Perception Of Sexual Orientation Research Articles

North American Undergraduate Students’ Sexual Orientation Beliefs: Exploring Differences across Diverse Sexual and Gender Identities

ABSTRACT Societal beliefs about various aspects of sexual orientation have been shown to influence whether people have discriminatory or supportive attitudes toward diverse sexual orientations. The overall aim of this study is to measure the beliefs about sexual orientation among a diverse sample of university students from two institutions in Canada and the United States of America. Specifically, we explored how beliefs varied among individuals with differing sexual orientations and gender identities, while controlling for cultural differences. A total of 475 participants completed an online survey comprising of the Sexual Orientations Beliefs Scale (SOBS). ANCOVAs revealed that sexual orientation was a significant factor for all four subscales of the SOBS (naturalness, homogeneity, informativeness, and discreteness). Sexual orientation was the most significant predictor of endorsing different sexual orientation beliefs. We found a significant interaction between gender and sexual orientation, revealing that perceptions of sexual orientation differ between straight-identified men and straight women.

Facial structure and perception of sexual orientation: Research with face models based on photographs of real people.

Some evidence suggests that lay persons are able to perceive sexual orientation from face stimuli above the chance level. A morphometric study of 390 heterosexual and homosexual Canadian people of both sexes reported that facial structure differed depending on the sexual orientation. Gay and heterosexual men differed on three metrics as the most robust multivariate predictors, and lesbian and heterosexual women differed on four metrics. A later study verified the perceptual validity of these multivariate predictors using artificial three-dimensional face models created by manipulating the key parameters. Nevertheless, there is evidence of important processing differences between the perception of real faces and the perception of artificial computer-generated faces. The present study which composed of two experiments tested the robustness of the previous findings and extended the research by experimentally manipulating the facial features in face models created from photographs of real people. Participants of the Experiment 1 achieved an overall accuracy (0.67) significantly above the chance level (0.50) in a binary hetero/homosexual judgement task, with some important differences between male and female judgements. On the other hand, results of the Experiment 2 showed that participants rated the apparent sexual orientation of series of face models created from natural photographs as a continuous linear function of the multivariate predictors. Theoretical implications are discussed.

Pride and Prejudice

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.

Examining Responses to Women’s Same-Sex Performativity: Perceptions of Sexual Orientation and Implications for Bisexual Prejudice

Heterosexual women’s public same-sex performativity (SSP) is thought to have significant negative impacts for queer women (e.g., Hamilton, 2007). SSP may (mis)inform observers’ assumptions about women’s same-sex sexuality more generally. In Studies 1a and 1b (N = 541), we examined how heterosexual people perceive the sexual orientation and motivations of women engaging in SSP. We expanded on conceptualizations of SSP as harmful to queer identities by experimentally examining how exposure to SSP influences heterosexual participants’ bisexual prejudice. In Study 2 (N = 222), we examined bisexual women’s perspectives on SSP and bisexual prejudice. Women who engage in SSP were often perceived as bisexual and as motivated by sexual experimentation and desire to shock onlookers. In Studies 1b and 2, we found that exposure to SSP increased endorsement of bisexual stereotypes and impacted bisexual women’s felt identity legitimacy. These findings raise concerns about the potential of SSP to inform and reinforce bisexual prejudice.

Perceptions of Anticipated Stigma in Gay and Lesbian Workers in Health Services (Argentina)


 This article analyses situations of discrimination, violence and inequality against gay and lesbian workers due to their sexual orientation, gender and / or gender expression in healthcare institutions located in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires. Some of the qualitative findings of a larger study are developed, which had a mixed approach and a cross-sectional, non-experimental design, in order to describe variants of anticipated stigma and perceptions of sexual orientation as potential obstacle at work. The persistence of stigma toward gay and lesbian workers, despite the greater legal and social recognition these groups have gained over the past decades, is a theoretical assumption of the study. While favourable changes are recognized, it is concluded that anticipated stigma persists among this group of workers.

Perceptions of valence and arousal uniquely contribute to perceptions of ambiguous group membership from faces.

Although previous research has considered the role of emotional valence in the perception and communication of group membership, the influence of perceived emotional arousal remains relatively unexplored. Here, we examined how valence and arousal simultaneously contribute to perceptions of sexual orientation and political affiliation at 3 distinct levels of analysis: within perceivers, between perceivers, and between targets. We found that valence distinguished targets best, reflecting socioemotional stereotypes, whereas arousal largely accounted for individual differences among perceivers, suggesting that perceptions of group membership partly depend on how each perceiver evaluates targets' level of arousal. Valence and arousal therefore provide distinct information during social categorization, highlighting the importance of considering different levels of analysis to achieve a more complete understanding of person perception. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Perception of sexual orientation through speech: Generational differences

Previous research has shown that listeners can perceive talkers' sexual orientation at a greater than chance levels from the acoustic characteristics of their speech (Munson et al., J. Phonetics [2006]). Recently, Obeda and Munson (2018, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 143, 1924) compared the perception of 44 gay, lesbian, and heterosexual people's sexual orientation through speech by the young adults reported in Munson et al. 2006 (whose data were collected in 2003) to a group of young adults tested in 2018. The new listeners were matched in age to the 2003 listeners. A number of differences between the two cohorts were found. In particular, the 2018 listeners were less willing to judge heterosexual women's speech as 'sounding heterosexual'. In this presentation, we compare both sets of data to the performance of a new set of listeners who are matched in birth year to the 2003 listeners, and who are currently 33–48 years old. Collection of those data is ongoing. Comparing this new group to the two other groups will allow us to examine whether the apparent generational change observed by Obeda and Munson has led listeners like those in 2003 to reevaluate their perception of sexual orientation through speech in 2018.

Medical students’ perception of sexual orientation in Sagamu, southwestern Nigeria: implications for access to HIV care

Purpose The prevalence of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is about four times higher among individuals with same-sex orientation as against the general population. This may be partly due to judgmental, heteronormative attitudes among health workers, thereby affecting access to care. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to assess the perception of final-year medical students of Olabisi Onabanjo University, Nigeria on sexual orientation and its implications on access to HIV care and support services. Design/methodology/approach A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted among final-year medical students. Data were collected using an interviewer-administered questionnaire and analyzed using SPSS 20. Relevant descriptive and inferential statistics were calculated. Participation was fully voluntary. Findings More males (70 percent) were aware of the concept of sexual orientation than females (60.4 percent). Most (94 percent) males and all female respondents felt homosexuality was against the order of nature. More males (76 percent) than females (62.3 percent) felt men having sex with men and homosexuality were synonymous. More females (50.9 percent) than males (48 percent) felt gay doctors should not be employed in public hospitals. Originality/value Respondents had a poor perception of sexual orientation and there were no significant differences between genders. This could contribute to existing stigmatization against individuals with minority sexual orientations. It should be addressed in the medical curriculum.

Violence motivated by perception of sexual orientation and gender identity: a systematic review.

ObjectiveTo assess the prevalence of physical and sexual violence motivated by perception of sexual orientation and gender identity in sexual and gender minorities.MethodsWe searched nine databases without language restrictions for peer-reviewed and grey literature published from 2000 to April 2016. We included studies with more than 50 participants that measured the prevalence of physical and sexual violence perceived as being motivated by sexual orientation and gender identity or gender expression. We excluded intimate partner violence and self-harm. Due to heterogeneity and the absence of confidence intervals in most studies, we made no meta-analysis.FindingsWe included 76 articles from 50 countries. These covered 74 studies conducted between 1995 and 2014, including a total of 202 607 sexual and gender minority participants. The quality of data was relatively poor due to a lack of standardized measures and sometimes small and non-randomized samples. In studies where all sexual and gender minorities were analysed as one population, the prevalence of physical and sexual violence ranged from 6% (in a study including 240 people) to 25% (49/196 people) and 5.6% (28/504) to 11.4% (55/484), respectively. For transgender people the prevalence ranged from 11.8% (of a subsample of 34 people) to 68.2% (75/110) and 7.0% (in a study including 255 people) to 49.1% (54/110).ConclusionMore data are needed on the prevalence, risk factors and consequences of physical and sexual violence motivated by sexual orientation and gender identity in different geographical and cultural settings. National violence prevention policies and interventions should include sexual and gender minorities.

Perception of Sexual Orientation from Facial Structure: A Study with Artificial Face Models.

Research has shown that lay people can perceive sexual orientation better than chance from face stimuli. However, the relation between facial structure and sexual orientation has been scarcely examined. Recently, an extensive morphometric study on a large sample of Canadian people (Skorska, Geniole, Vrysen, McCormick, & Bogaert, 2015) identified three (in men) and four (in women) facial features as unique multivariate predictors of sexual orientation in each sex group. The present study tested the perceptual validity of these facial traits with two experiments based on realistic artificial 3D face models created by manipulating the key parameters and presented to Spanish participants. Experiment 1 included 200 White and Black face models of both sexes. The results showed an overall accuracy (0.74) clearly above chance in a binary hetero/homosexual judgment task and significant differences depending on the race and sex of the face models. Experiment 2 produced five versions of 24 artificial faces of both sexes varying the key parameters in equal steps, and participants had to rate on a 1-7 scale how likely they thought that the depicted person had a homosexual sexual orientation. Rating scores displayed an almost perfect linear regression as a function of the parameter steps. In summary, both experiments demonstrated the perceptual validity of the seven multivariate predictors identified by Skorska et al. and open up new avenues for further research on this issue with artificial face models.

Disfluent Processing of Nonverbal Cues Helps to Explain Anti-Bisexual Prejudice

Recent studies have documented that metacognitive processes underlying social perception contribute to interpersonal prejudice. For example, individuals categorized as lesbian/gay on the basis of their physical appearance are processed disfluently, and such disfluent processing arouses negative social evaluations. Although this pattern of results has replicated across several independent samples, evidence for the social consequences of perceptual disfluency remains limited to a handful of stigmatized groups. Here, we tested disfluency’s effects among a social group that has received scant attention in research on social perception—namely, bisexual individuals. We found that (a) perceivers achieved above-chance accuracy categorizing targets as bisexual versus not bisexual based upon facial photographs, (b) gender-atypical facial features were associated with bisexual categorizations, (c) targets who were categorized as bisexual and targets who personally identified as bisexual were evaluated more negatively than those who were not categorized/identified as bisexual, and (d) disfluent processing of nonverbal cues—especially gendered cues—helped to explain anti-bisexual prejudice. Collectively, these findings contribute to the growing literature on perceptions of sexual orientation and highlight the generalizability of perceptual fluency for understanding diverse forms of prejudice that arise in the early moments of social perception.

How women's sexual orientation guides accuracy of interpersonal judgements of other women

This research examines how women's sexual orientation guides the accuracy of judgements of other women. One hundred ten judges (67 straight and 43 lesbian women) watched videotapes of 9 targets (4 straight and 5 lesbian) and made judgements about the targets' thoughts, emotions, personality, and sexual orientation. Accuracy scores were created for each judge by comparing judgements to criterion data gathered about targets. Straight judges were significantly more accurate at judging thoughts and marginally more accurate at judging emotions compared to lesbian judges. There were no significant differences in judging personality. Straight targets' thoughts and personality were more easily assessed than lesbian targets' while lesbians' emotions were more easily judged than straight targets'. Lesbian judges were more accurate at judging sexual orientation regardless of their tendency to categorize women as lesbian compared to straight judges. Findings support past research on the accurate perception of sexual orientation and contribute to understanding how sexual orientation guides person perception.

Indexical meanings of [s+] among Copenhagen youth: Social perception of a phonetic variant in different prosodic contexts

AbstractIt is well documented that the same sociolinguistic feature can be used as a sociolinguistic resource with different indexical potentials in different linguistic as well as social contexts. Often, however, indexical meanings of a specific feature are related to or derived from one another. In this article we present the results of a perceptual study of indexical meanings of alveolar versus fronted (s)—[s] versus [s+]—in different registers. The data consist of responses to male speakers' use of [s] and [s+] respectively, in two different registers that may be labelled “modern Copenhagen speech” and “street language.” Results show that the [s+] indexes femininity and gayness when it occurs in “modern Copenhagen,” whereas the (s)-variation has a different and less significant effect when occurring in “street language.” We discuss the implications for theories of indexical fields and the relation between features and clusters of features in speakers' perceptions. (Indexical meaning, phonetic variation, fronted /s/, perception of sexual orientation and ethnicity, matched guise technique).

Explicit and Implicit Methods in Quantitative Analyses of Sociophonetic Variation

Abstract This viewpoint paper provides an overview of explicit and implicit methods in sociophonetic perception studies, illustrates how they can be used to measure the relationship between social factors and phonetic variation, and demonstrates how they can prove useful complements to more traditional sociolinguistic methods. The first section addresses explicit measures and gives an example of an explicit measures task exploring the relationships between phonetic variation and perceptions of speaker sexual orientation, height, age, and social class in Puerto Rican Spanish. Results show that an explicit measures task can provide a window into fine-grained phonetic variation associated with social factors that is not available through traditional impressionistic methods. The second part of the paper provides an overview of implicit measures, including an example of the use of implicit measures in a response time task that quantitatively assesses the relationship between /s/ variation and perceptions of sexual orientation in Puerto Rican Spanish. The paper concludes with a summary of how the results gathered from these types of experiments can further our understanding of theoretical issues in Hispanic Linguistics.

Speaker attitude as a predictive factor in listener perception of gay men’s speech

Research on listener identification of sexual orientation (e.g., Gaudio 1994, Piccolo 2008) has produced conflicting results. I argue that one contributing factor to linguistic perception of sexual orientation is the speaker’s assumptions about gay male ways of speaking American English or about specific linguistic features that the speaker believes listeners will associate with “sounding gay” in American English. Interviews I conducted with eight gay men highlight the ways in which positive and negative attitudes become realized in discourse about sounding gay or gay male ways of speaking and its link to other social practices. I then present results from a language perception study, which suggest that negative attitudes toward sounding gay decrease the possibility that a speaker will use linguistic features associated with sounding gay and will, as a result, be less likely to be perceived as gay than gay men who hold positive attitudes toward sounding gay.

The Influence of Target and Perceiver Race in the Categorisation of Male Sexual Orientation

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.

‘Out’ gay and lesbian faculty and the inclusion of sexual orientation topics in teacher preparation programmes in the USA

Do ‘out’ lesbian and gay faculty influence the inclusion of sexual orientation as a form of diversity in their teacher preparation programmes? Data gathered from 142 teacher preparation programmes across the USA (representing the preparation of 23,000–30,000 new teachers annually) suggest they do not. Likewise, the priority placed upon sexual orientation topics within programmes was unrelated to the presence of out gay and lesbians among programme faculty. The presence of out gay and lesbian faculty was also unrelated to programme coordinators’ beliefs that faculty ignorance, resistance or discomfort regarding sexual orientation topics were challenges to inclusion. Finally, the presence of out gay and lesbian faculty was unrelated to programme coordinators’ perceptions of sexual orientation as a factor associated with student risk. Directions for further research are discussed.

Loose Lips and Silver Tongues, or, Projecting Sexual Orientation Through Speech

AbstractThe 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.

College Students' Perceptions of Sexual Orientation and Gender Given Job Descriptions and Titles for Interior Decoration, Interior Design, and Architecture

To examine perceptions of design professionals, this study was designed to examine possible gender-bias based on job title and description and whether there is a relationship between the two perceptions. A respondent's sex was significantly related to perceptions of a design professional's sex. Both respondents' sex and the perceived sex of the design professional had significant effects on the perceived sexual orientation of the design professionals. Furthermore, the results also indicated that if the design professional was perceived to be male, there was a higher tendency that he would be perceived as homosexual, especially by a male respondent.

Role of appearance and nonverbal behaviors in the perception of sexual orientation among lesbians and gay men.

According to the zero-acquaintance paradigm gay men and lesbians possess the ability to identify other homosexuals accurately after only very brief interpersonal contact. Given the vulnerability gay men and lesbians face in terms of antigay violence and prejudice, perceptual accuracy provides self-protection. In an exploratory study, 123 respondents were classified as low, moderate, and high perceivers on the basis of their responses to a recognition index designed by the authors. Next, respondents rated on a series of 5-point Likert scales the helpfulness of several characteristics for identifying gay men and lesbians. Analysis supported the importance of eye contact for lesbians and gay men in identifying one another. For both lesbian and gay male participants, several other variables emerged as significantly helpful in identifying gay men: clothing style and fit, jewelry, facial expressions, posture, body type, walk or gait, and both the types and frequencies of gestures.