Who wants to sound straight? Sexual majority and minority stereotypes, beliefs and desires about auditory gaydar

Abstract

Research on the accuracy of ‘gaydar’ judgments has burgeoned but rarely considered targets’ perspectives on cues that signal a person's sexual orientation to others. We examined sexual majority and minority speakers’ (N = 241) beliefs about the extent to which their voices act as a ‘gaydar’ clue to others, and speakers’ desire to be so disclosed. Men believed their voices were more revealing of their sexual orientation than women did. Moreover, sexual majority participants, particularly masculine-sounding heterosexual men, desired to be disclosed the most of all. Sexual majority participants perceived their voices as gender typical and sexual minority participants perceived their voices as gender atypical, and participants whose beliefs were most consistent with this pattern also believed most that their voices acted as gaydar cues. The findings suggested that group differences in beliefs about gaydar may complicate individuals’ attempts to judge each other's sexual orientations from minimal cues.