Is Gaydar Real – Science Says It Works

You probably heard about gaydar or the “gay radar” that some people (not just gays) possess. Is it real? Does gaydar really work? According to a study published in the peer-reviewed journal PLoS ONE, gaydar is for real!

The research demonstrated that configural face processing significantly contributes to perception of sexual orientation, and that sexual orientation is inferred more easily from women’s vs. men’s faces.

The present research was the first attempt to determine the roles that featural and configural face processing play in snap judgments of sexual orientation from faces. Participants were able to judge the sexual orientation of women’s and men’s faces with above-chance accuracy, but their ability to do so was significantly impaired when the photographs were presented upside-down. These results elucidate the processes by which sexual orientation is judged from the face in several ways. First, because accuracy of sexual orientation judgments was appreciably reduced for upside-down (vs. upright) faces of both women and men – a situation in which configural face processing is strongly inhibited – these data show that configural face processing contributes to judgment accuracy. Accordingly, as experiments aim to examine the precise face characteristics that differentiate gay and straight faces, researchers should look for differences in relationships among facial features as well as differences in features themselves.

Could the decrease in judgment accuracy for upside-down faces reflect a decrease in featural face processing? It seems unlikely. Meta-analyses or review papers repeatedly find robust effects of facial inversion on configural face processing, but any effects of facial inversion on featural face processing are small and rare. Moreover, researchers who did find facial inversion effects using faces manipulated in featural content attributed the effects to their observation that the specific featural differences they created “also affect [configural] relations with the rest of the face” (p. 50). That is, these researchers reasoned that the effects of facial inversion that they observed for faces ostensibly differing in figural information were actually caused by unintentional configural differences caused by feature changes (such as a circular eye replacing an elliptical eye and therefore changing the eye-nose distance). Accordingly, in our view, as in previous research, it seems likely that the effects of facial inversion are mostly, if not entirely, attributable to decrements in configural face processing and not to decrements in featural face processing.

Moreover, the finding that judgment accuracy remained above chance for upside-down faces strongly suggests that sexual orientation can be inferred from featural processing alone. Evidence suggests that if a trait can be inferred from featural processing alone, it may be inferred spontaneously and unintentionally in everyday life. Thus, the present results imply that in casual interactions, people may unwittingly accurately perceive others’ sexual orientation from brief glances at their faces. If so, it would appear that minority sexual orientation is not the concealed stigma that many argue it is. Indeed, the need to protect gay people from discrimination would seem increasingly urgent to the extent that minority sexual orientation is tacitly inferred from aspects of personal appearance that are routinely available for inspection (e.g., faces). Although the present experiments deal primarily with whether above-chance accuracy in snap judgments of sexual orientation from faces can occur and how faces are processed to give rise to such judgments, it does so in an experimental setting wherein individuals are instructed to make forced-choice judgments of sexual orientation. Recent work, suggests that inferences of sexual orientation need not depend on the explicit instructions to judge faces as gay or straight. Nonetheless, a relatively unexplored question that is ripe for future research involves the external validity of these effects – do snap judgments of sexual orientation from faces occur in real-life settings? Additionally, what are the downstream consequences of snap judgments of sexual orientation, for example, on the perceiver’s feelings, thoughts, and behaviors towards the target?

Do sexual orientation judgments rely on category or identity person information? Previous work has postulated that configural face processing is necessary for judging identity person information (e.g., famous vs. not famous) but that only featural face processing is necessary for judging category person information (e.g., male vs. female). Here, we found that configural face processing improved accuracy of sexual orientation judgments, but was not necessary to enable above-chance judgment accuracy. Given that sexual orientation is a less obvious category, compared to race or sex, it may prompt the use of both category (featural) and individuating (configural) face information. This is in contrast to processing of faces representing more physiognomically obvious categories (e.g., sex) that may be clearly ascertained by featural cues alone. Future research should examine whether all faces invoke, and all perceivers rely on, both featural and configural processing for sexual orientation judgments, or whether only some faces invoke and/or only some perceivers rely on configural face processing in addition to featural face processing.

Second, the results indicate that the process of reading sexual orientation from faces of women is notably easier than the process of reading sexual orientation from faces of men. That is, participants read sexual orientation more accurately from women’s faces than from men’s faces (Mean difference in A? = .078, or approximately 7.8 percentage points). Though this difference was suggested by casual comparisons of results across papers, the present experiment was the first in which participants judged faces of both genders, and thus the first experiment in which a direct comparison of accuracy for women’s and men’s faces could be computed. Moreover, this difference persisted regardless of spatial orientation, suggesting that women’s sexual orientation is more obvious than men’s both in individual facial features and in facial configuration. The prospect of distinct processes for extracting sexual orientation from women’s and men’s faces is intriguing, yet not entirely surprising. The face is assumed to reflect experiences. Men and women differ in their subjective experiences and overt expressions of romantic love and sexual desire, as well as their biological (neurophysiological and hormonal) underpinnings. The current findings suggest that facial expressions of sexual orientation also differ by gender.

SOURCE PLOS ONE