Proxemic Behaviors During Gay/Straight Interactions: An Automated Analysis Through Kinect Depth-Sensing Camera

Through two experimental studies (N = 150), we investigated proxemic behaviors featuring gay/straight dyadic interactions. In doing so, for the first time, we relied on an IR depth camera and considered the interpersonal volume between the interactants, a novel feature that exhaustively captures interactants' proxemic behaviors. Study 1 revealed that the straight participants' implicit sexual bias - but not the explicit prejudice - significantly predicted their volume while interacting with a study accomplice who was presented as gay (vs. straight). However, unlike previous research, mixed-model analyses revealed the higher their implicit bias was, the smaller the interpersonal volume that they maintained with the gay study accomplice, especially when the conversation focused on an intergroup-related (vs. neutral) topic. Study 2 was mainly designed to deepen this main finding. Results documented that highly implicitly biased participants who maintained a smaller interpersonal volume with a gay (vs. straight) study accomplice were more cognitively depleted after the interaction than low-biased participants, possibly suggesting that highly implicitly biased straight people can control this nonverbal behavior to appear as nonprejudiced in the gay interactant's eyes. Implications for research on sexual prejudice and intergroup nonverbal behaviors are discussed.

Too Manly and Too Straight? Perceived Sexual Orientation of Black and White Men and Women

Using data from an online survey assessing perceptions of 12 target¹ photos of Black and White males² and females, the current study examined a moderated mediation model of sexual orientation perceptions (N = 310). Results indicated that perceived masculinity/femininity was not a mediator in the association between target gender and perceived sexual orientation. Black male targets were perceived to be more heterosexual than White male targets, Black female targets were perceived as less heterosexual than White female targets, and Black targets were perceived as more masculine than White targets. These findings may indicate rigid gender- and sexuality-related expectations for Black men. Black women who are perceived as gay may be more at risk of related interpersonal harm than White women. Black sexual minority individuals may face challenges in navigating identity concealment or disclosure. Future research should explore the potential antecedents and consequences of perceptions of Black individuals' sexual orientation.

Stigmatization of 'gay-sounding' voices: The role of heterosexual, lesbian, and gay individuals' essentialist beliefs

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.

Feeling correct is feeling prejudiced: The differential effects of attitude correctness and attitude clarity on evaluations of outgroups

Global attitude certainty consists of two subconstructs: attitude clarity—certainty that one is aware of one’s true attitudes—and attitude correctness, certainty that one’s attitudes are morally correct and valid. Attitude correctness is more often associated with group-related psychological and behavioral outcomes than attitude clarity. As such, we expected that attitude correctness, but not attitude clarity, would be associated with more negative attitudes toward outgroups when group boundaries are defined by attitudes. Across four studies, greater attitude correctness related to more negative attitudes toward attitudinal outgroups regardless of context (e.g., political, religious); attitude clarity’s relationship to prejudice was inconsistent (Studies 1a and 2: positive or no relationship; Study 3: negative; Studies 1b and 4: no relationship). In Studies 2 and 3, mediational analyses showed that greater attitude correctness was associated with stronger beliefs that group boundaries are sharp and distinct (i.e., discreteness beliefs), which in turn was associated with greater prejudice. Finally, Study 4 demonstrated that the attitude correctness–prejudice link was associated with greater intention to engage in competitive behaviors in a conflict resolution scenario with an outgroup member.

Effort-Based Decision-Making and Gross Motor Performance: Are They Linked?

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between effort-based decision making and gross motor performance. Effort-based decision making was measured using a modified version of the Effort Expenditure for Rewards Task (EEfRT), in which participants pressed a button on a keyboard to fill a bar on a screen for monetary reward. Participants received monetary rewards that were commensurate with the level of effort that they were willing to expend. Gross motor performance was measured with a walking task, in which participants matched their steps to the beat of an audio metronome; they walked to metronome beats that were slower and also faster than their normal walking pace. We hypothesized that increased effort during the effort-based decision making task would be paired with an increase in steps taken per minute during the gross motor task. However, the results of this study indicated a lack of a statistically significant relationship between the effort-based decision making task and the gross motor task. Planning rather than decision-making may have been the cognitive construct that governed our gross motor task. These findings can be beneficial when thinking about potential interventions for populations who experience deficits in motor performance and cognition as well as for understanding the relationship between both cognitive and motor performance in healthy adults.

Aesthetic as genetic: The epistemological violence of gaydar research

In recent years, “gaydar” has come under increasing scientific scrutiny. Gaydar researchers have found that we can accurately judge sexual orientation at better than chance levels from various nonverbal cues. Why they could find what they did is typically chalked up to gender inverted phenotypic variations in craniofacial structure that distinguish homosexuals. This interpretation of gaydar data (the “hegemonic interpretation”) maintains a construction of homosexuality as both a “natural kind” and an “entitative” category. As a result, culturally and historically contingent markers of homosexuality are naturalized under the guise of gaydar. Of significant relevance to this article’s critique of gaydar research is that the hegemonic interpretation is presented as politically advantageous for LGB people by its authors, an undertheorized assumption that risks sanctioning an epistemological violence with unfortunate, demobilizing sociopolitical consequences. This critique is contextualized within current debates regarding intimate/sexual citizenship and advocates, instead, for a queer political ethic that considers such cultural erasure to be politically untenable.

Perceptions of Sexual Orientation From Minimal Cues

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.