Name Your Favorite Musician

Stahlberg, Dagmar; Sczesny, Sabine; Braun, Friederike

doi:10.1177/0261927x01020004004

Cited by 128 publications

(131 citation statements)

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“…In this process, participants’ own language use functioned as a mediator between the language of the media texts and the mental representation of social roles. Thus, our results not only replicate and link previous findings (Hamilton, 1988; Stahlberg et al, 2001; Koeser et al, 2015), but also illuminate the mechanism behind the effects of gender-inclusive language. Participants’ own use of gender-inclusive language made them think in more gender-inclusive ways.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

“…We expected participants summarizing a gender-inclusive text to use more word pairs and other gender-fair forms than those summarizing a text with masculine generics (Hypothesis 1). In line with past research (Stahlberg et al, 2001), we expected that reading a text with gender-inclusive forms would result in higher estimates of the percentage of women in the respective roles than reading a text with masculine generics (Hypothesis 2).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 77%

“…When gender-inclusive forms are used, people assume percentages of women in a profession to be higher than when masculine generics are used (Braun et al, 2005) and more female exemplars of a category are named (Stahlberg et al, 2001; Merkel et al, 2012) or drawn (Bojarska, 2011). Most research of this kind investigated common social roles (e.g., student, professor, physician, Bojarska, 2011) and only some studies tested more prominent roles (e.g., musician, politician, Stahlberg et al, 2001). In one investigation, German participants listed more women when asked to name their favorite “heroine or hero in a novel” 1 (word pair form; German: Romanheldin oder Romanheld ) than those who were asked to name their favorite “hero in a novel” ( Romanheld ; Stahlberg and Sczesny, 2001).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Social Perception of Heroes and Murderers: Effects of Gender-Inclusive Language in Media Reports

2016

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The way media depict women and men can reinforce or diminish gender stereotyping. Which part does language play in this context? Are roles perceived as more gender-balanced when feminine role nouns are used in addition to masculine ones? Research on gender-inclusive language shows that the use of feminine-masculine word pairs tends to increase the visibility of women in various social roles. For example, when speakers of German were asked to name their favorite “heroine or hero in a novel,” they listed more female characters than when asked to name their favorite “hero in a novel.” The research reported in this article examines how the use of gender-inclusive language in news reports affects readers’ own usage of such forms as well as their mental representation of women and men in the respective roles. In the main experiment, German participants (N = 256) read short reports about heroes or murderers which contained either masculine generics or gender-inclusive forms (feminine-masculine word pairs). Gender-inclusive forms enhanced participants’ own usage of gender-inclusive language and this resulted in more gender-balanced mental representations of these roles. Reading about “heroines and heroes” made participants assume a higher percentage of women among persons performing heroic acts than reading about “heroes” only, but there was no such effect for murderers. A post-test suggested that this might be due to a higher accessibility of female exemplars in the category heroes than in the category murderers. Importantly, the influence of gender-inclusive language on the perceived percentage of women in a role was mediated by speakers’ own usage of inclusive forms. This suggests that people who encounter gender-inclusive forms and are given an opportunity to use them, use them more themselves and in turn have more gender-balanced mental representations of social roles.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 77%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Social Perception of Heroes and Murderers: Effects of Gender-Inclusive Language in Media Reports

2016

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“…In other words, hij ‘he’ is used generically , as referring to men as well as women, despite carrying masculine grammatical gender. Such word forms, which carry masculine grammatical gender, but are used generically, are usually referred to as generic masculines [5–7] or masculine generics [8–10]. They are more precisely defined as masculine forms that are used to refer to people of unknown or unspecified gender or to groups of mixed gender [9,11,12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The processing of the Dutch masculine generic zijn ‘his’ across stereotype contexts: An eye-tracking study

2018

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Language users often infer a person’s gender when it is not explicitly mentioned. This information is included in the mental model of the described situation, giving rise to expectations regarding the continuation of the discourse. Such gender inferences can be based on two types of information: gender stereotypes (e.g., nurses are female) and masculine generics, which are grammatically masculine word forms that are used to refer to all genders in certain contexts (e.g., To each his own). In this eye-tracking experiment (N = 82), which is the first to systematically investigate the online processing of masculine generic pronouns, we tested whether the frequently used Dutch masculine generic zijn ‘his’ leads to a male bias. In addition, we tested the effect of context by introducing male, female, and neutral stereotypes. We found no evidence for the hypothesis that the generically-intended masculine pronoun zijn ‘his’ results in a male bias. However, we found an effect of stereotype context. After introducing a female stereotype, reading about a man led to an increase in processing time. However, the reverse did not hold, which parallels the finding in social psychology that men are penalized more for gender-nonconforming behavior. This suggests that language processing is not only affected by the strength of stereotype contexts; the associated disapproval of violating these gender stereotypes affects language processing, too.

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“…This language reform reflects the assumption that language, here gender-fair language, is a tool to influence people’s gendered perception of reality. For example, with respect to occupations, studies with adults and primary school children from countries with grammatical gender languages (e.g., French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Italian) suggest that they are perceived in a less gender-typed manner when they are described in gender-fair language, more specifically in pair forms (i.e., by explicit reference to both male and female jobholders, e.g., inventeuses et inventeurs ; French feminine and masculine plural forms for inventors), rather than masculine plural forms (e.g., inventors; Braun et al, 1998; Heise, 2000, 2003; Stahlberg and Sczesny, 2001; Stahlberg et al, 2001; Rothmund and Scheele, 2004; Vervecken et al, 2013; Vervecken and Hannover, 2015; for a discussion of this issue for natural gender languages e.g., English; see, e.g., Gabriel et al, 2008; Garnham et al, 2012; Lassonde and O’Brien, 2013). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Warm-hearted businessmen, competitive housewives? Effects of gender-fair language on adolescents’ perceptions of occupations

et al. 2015

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Recent studies from countries with grammatical gender languages (e.g., French) found both children and adults to more frequently think of female jobholders and to consider women’s success in male dominated occupations more likely when the jobs were described in pair forms (i.e., by explicit reference to male and female jobholders, e.g., inventeuses et inventeurs; French feminine and masculine plural forms for inventors), rather than masculine only forms (e.g., inventors). To gain a better understanding of this phenomenon, we systematically varied the gender connotation of occupations (males overrepresented, females overrepresented, equal share of males and females) and measured additional dependent variables, predicting that gender fair language would reduce the impact of the gender connotation on participants’ perceptions. In a sample of 222 adolescents (aged 12–17) from French speaking Switzerland, we found that pair forms attenuated the difference in the ascription of success to male and female jobholders in gendered occupations and attenuated the differential ascription of warmth to prototypical jobholders in male vs. female dominated jobs. However, no effect of language form on the ascription of competence was found. These findings suggest that language policies are an effective tool to impact gendered perceptions, however, they also hint at competence-related gender stereotypes being in decline.

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Name Your Favorite Musician

Cited by 128 publications

References 5 publications

The Social Perception of Heroes and Murderers: Effects of Gender-Inclusive Language in Media Reports

The Social Perception of Heroes and Murderers: Effects of Gender-Inclusive Language in Media Reports

The processing of the Dutch masculine generic zijn ‘his’ across stereotype contexts: An eye-tracking study

Warm-hearted businessmen, competitive housewives? Effects of gender-fair language on adolescents’ perceptions of occupations

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