Faces and Sexual Orientation Judgments: Belief Matters

People often use facial features to guess someone's sexual orientation. Masculine men and feminine women are usually judged as straight, while feminine men and masculine women are considered not straight. Two studies explored how strongly believing in gender stereotypes affects these judgments. In both studies, participants looked at 80 faces of varying gender typicality and then filled out a survey on their beliefs in gender stereotypes. In the second study, they also rated their prejudice against different sexual orientations. The results showed that people who strongly believed in gender stereotypes were more likely to judge a face as straight if it looked typical for that gender. Interestingly, in the second study, prejudice against certain sexual orientations was linked to how people used these facial cues, and this was all tied to their belief in gender stereotypes. This tells us that what we believe about gender roles can greatly influence how we judge others' sexual orientation.