Gaydar and the Fallacy of Decontextualized Measurement

Abstract

Recent media coverage of studies about "gaydar," the supposed ability to detect another's sexual orientation through visual cues, reveal problems in which the ideals of scientific precision strip the context from intrinsically social phenomena. This fallacy of objective measurement, as we term it, leads to nonsensical claims based on the predictive accuracy of statistical significance. We interrogate these gaydar studies' assumption that there is some sort of pure biological measure of perception of sexual orientation. Instead, we argue that the concept of gaydar inherently exists within a social context and that this should be recognized when studying it. We use this case as an example of a more general concern about illusory precision in the measurement of social phenomena and suggest statistical strategies to address common problems.

Publisher

Society for Sociological Science

Publication Date

5-24-2018

Publication Title

Sociological Science

Department

Sociology

Additional Department

Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies

Document Type

Article

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/10.15195/v5.a12

Keywords

Classification, Facial appearance, Sexual orientation

Language

English

Format

text

Link to Full Text

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