by Devin Lowe 
 
 "Gaydar" — the purported ability to infer whether people are gay or straight based on their appearance — seemed to get a scientific boost from a 2008 study that concluded people could accurately guess someone's sexual orientation based on photographs of their faces. 
 
 In a new paper published in the Journal of Sex Research, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison challenge what they call "the gaydar myth." William Cox, an assistant scientist in the Department of Psychology and the lead author, says gaydar isn't accurate and is actually a harmful form of stereotyping. 
 
 "Most people think of stereotyping as inappropriate," Cox says. "But if you're not calling it 'stereotyping,' if you're giving it this other label and camouflaging it as 'gaydar,' it appears to be more socially and personally acceptable." 
 
 Cox and his team questioned the validity of the previous research, citing differences in the quality of the photos used for the gay and straight people featured in the study. The gay men and lesbians, according to Cox's studies, had higher quality pictures than their straight counterparts. When researchers controlled for differences in photo quality, participants were unable to tell who was gay and straight. 
 
 Another reason people's judgments of sexual orientation are often wrong, Cox says, is that such a small percentage of the population — 5 percent or less — is gay. 
 
 "Imagine that 100 percent of gay men wear pink shirts all the time, and 10 percent of straight men wear pink shirts all the time. Even though all gay men wear pink shirts, there would still be twice as many straight men wearing pink shirts. So, even in this extreme example, people who rely on pink shirts as a stereotypic cue to assume men are gay will be wrong two-thirds of the time," Cox says. 
 
 Cox authored the paper with professors Patricia Devine and Janet Hyde and UW-Madison graduate Alyssa Bischmann. 
 
 In one of the studies, Cox and his team manipulated what participants understood about gaydar by providing different explanations of gaydar for three groups. The researchers told one group that gaydar is real, told another that gaydar is stereotyping, and did not define gaydar for the third group. 
 
 The group that was led to believe gaydar is real stereotyped much more often than the other groups, assuming that men were gay based on the stereotypic cues — statements such as "he likes shopping." 
 
 "If you tell people they have gaydar, it legitimizes the use of those stereotypes," Cox says. 
 
 That's harmful, he says, because stereotypes limit opportunities for members of stereotyped groups, narrowing how we think about them and promoting prejudice and discrimination — even aggression. 
 
 In a 2014 study on prejudice-based aggression, Cox and Devine 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 stereotypic cue, participants shocked him far more often than when the research team explicitly told them he was gay. 
 
 "There was a subset of people who were personally very prejudiced, but they didn't want other people to think that they were prejudiced," Cox says. "They tended to express prejudice only when they could get away with it." 
 
 Cox hopes his research counteracts the gaydar myth and exposes it as something more harmful than most people realize. 
 
 "Recognizing when a stereotype is activated can help you overcome it and make sure that it doesn't influence your actions," Cox says. 

 
 
 You do not have a good 'gaydar.' Stop. (Photo by Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images) 
 
 A new study suggests that 'gaydar' -- the sixth sense by which many insist they can just tell that someone they meet isn't heterosexual -- is bad in two big ways. For starters, it doesn't work. But more importantly, the concept of gaydar may be pretty harmful. It may -- big surprise here, guys -- just be an excuse to revel in harmful stereotypes about LGBTQ people. 
 
 In a paper published in the Journal of Sex Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison psychologist William Cox argues that gaydar just isn't really a thing. 
 
 [Sexism often comes with a smile, study finds] 
 
 "Imagine that 100 percent of gay men wear pink shirts all the time, and 10 percent of straight men wear pink shirts all the time. Even though all gay men wear pink shirts, there would still be twice as many straight men wearing pink shirts. So, even in this extreme example, people who rely on pink shirts as a stereotypic cue to assume men are gay will be wrong two-thirds of the time," Cox said in a statement. 
 
 Previous studies have come out claiming that gaydar is very real, and perhaps even based on cues as innate as facial shape. So a single study can't debunk all of those. It's possible there's some detectable difference that's common, if not inherent or universal, in people of different sexual orientations. But in his own team's studies, Cox found that any facial gaydar people seemed to have could be attributed to something pretty trivial: Photo quality. 
 
 [That other time a politician talked about his gaydar] 
 
 Gay men tended to use nicer photos on their dating profiles, and those are the pictures that end up being used in studies like these. People may have thought they were detecting some innate gayness in the pictures they ticked off as non-heterosexual, Cox argues, but they were actually just leaning on stereotypes that told them gay men would present themselves better. 
 
 Furthermore, the researchers argue that the concept of gaydar is downright dangerous: 
 
 "Most people think of stereotyping as inappropriate," Cox said in a statement. "But if you're not calling it 'stereotyping,' if you're giving it this other label and camouflaging it as 'gaydar,' it appears to be more socially and personally acceptable." 
 
 Cox and his colleagues tested this by manipulating each subject's belief in gaydar -- priming them to think it was real, priming them to think that it was just a form of stereotyping, and not mentioning gaydar at all in the control group. When subjects were told that gaydar had scientific basis, they were more likely to guess that men with stereotypically "gay" traits were gay. For example, they were more likely to guess that a man was gay after being told that he liked to shop. 
 
 [Kentucky clerk Kim Davis seeks exemption on gay marriage licenses] 
 
 And leaning on stereotypes -- while obviously harmful to member of marginalized groups -- is also inaccurate. 
 
 "Consider the statistic that gay men are three times more likely to be alcoholic than straight men," the study states. "Knowing that strong relationship, would you assume that an alcoholic man was likely gay? We surmise that you would not, because alcoholism is not a common stereotypic trait that is supported and perpetuated by the dominant cultural stereotypes of gay men. When stereotypes guide one’s expectations, however, one falls prey to errors in reasoning." 
 
 And studies have found that stereotypes -- even "good" ones, like the high style and grooming stereotypically associated with gay men -- are bad for members of marginalized groups. Seemingly positive stereotypes can fly under our radars, masquerading as compliments. But they still create a sense that these people are inherently different, that they're other. And I probably don't need to tell you that the results of such thinking are less than great. 
 
 So even if the science isn't out on gaydar, it may be time to start thinking of it as just another stereotyping tool. 
 
 Read More: 
 
 Gender gap: Women welcome in ‘hard working’ fields, but ‘genius’ fields are male-dominated, study finds 
 
 Many scientific studies can’t be replicated. That’s a problem. 
 
 Men (on the Internet) don’t believe sexism is a problem in science, even when they see evidence 
 
 Sexism often comes with a smile, study finds 
 
 Hundreds of scientists ask Science to stop publishing a smorgasbord of stereotypes
– Not only is everyone's "gaydar" permanently on the fritz, this faulty gay-identifying equipment can actually be dangerous. That's according to a study published in July in the Journal of Sex Research. The Washington Post reports psychologist William Cox and his team of researchers found gaydar doesn't actually exist and is simply a way to make stereotypes about the LGBTQ community more socially acceptable. "If you tell people they have gaydar, it legitimizes the use of those stereotypes," Cox says in a press release. For example, test subjects who were told that gaydar is based in science were more likely to use stereotypes. Cox says he wants to expose the "myth" of gaydar as something that is actually harmful. Not only did Cox find gaydar was just another name for stereotyping, it was also inaccurate, the Post reports. "Imagine that 100% of gay men wear pink shirts all the time, and 10% of straight men wear pink shirts all the time," he says. "Even though all gay men wear pink shirts, there would still be twice as many straight men wearing pink shirts." Cox's research goes against a 2008 study that concluded gaydar was real based on test subjects' ability to identify gay people from their faces on dating sites. But, Cox found those earlier subjects were actually just picking out higher quality photos rather than anything about the people's faces. (None of this stopped one famous playwright from using gaydar to out both Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth.)