Heterosexual Speakers Research Articles

The Impact of Stimuli Length and Analytic Method on Auditory 'Gaydar' Research.

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.

Judgments of self-identified gay and heterosexual male speakers of American English: Which vowels do listeners rely on to form their sexual orientation judgments?

Prior research (Tracy et al., 2015) demonstrated that, upon hearing a single phone, listeners differentiated between gay and heterosexual male talkers of American English. For instance, listeners relied on seven vowels (e.g., /æ/, /eɪ/, /ε/, /iː/, /oʊ/, /ɑ/, and /uː/) to form their judgments. From this particular finding, it is unclear whether the results could be replicated and whether these are the only vowels that listeners rely on; it is possible that listeners might rely on additional vowels. To further explore these issues, the present study examined a wider range of vowels (e.g., /i:/, /ɪ/, /eɪ/, /ɛ/, /æ/, /ɑɹ/, /ɑ/, /ɔ/, /oʊ/, /u:/, /ai/, /aʊ/, /ɔɪ/, /ɪr/, / ^/, and /ju/) and, in most instances, presented two different tokens of each vowel to listeners. Some tokens of a vowel (e.g., /i:/, /ɛ/, /æ/, /oʊ/, /u:/, and /ju/) came from a stressed syllable and some tokens came from an unstressed syllable. Only four vowels (e.g., /ɔ/, /aʊ/, /ɔɪ/, and / ^/) were presented once. Across all instances of every vowel, participants were able to significantly discriminate between gay and heterosexual speakers. Thus, listeners use a wide range of vowels to form their sexual orientation judgments of male talkers.

Gay- and Lesbian-Sounding Auditory Cues Elicit Stereotyping and Discrimination

The growing body of literature on the recognition of sexual orientation from voice (“auditory gaydar”) is silent on the cognitive and social consequences of having a gay-/lesbian- versus heterosexual-sounding voice. We investigated this issue in four studies (overall N = 276), conducted in Italian language, in which heterosexual listeners were exposed to single-sentence voice samples of gay/lesbian and heterosexual speakers. In all four studies, listeners were found to make gender-typical inferences about traits and preferences of heterosexual speakers, but gender-atypical inferences about those of gay or lesbian speakers. Behavioral intention measures showed that listeners considered lesbian and gay speakers as less suitable for a leadership position, and male (but not female) listeners took distance from gay speakers. Together, this research demonstrates that having a gay/lesbian rather than heterosexual-sounding voice has tangible consequences for stereotyping and discrimination.

Judgments of self-identified gay and heterosexual male speakers: Which phonemes are most salient in determining sexual orientation?

While numerous studies have demonstrated that a male speaker's sexual orientation can be identified from relatively long passages of speech, few studies have evaluated whether listeners can determine sexual orientation when presented with word-length stimuli. If listeners are able to distinguish between self-identified gay and heterosexual male speakers of American English, it is unclear whether they form their judgments based on a phoneme, such as a vowel or consonant, or multiple phonemes, such as a vowel and a consonant. In this study, we first found that listeners can distinguish between self-identified gay and heterosexual speakers of American English upon hearing word-length stimuli. We extended these results in a separate experiment to demonstrate that listeners primarily rely on vowels, and to some extent consonants, when forming their judgments. Listeners were able to differentiate between the two groups of speakers for each of the vowels and three of the seven consonants presented. In a follow-up experiment we found evidence that listeners' judgments improved if they were presented with multiple phonemes, such as a vowel and /s/. These results provide important information about how different phonemes can provide discriminant information about a male speaker's sexual orientation.

Acoustic and perceptual characteristics of vowels produced by self-identified gay and heterosexual male speakers

Prior research (Tracy & Satariano, 2011) investigated the perceptual characteristics of gay and heterosexual male speech; it was discovered that listeners primarily relied on vowels to identify sexual orientation. Using single-word utterances produced by those same speakers, the current study examined both the acoustic characteristics of vowels, such as pitch, duration, and the size of the vowel space, and how these characteristics relate to the perceived sexual orientation of the speaker. We found a correlation between pitch and perceived sexual identity for vowels produced by heterosexual speakers—higher f0 was associated with perceptual “gayness.” We did not find this correlation for gay speakers. Vowel duration did not reliably distinguish gay and heterosexual speakers, but speakers who produced longer vowels were perceived as gay and speakers who produced shorter vowels were perceived as heterosexual. The size of the vowel space did not reliably differ between gay and heterosexual speakers. However, ...

Differentiating between gay and heterosexual male speech.

How many phones do listeners need to hear in order to discriminate between gay and heterosexual male speakers? Prior research [Munson et al. (2006) has found that listeners only need to hear a single monosyllabic word to make this determination. In a series of experiments, listeners heard monosyllabic words and portions of these words, and were able to discriminate between gay and heterosexual male speakers. Experiment 1 replicated the prior results. In experiment 2, listeners were above chance in differentiating between heterosexual and gay male speakers when presented with specific phonemes, such as /s/ and certain vowels (/eɪ/, /u/, /i/, /ɛ/, //aelig/). These data extend prior work demonstrating that gay and heterosexual men produce certain phones differently [Linville (1998); Pierrehumbert et al. (2004)]. When presented with other phonemes (/n/, /m/, /f/, /v/, /l/, /w/), listeners were not as accurate in differentiating between gay and heterosexual male speakers. These results suggest that listeners were able to accurately discriminate between gay and heterosexual speakers when presented with specific phonemes, although they were relatively more accurate in their determinations when presented with the entire monosyllabic word.

The Queen’s English: An Alternative, Biosocial Hypothesis for the Distinctive Features of “Gay Speech”

Popular stereotypes concerning the speech of homosexuals typically attribute speech patterns characteristic of the opposite-sex, i.e., broadly feminized speech in gay men and broadly masculinized speech in lesbian women. A small body of recent empirical research has begun to address the subject more systematically and to consider specific mechanistic hypotheses to account for the potentially distinctive features of homosexual speech. Results do not yet fully endorse the stereotypes but they do not entirely discount them either; nor do they cleanly favor any single mechanistic hypothesis. To contribute to this growing body of research, we report acoustic analyses of 2,875 vowel sounds from a balanced set of 125 speakers representing heterosexual and homosexual individuals of each sex from southern Alberta, Canada. Analyses focused on voice pitch and formant frequencies which together determine the principle perceptual features of vowels. There was no significant difference in mean voice pitch between heterosexual and homosexual men or between heterosexual and homosexual women, but there were significant differences in the formant frequencies of vowels produced by both homosexual groups compared to their heterosexual counterparts. Formant frequency differences were specific to only certain vowel sounds and some could be attributed to basic differences in body size between heterosexual and homosexual speakers. The remaining formant frequency differences were not obviously due to differences in vocal tract anatomy between heterosexual and homosexual speakers, nor did they reflect global feminization or masculinization of vowel production patterns in homosexual men and women, respectively. The vowel-specific differences observed could reflect social modeling processes in which only certain speech patterns of the opposite-sex, or of same-sex homosexuals, are selectively adopted. However, we introduce an alternative biosocial hypothesis, specifically that the distinctive, vowel-specific features of homosexual speakers relative to heterosexual speakers arise incidentally as a product of broader psychobehavioral differences between the two groups that are, in turn, continuous with and flow from the physiological processes that affect sexual orientation to begin with.

The influence of sexual orientation on vowel production (L)

Vowel production in gay, lesbian, bisexual (GLB), and heterosexual speakers was examined. Differences in the acoustic characteristics of vowels were found as a function of sexual orientation. Lesbian and bisexual women produced less fronted /u/ and /ɑ/ than heterosexual women. Gay men produced a more expanded vowel space than heterosexual men. However, the vowels of GLB speakers were not generally shifted toward vowel patterns typical of the opposite sex. These results are inconsistent with the conjecture that innate biological factors have a broadly feminizing influence on the speech of gay men and a broadly masculinizing influence on the speech of lesbian/bisexual women. They are consistent with the idea that innate biological factors influence GLB speech patterns indirectly by causing selective adoption of certain speech patterns characteristic of the opposite sex.