Implicit gender bias in linguistic descriptions for expected events
- Gender stereotypes influence subjective beliefs about the world, and this is reflected in our use of language. But do gender biases in language transparently reflect subjective beliefs? Or is the process of translating thought to language itself biased? During the 2016 United States (N = 24,863) and 2017 United Kingdom (N = 2,609) electoral campaigns, we compared participants' beliefs about the gender of the next head of government with their use and interpretation of pronouns referring to the next head of government. In the United States, even when the female candidate was expected to win, she pronouns were rarely produced and induced substantial comprehension disruption. In the United Kingdom, where the incumbent female candidate was heavily favored, she pronouns were preferred in production but yielded no comprehension advantage. These and other findings suggest that the language system itself is a source of implicit biases above and beyond previously known biases, such as those measured by the Implicit Association Test.
Author details: | Titus Raban von der MalsburgORCiDGND, Till Poppels, Roger P. Levy |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797619890619 |
ISSN: | 0956-7976 |
ISSN: | 1467-9280 |
Title of parent work (English): | Psychological Science |
Subtitle (English): | the cases of the 2016 United States and 2017 United Kingdom elections |
Publisher: | Sage |
Place of publishing: | London |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2020/01/08 |
Publication year: | 2020 |
Release date: | 2024/04/24 |
Tag: | event expectations; implicit bias; language; open data; open materials; psycholinguistics; reference |
Volume: | 31 |
Issue: | 2 |
Number of pages: | 14 |
First page: | 115 |
Last Page: | 128 |
Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Linguistik |
DDC classification: | 1 Philosophie und Psychologie / 10 Philosophie / 100 Philosophie und Psychologie |
4 Sprache / 41 Linguistik / 410 Linguistik | |
Peer review: | Referiert |
Publishing method: | Open Access / Gold Open-Access |
License (German): | CC-BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International |
External remark: | Zweitveröffentlichung in der Schriftenreihe Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe ; 856 |