Abstract
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.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
A previous pilot study showed that manipulation of ±2 standardized units in those parameters was sufficient to originate some (subtle) facial changes in a realistic way.
A previous pilot study had shown that adding (or subtracting) two standardized units at the zero position of the Forehead—small/large control caused a more pronounced effect than in the other controls.
The size of the steps in each parameter (number of units) was adjusted to avoid greatly exaggerated versions on the extremes.
Skorska et al. (2015) used the label “more puckered” mouth several times to refer to lesbian women; this facial trait corresponds to the FaceGen parameter called “Mouth protruding-retracted,” which reached a partial correlation of −.42 with sexual orientation in women (Skorska et al., 2015, Table 2) (negative correlation indicates that lesbian women had less of that metrics; i.e., less retracted mouth). There is another FaceGen parameter called “Mouth–Lips puckered/retracted” which, in Skorska et al.’s work, yielded a lower partial correlation (−.31, Table 2). In the present study, the former one was the experimentally manipulated parameter.
References
Ambady, N., Hallahan, M., & Conner, B. (1999). Accuracy of judgments of sexual orientation from thin slices of behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 538–547.
Baayen, R. H., Davidson, D. J., & Bates, D. M. (2008). Mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items. Journal of Memory and Language, 59, 390–412. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2007.12.005.
Berger, G., Hank, L., Rauzi, T., & Simkins, L. (1987). Detection of sexual orientation by heterosexuals and homosexuals. Journal of Homosexuality, 13, 83–100.
Brambilla, M., Riva, P., & Rule, N. O. (2013). Familiarity increases the accuracy of categorizing male sexual orientation. Personality and Individual Differences, 55, 193–195. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2013.02.023.
Brysbaert, M. (2007). “The language-as-fixed-effect fallacy”: Some simple SPSS solutions to a complex problem (Version 2.0). Royal Holloway: University of London.
DeBruine, L., Jones, B., Unger, L., Little, A., & Feinberg, D. (2007). Dissociating averageness and attractiveness: Attractive faces are not always average. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 33, 1420–1430. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.33.6.1420.
Ferreira, L. (2015). How many African states outlaw same-sex relations? (At least 34). Report retrieved 28 August 2015 from https://africacheck.org/.
Freeman, J. B., Johnson, K. L., Ambady, N., & Rule, N. O. (2010). Sexual orientation perception involves gendered facial cues. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 1318–1331. doi:10.1177/0146167210378755.
Hughes, S. M., & Bremme, R. (2011). The effects of facial symmetry and sexually-dimorphic facial proportions on assessments of sexual orientation. Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology, 5, 214–230. doi:10.1037/h0099261.
Johnson, K. L., Freeman, J. B., & Pauker, K. (2012). Race is gendered: How covarying phenotypes and stereotypes bias sex categorization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102, 116–131.
Johnson, K. L., & Ghavami, N. (2011). At the crossroads of conspicuous and concealable: What race categories communicate about sexual orientation. PLoS ONE, 6, e18025. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0018025.
Judd, C. M., Westfall, J., & Kenny, D. A. (2012). Treating stimuli as a random factor in social psychology: A new and comprehensive solution to a pervasive but largely ignored problem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103, 54–69. doi:10.1037/a0028347.
Lefevre, C., Ewbank, M., Calder, A., von dem Hagen, E., & Perrett, D. (2013). It is all in the face: Carotenoid skin coloration loses attractiveness outside the face. Biology Letters, 9(6), 20130633. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2013.0633.
Rehnman, J. (2007). The role of gender in face recognition. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Stockholm University.
Rieger, G., Linsenmeier, J. A. W., Gygax, L., García, S., & Bailey, J. M. (2010). Dissecting “gaydar”: Accuracy and the role of masculinity-femininity. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 39, 124–140. doi:10.1007/s10508-008-9405-2.
Rosenthal, R., & Rubin, D. B. (1982). A simple general purpose display of magnitude of experimental effect. Journal of Educational Psychology, 74, 708–712. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.74.2.166.
Rule, N. O. (2011). The influence of target and perceived race in the categorisation of male sexual orientation. Perception, 40, 830–839. doi:10.1068/p7001.
Rule, N. O. (2017). Perceptions of sexual orientation from minimal cues. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 46, 129–139. doi:10.1007/s10508-016-0779-2.
Rule, N. O., & Ambady, N. (2008). Brief exposures: Male sexual orientation is accurately perceived at 50 ms. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 1100–1105. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2007.12.001.
Rule, N. O., Ambady, N., Adams, R. B., & Macrae, C. N. (2008). Accuracy and awareness in the perception and categorization of male sexual orientation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 1019–1028. doi:10.1037/a0013194.
Rule, N. O., Ambady, N., & Hallett, K. C. (2009a). Female sexual orientation is perceived accurately, rapidly, and automatically from the face and its features. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 1245–1251. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2009.07.010.
Rule, N. O., Ishii, K., Ambady, N., Rosen, K. S., & Hallett, K. C. (2011). Found in translation: Cross-cultural consensus in the accurate categorization of male sexual orientation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37, 1449–1507. doi:10.1177/0146167211415630.
Rule, N. O., Macrae, C. N., & Ambady, N. (2009b). Ambiguous group membership is extracted automatically from faces. Psychological Science, 20, 441–443. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02314.x.
Singular Inversions. (2010). FaceGen Modeller, Version 3.5. www.facegen.com.
Skorska, M. N., Geniole, S. N., Vrysen, B. M., McCormick, C. M., & Bogaert, A. F. (2015). Facial structure predicts sexual orientation in both men and women. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 44, 1377–1394. doi:10.1007/s10508-014-0454-4.
Sylva, D., Rieger, G., Linsenmeier, J. A. W., & Bailey, J. M. (2010). Concealment of sexual orientation. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 39, 141–152. doi:10.1007/s10508-008-9466-2.
Tanaka, J. W., Kiefer, M., & Bukach, C. M. (2004). A holistic account of the own-race effect in face recognition: Evidence from a cross-cultural study. Cognition, 93, B1–B9. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2003.09.011.
Tskhay, K. O., & Rule, N. O. (2013). Accuracy in categorizing perceptually ambiguous groups: A review and meta-analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 17, 72–86. doi:10.1177/1088868312461308.
Valentova, J. V., Kleisner, K., Havlicek, J., & Neustupa, J. (2014). Shape differences between the faces of homosexual and heterosexual men. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 43, 353–361. doi:10.1007/s10508-013-0194-x.
Valentova, J. V., Rieger, G., Havlicek, J., Linsenmeier, J. A. W., & Bailey, J. M. (2011). Judgments of sexual orientation and masculinity–femininity based on thin slices of behavior: A cross-cultural comparison. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 40, 1145–1152. doi:10.1007/s10508-011-9818-1.
Westfall, J., Kenny, D. A., & Judd, C. M. (2014). Statistical power and optimal design in experiments in which samples of participants respond to samples of stimuli. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143, 2020–2045. doi:10.1037/xge0000014.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
None.
Informed Consent
All individual participants included in this study gave their informed consent.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
González-Álvarez, J. Perception of Sexual Orientation from Facial Structure: A Study with Artificial Face Models. Arch Sex Behav 46, 1251–1260 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-016-0929-6
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-016-0929-6