William Taylor Laimaka Cox is an assistant scientist in the department of

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between ...

at the

University of Wisconsin–Madison The University of Wisconsin–Madison (University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin, UW, UW–Madison, or simply Madison) is a public land-grant research university in Madison, Wisconsin. Founded when Wisconsin achieved statehood in 1848, UW–Madison ...

. He is an experimental cognitive scientist specializing in

stereotyping In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example ...

prejudice Prejudice can be an affective feeling towards a person based on their perceived group membership. The word is often used to refer to a preconceived (usually unfavourable) evaluation or classification of another person based on that person's per ...

, and learning. His work explores the cultural and cognitive mechanisms that perpetuate stereotypes and prejudices and applies the understanding of those mechanisms to effective evidence-based interventions to reduce bias. Cox and Devine have conducted research on the cognitive structure of stereotypes, demonstrating that some stereotypes primarily serve as categorization cues, especially those stereotypes related to social groups with non-visible defining features, like gay men. Whereas other researchers have argued that people have an accurate "

gaydar Gaydar (a portmanteau of ''gay'' and ''radar'') is a colloquialism referring to the intuitive ability of a person to assess others' sexual orientations as homosexual, bisexual or straight. Gaydar relies on verbal and nonverbal clues and LG ...

" ability that enables people to visually identify whether someone is gay or straight, Cox, Devine, and their colleagues argued that "gaydar" is simply an alternate label for using

stereotypes In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example ...

to infer

orientation Orientation may refer to: Positioning in physical space * Map orientation, the relationship between directions on a map and compass directions * Orientation (housing), the position of a building with respect to the sun, a concept in building de ...

(e.g., inferring that fashionable men are gay), and thereby serves the function of a legitimizing myth to reduce the normative stigma associated with stereotyping. The researchers point out that past work arguing that people have accurate "gaydar" falls prey to the

false positive paradox The base rate fallacy, also called base rate neglect or base rate bias, is a type of fallacy in which people tend to ignore the base rate (i.e., general prevalence) in favor of the individuating information (i.e., information pertaining only to a ...

(see also the

base rate fallacy The base rate fallacy, also called base rate neglect or base rate bias, is a type of fallacy in which people tend to ignore the base rate (i.e., general prevalence) in favor of the individuating information (i.e., information pertaining only to a ...

), because the alleged accuracy discounts the very low base rate of LGB people in real populations, resulting in a scenario where the "accuracy" of gaydar reported in lab studies translates to high levels of inaccuracy in the real world.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cox, William T. L. Living people University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty 1984 births