Even so, people often believe they can rely on their gut to intuit things about other people. Stereotypes often influence these impressions, whether it's that a black man is dangerous, a woman won't be a good leader or a fashionable man is gay. Scroll down for video Researchers presented pictures, sound clips and videos of real gay and straight people to participants, who then categorized them as gay or straight. Half of the people in the pictures, clips and videos were gay and half were straight, which meant that the participants would demonstrate an accurate gaydar if their accuracy rate were significantly higher than 50%. Participants tended to have about 60% accuracy, and the researchers concluded that people really do possess an accurate gaydar. Many studies have replicated these results, with their authors touting them as evidence that gaydar exists. This study fall prey to a mathematical error that, when corrected, actually leads to the opposite conclusion: Most of the time, gaydar will be highly inaccurate. How can this be, if people in these studies are accurate at rates significantly higher than 50 percent? William Cox with the University of Wisconsin-Madison explains that there's a problem in the basic premise of these studies: Namely, having a pool of people in which 50 percent of the targets are gay. In the real world, only around 3 to 8 percent of adults identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual. Stereotypes related to gay men and lesbians often operate under the guise of 'gaydar' rather than stereotyping. Like many purported intuitions, however, gaydar often relies on stereotypes. While many people believe stereotyping is wrong, calling it 'gaydar' merely provides a cover for using stereotypical traits — like someone's fashion sense, profession or hairstyle — to jump to conclusions about someone being gay. Nonetheless, some researchers have published studies that, at first glance, appear to show that people have accurate gaydar. In some recent work, my colleagues and I have been able to demonstrate how the perpetuation of the gaydar myth has unintended negative consequences. We've also identified a mathematical flaw in some previous gaydar research, calling into question the results. My colleagues and I suspected that even people who would normally try to refrain from stereotyping might be more likely to use gay stereotypes if they are led to believe they have gaydar. To test this idea, we conducted an experiment. We told some participants that scientific evidence says gaydar was a real ability, led others to believe that gaydar is just another term for stereotyping and said nothing about gaydar to a third group the control. Participants then judged whether men were gay or straight based on information ostensibly taken from social media profiles. While many people believe stereotyping is wrong, calling it 'gaydar' merely provides a cover for using stereotypical traits — like someone's fashion sense, profession or hairstyle — to jump to conclusions about someone being gay This design allowed us to assess how often people jumped to the conclusion that men were gay based on stereotypically gay interests. Those who were told gaydar is real stereotyped much more than the control group, and participants stereotyped much less when they had been told that gaydar is just another term for stereotyping. These patterns provided strong support for the idea that belief in gaydar encourages stereotyping by simply disguising it under a different label. In some ways, the idea of gaydar — even if it's just stereotyping — seems useful at best and harmless at worst. In a 2014 study on prejudice-based aggression, the same research team had participants play a game with a subject in another room that involved administering electric shocks to the subject. When the research team implied that the subject was gay using a stereotypical cue, participants shocked him far more often than when the research team explicitly told them he was gay. Using gaydar as a way to talk innocuously or jokingly about stereotyping — 'Oh, that guy sets off my gaydar' — trivializes stereotyping and makes it seem like no big deal. But we know that stereotypes have many negative consequences, so we shouldn't be encouraging it on any level. First, stereotyping can facilitate prejudice. In a study on prejudice-based aggression, we had participants play a game that involved administering electric shocks to a subject in the other room. Participants learned only one thing about this other person, either that he was gay or simply liked shopping people tend to assume men who like shopping are gay. In one condition, therefore, the participants knew that the man was gay and in the other they might have privately inferred that he was gay though it wasn't confirmed, but that wasn't known to anyone else who might have accused them of being prejudiced. These conditions are especially important for a subset of people who are covertly prejudiced: They're aware that they're prejudiced and ok with it, but don't want others to know. We can identify these people with some well-established questionnaire measures, and we know that they express prejudice only when they're able to get away with it. As we predicted, these covertly prejudiced people tended to refrain from shocking the man who was confirmed as gay, but delivered extremely high levels of shocks to the man who liked shopping. If they had shocked the first man, people could accuse them of prejudice 'You shocked him because he was gay! A study from Northeastern University in Boston claims to have made a breakthrough in this area of research by establishing that lesbians are better at detecting sexual orientation in other women. But straight women are more attune to detecting emotion and personality in their peers. After filming, these subjects watched themselves on screen and marked down the emotions and thoughts they experienced at particular points during the interview. In a follow-up experiment, 100 'judges' - 67 straight women and 43 lesbians - were asked to watch the same videos and at each time when the target indicated a feeling or emotion, the judge had to guess what that feeling or emotion was. The judges also had to guess the participants' personalities and the researchers scored these judges based on four criteria: whether they accurately detected the targets' emotions, thoughts, personality, and sexual orientation. While the lesbians were found to be better at determining sexual orientation, the straight women were better at assessing thoughts and emotions. They were particularly good at this when the people they were judging were also straight. Both groups did an equally good job of evaluating personality traits. Interestingly, the straight people were generally easier to pick out, to both straight and lesbian judges, in comparison to their lesbian counterparts. But if others accused participants of prejudice in the second condition, it could be plausibly denied 'I didn't think he was gay! In other words, stereotyping can give people opportunities to express prejudices without fear of reprisal. Second, stereotypes — even innocuous ones — are troublesome for a number of reasons: They lead us to think narrowly about people before we get to know them, they can justify discrimination and oppression, and, for members of stereotyped groups, they can even lead to depression and other mental health problems. Encouraging stereotyping under the guise of gaydar contributes — directly or indirectly — to stereotyping's downstream consequences. Some researchers say that stereotypes about gay people possess a grain of truth, which could lend credence to the idea of having accurate gaydar. In these studies, researchers presented pictures, sound clips and videos of real gay and straight people to the participants, who then categorized them as gay or straight. Most of the time, gaydar will be highly inaccurate. In the real world, only around 3 to 8 percent of adults identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual and people tend to make assumptions that more people are gay - based on stereotypes Half of the people in the pictures, clips and videos were gay and half were straight, which meant that the participants would demonstrate an accurate gaydar if their accuracy rate were significantly higher than 50 percent. Indeed, participants tended to have about 60 percent accuracy, and the researchers concluded that people really do possess an accurate gaydar. Many studies have replicated these results, with their authors — and the media — touting them as evidence that gaydar exists. But as we've been able to show in two recent papers, all of these previous studies fall prey to a mathematical error that, when corrected, actually leads to the opposite conclusion: Most of the time, gaydar will be highly inaccurate. How can this be, if people in these studies are accurate at rates significantly higher than 50 percent? There's a problem in the basic premise of these studies: Namely, having a pool of people in which 50 percent of the targets are gay. In the real world, only around 3 to 8 percent of adults identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual. What does this mean for interpreting the 60 percent accuracy rate? Scientists claim they can predict whether someone is gay or straight with up to 70 per cent accuracy by looking at their DNA. It has long been believed that sexuality has a biological basis — with certain genes linked to being gay. Dr Tuck Ngun, from the University of California at Los Angeles said: 'To our knowledge, this is the first example of a predictive model for sexual orientation based on molecular markers. This finding has led scientists to believe there is a genetic component to being gay. To pinpoint the genetic areas which are linked to some people being gay, Dr Ngun and his team studied the genes of 47 pairs of adult male identical twins. The study involved 37 pairs of twins in which one brother was homosexual and the other heterosexual, and 10 pairs in which both were homosexual. Using a computer program called Fuzzy Forest they found that nine small regions of the genetic code played the key role on deciding whether someone is heterosexual or homosexual. The research looked at a process called 'methylation' of the DNA — which has been compared to a switch on the DNA — making it have a stronger or weaker effect. This process can be triggered by hormonal effects on the growing foetus in the womb. While identical twins have exactly the same genetic sequence, environmental factors lead to differences in how their DNA is methylated. Thus, by studying twins, the researchers could control for genetic differences and tease out the effect of methylation. This alteration of the gene is known as an 'epigenetic' effect. Think about what the 60 percent accuracy means for the straight targets in these studies. If people have 60 percent accuracy in identifying who is straight, it means that 40 percent of the time, straight people are incorrectly categorized. In a world where 95 percent of people are straight, 60 percent accuracy means that for every 100 people, there will be 38 straight people incorrectly assumed to be gay, but only three gay people correctly categorized. Even when people seem gay — and set off all the alarms on your gaydar — it's far more likely that they're straight. More straight people will seem to be gay than there are actual gay people in total. If you're disappointed to learn that your gaydar might not operate as well as you think it does, there's a quick fix: Rather than coming to a snap judgment about people based on what they wear or how they talk, you're probably better off just asking them.
