ACOUSTIC CORRELATES OF PERCEIVED SEXUAL ORIENTATION

This study aimed to examine whether sexual orientation can be detected from monologue readings and narration. The main research question was, if naïve listeners could perceive the speakers’ sexual orientation accurately, can we conclude that there are some potential phonetic cues which signal one’s sexual orientation. 10 openly gay men and 10 straight men recorded a scientific passage, a poem and a narration. These recordings were played to 30 listeners for judgments of perceived sexual orientation. Listeners correctly identified the sexual orientation of these speakers at a rate of 80%. On the other hand, the results of acoustic measurements did not show any particular pattern that could be identified as an indicator of the sexual orientation of the speaker.