How are gendered pronouns used when referring to a future president whose gender isn't known yet?

What is it about?

How do we use pronouns when referring to people whose gender isn’t known yet? We investigated this question during the 2016 US presidential campaign and found that people were reluctant to refer to the future president with "she" even when they thought Hillary Clinton would win. We found a similar bias against "she" in comprehension where people incurred a considerable cognitive cost when encountering a "she" pronoun referring to the future president. We explain these findings in terms of linguistic biases that go beyond any biases on the conceptual level. We also compare the US findings to data from the UK, a country that has previously had a female head of government.

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Photo by Stephen Walker on Unsplash

Photo by Stephen Walker on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The way we talk about future presidents and other important roles shapes our perception of the world and potentially also guides (directly or indirectly) our actions, for instance, when voting for a male vs. female candidate. Our research shows that implicit linguistic gender biases are baked into our language system and that these biases go beyond biases that were previously demonstrated, e.g., using the Implicit Association Test. Our research therefore sheds new light on how language itself contributes to the spread and persistence of stereotypes in society.

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