faces presented for 50 ms, 100 ms, 6500 ms, 10,000 ms, and at a self-paced rate (averaging 1500 ms), was categorized at above-chance levels with no decrease in accuracy for briefer exposures. Previous work showing impression formation at similar speeds relied on consensus to determine the validity of judgments. The present results extend these findings by providing a criterion for judgmental accuracy—actual group membership.
Whereas previous work has shown that male sexual orientation can be accurately and rapidly perceived from the human face and its individual features, no study has examined the judgment of female sexual orientation. To fill this gap, the current work examined the accuracy, speed, and automaticity of judgments of female sexual orientation from the face and from facial features. Study 1 showed that female sexual orientation could be accurately judged from the face and from just eyes without brows and limited to the outer canthi. Study 2 then examined the speed and efficiency of these judgments, showing that judgments of the faces following very brief, near subliminal (40 ms) exposures were significantly better than chance guessing. Finally, Study 3 tested the automaticity of judgments of female sexual orientation by examining the effects of deliberation on accuracy. Participants who made snap judgments of female sexual orientation were significantly more accurate than participants who made thoughtful and deliberated judgments. These data therefore evidence a robust, reliable, and automatic capacity for extracting information about female sexual orientation from nonverbal cues in the face.
Previous research has documented individual differences in a range of constructs relating to social stereotyping, prejudice, and intergroup attitudes. However, research has not sought specifically to measure a general acceptance of social stereotyping. In the present research, we explored attitudinal, cognitive, emotional, and personality correlates of a person’s self-reported willingness to rely on stereotypical information when interacting with people of different social and cultural groups. In six studies (N = 1080) we found that more acceptance of stereotyping was associated with more explicit and implicit stereotyping of particular groups, less liberal gender-role values, more authoritarian attitudes, preference for hierarchies, higher social dominance orientation, less universal outlook, less complexity in describing others’ emotions, less utilization of emotional information, and more utilization of social categories (gender and race) when rating the similarity of faces, less agreeable and more agentic personality, and more rigid and simplistic cognitive style (all independent of one’s gender). Female and African-American participants were less accepting of stereotyping than male and Caucasian participants. The general tendency to accept stereotyping in daily life is a measurable individual difference that may prove useful in social-personality research.
Although sexual orientation can be judged from faces, in previous work Caucasian or racially unspecified targets and perceivers have been primarily studied. Here, target and perceiver race were considered in the accurate categorisation of male sexual orientation. Asian, Black, and Caucasian participants categorised the sexual orientations of Asian, Black, and Caucasian men. Accuracy was significantly above chance and consistent across all combinations of perceivers and targets. Response bias scores showed that targets were significantly more likely to be categorised as straight, rather than gay, regardless of target or perceiver race. Moreover, judgments of individual targets were significantly correlated for perceivers from all three groups, suggesting cross-race consistency in target legibility. The perception of sexual orientation from faces therefore appears to be robust against variations in target and perceiver race.
In the present article, we present a software package, MouseTracker, that allows researchers to use a computer mouse-tracking method for assessing real-time processing in psychological tasks. By recording the streaming x-, y-coordinates of the computer mouse while participants move the mouse into one of multiple response alternatives, motor dynamics of the hand can reveal the time course of mental processes. MouseTracker provides researchers with fine-grained information about the real-time evolution of participant responses by sampling 60-75 times/sec the online competition between multiple response alternatives. MouseTracker allows researchers to develop and run experiments and subsequently analyze mouse trajectories in a user-interactive, graphics-based environment. Experiments may incorporate images, letter strings, and sounds. Mouse trajectories can be processed, averaged, visualized, and explored, and measures of spatial attraction/curvature, complexity, velocity, and acceleration can be computed. We describe the software and the method, and we provide details on mouse trajectory analysis. We validate the software by demonstrating the accuracy and reliability of its trajectory and reaction time data. The latest version of MouseTracker is freely available at http://mousetracker.jbfreeman.net.
This paper reports a series of factor analyses of responses to attitude statements about lesbians and gay men. Using a common factor model with oblique rotation, a bipolar "Condemnation-Tolerance" factor was observed repeatedly in four separate samples of undergraduates. The factor accounts for 35-45% of the total common variance in responses, and is similar for male and female respondents and for questionnaires concerning both lesbians and gay men. A "Beliefs" factor accounts for another 5% of the total variance. It is argued that scales assessing attitudes toward lesbians and gay men should restrict their content to items loading highly on the Condemnation-Tolerance factor.
This paper attempts to refine and state more clearly an operational definition of homophobia. Homophobia is seen as but one dimension among many that collectively refer to the much larger domain of homonegativeism. The paper then presents a new measure of homophobia, called the IHP, and reports the finding of a study designed to validate the new scale. The IHP was found to have a reliability of .90 and good content and factorial validity.
Some recent findings suggest that different implicit measures of prejudice assess the same underlying construct, but other work suggests that they may not. In this experiment, White participants completed a version of a priming measure of racial attitudes that either encouraged categorization of the face primes in terms of race or did not encourage such categorization, and then completed the Implicit Association Test. Correspondence between the two measures was found only when categorization by race was required on the priming measure. Moreover, participants appeared more prejudiced when they were led to construe individuals in terms of race than when they were not so encouraged. The discussion focuses on the potential for dissociations between evaluations of a category and evaluations of members of the category.
The role of individual differences in implicit attitudes toward homosexuals and motivation to control prejudiced reactions (MCPR) in predicting private and public helping behaviour was investigated. After assessing the predictor variables, 69 male students were informed about a campaign of a local gay organization. They were provided with an opportunity to donate money and sign a petition in the presence (public setting) or absence (private setting) of the experimenter. As expected, more helping behaviour was shown in the public than in the private setting. However, while the explicit cognitive attitude accounted for helping behaviour in both settings, an implicit attitude x MCPR interaction accounted for additional variability of helping in the public setting only. Three different mediating processes are discussed as possible causes of the observed effects.