Vocal Stereotypes toward Women and Men Diverging in Sexual Orientations: A Combination of Production-Related and Perceptive Approaches

• Applicant: Dr. Sven Kachel
• Subject Area: Social Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology ; General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: from 2019 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 415928944

• Final Report Year: 2024

Final Report Abstract

Social characteristics such as gender, regionality, and age are communicated through the way people speak. So-called perceptually ambiguous group memberships, such as sexual orientation, are also expressed and perceived vocally. Hereby, the stereotype of gender inversion is used (e.g., compared to heterosexual men, gay men are believed to be more similar to heterosexual women). The overarching aim of the present research project was to explain under which conditions stereotypical ways of speaking are used to mark sexual orientations and which voice parameters create the impression of a certain sexual orientation. To this end, nine studies were conducted, combining approaches and methods from social psychology, cognitive psychology, phonetics, and gender studies. We have shown that text topic and experimenter influence the vocal expression of sexual orientation and that this partially depends on often overlooked differences within the groups (e.g., exclusively vs. mainly lesbian women). Using voice morphing, we were able to show that vocal information had a causal effect on the auditory impression formation about sexual orientation. However, compared to visual signals such as faces, voices appear to be less suitable for conveying accurate information about sexual orientation. This is especially true for women. Finally, we were able to show that lesbian/gay people were discriminated against based on subtle cues alone (e.g., short videos without sound). Without explicitly mentioning their sexual orientation, they were attributed lower leadership skills or perceived as more ostracizable.

Publications

• Gender (Conformity) Matters: Cross-Dimensional and Cross-Modal Associations in Sexual Orientation Perception. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 39(1), 40-66.
  Kachel, Sven; Steffens, Melanie C.; Preuß, Sabine & Simpson, Adrian P.
  
• LGBT identity intersections: An attempt to integrate theoretical models of impression formation [Talk]. LGBTIQ-Studies Pre-Conference of the European Association of Social Psychology, Online.
  Steffens, M., Niedlich, C. & Kachel, S.
  
• Sexual orientation information and hiring: Can individualizing information lead to negative stereotyping of sexual minority group members?. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 52(5), 287-304.
  Niedlich, Claudia; Kachel, Sven & Steffens, Melanie C.
  
• Assessing diversity dimensions in environmental psychology: Challenges and recommendations. Umweltpsychologie, 27(1), 8–33.
  Landmann, H., Kachel, S., Kommerscheidt, L., Lange, F. & Richter, I.
  
• Dressing through Crisis. Does Clothing Symbolically Protect Us from Existential Threats?. Extended Views, 105-118. Böhlau Verlag.
  Gruber, Robert & Kachel, Sven
  
• Dressing up social psychology: Empirically investigating the psychological functions of clothing using the example of symbolic protection. British Journal of Social Psychology, 63(2), 1003-1035.
  Gruber, Robert; Häfner, Michael & Kachel, Sven
  
• Queer events, relationships, and sports: Does topic influence speakers’ acoustic expression of sexual orientation? [Poster presentation]. 24th INTERSPEECH Conference, Dublin, Ireland
  Kachel, S., Pöhlmann, M. & Nussbaum, T.
  
• Queer Events, Relationships, and Sports: Does Topic Influence Speakers’ Acoustic Expression of Sexual Orientation?. INTERSPEECH 2023, 4269-4273. ISCA.
  Kachel, Sven; Pöhlmann, Manuel & Nussbaum, Christine
  
• The intersecting impact of sexual orientation and gender on leadership perception: Investigating the differences between person-related signals [Poster presentation]
  Kachel, S., Gaisbauer, N., Niedlich, S., Gruber, R. & Steffens, M.C.
  
• Gaining masculine power through guns? The impact of masculinity threat on attitudes toward guns. Frontiers in Psychology, 15.
  Kachel, Sven; Bloch, Tibor; Bosson, Jennifer K.; Lorenz, Lea L. & Steffens, Melanie C.
  
• Gender role nonconformity as a key factor in ostracism experiences of sexual minorities [Talk]. Annual Convention of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, San Diego, CA, USA
  Büttner, C., Rudert, S. C. & Kachel, S.
  
• Morphosyntactic stereotypes of speakers with different genders and sexual orientations: an experimental investigation. Linguistics, 62(6), 1581-1625.
  Posio, Pekka; Kachel, Sven & Uclés-Ramada, Gloria
  
• Speakers’ vocal expression of sexual orientation depends on experimenter gender. Speech Communication, 156, 103023.
  Kachel, Sven; Simpson, Adrian P. & Steffens, Melanie C.
  
• Straighter voice information leads to straighter perceptions: Causal implications for sexual orientation perception using a voice-morphing approach [Accepted Talk]. 18th International Conference on Language and Social Psychology, Tallinn, Estonia
  Kachel, S., Pöhlmann, M. & Nussbaum, C.
  
• Voice-based perception of minority groups: Processes and Consequences [Accepted Symposium]. 18th International Conference on Language and Social Psychology, Tallinn, Estonia
  Fasoli, F. & Kachel, S.