Stereotypically gay- and straight-sounding auditory cues change adolescent music students’ perceptions of men’s teaching effectiveness

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of a stereotypically gay-sounding voice on middle- and high-schooler’s perceptions of teaching effectiveness. Participants ( N = 273) listened to two men with stereotypically gay and straight voices, respectively, reading a short paragraph. Afterwards, they rated the likelihood of each speaker’s ability to demonstrate top skills and behaviors associated with effective music teaching and also predicted whether each man would be a band director, choir director, string orchestra director, or elementary general music teacher. The results from measurement invariance analysis show that participants rated the gay voice higher on measures of maintaining high musical standards and organization, whereas they rated the straight-sounding speaker higher on measures of leadership. The results from a multinomial logistic regression show that listeners predicted that the gay-sounding speaker would most likely be an elementary general music teacher and that the straight-sounding speaker would be a band director. The differences between these findings and prior research, nuance of leadership versus classroom management, and the need for further research on stereotypical voices are discussed.