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Breaking Away From the Male Stereotype of a Specialist: Gendered Language Affects Performance in a Thinking Task

This experimental online-survey study investigated if different written language forms in German have an effect on male bias in thinking. We used answers to the specialist riddle as an indicator for male bias in mental representations of expertise. The difficulty of this thinking task lies in the fa...

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Autores principales: Kollmayer, Marlene, Pfaffel, Andreas, Schober, Barbara, Brandt, Laura
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6018092/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29971027
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00985
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author Kollmayer, Marlene
Pfaffel, Andreas
Schober, Barbara
Brandt, Laura
author_facet Kollmayer, Marlene
Pfaffel, Andreas
Schober, Barbara
Brandt, Laura
author_sort Kollmayer, Marlene
collection PubMed
description This experimental online-survey study investigated if different written language forms in German have an effect on male bias in thinking. We used answers to the specialist riddle as an indicator for male bias in mental representations of expertise. The difficulty of this thinking task lies in the fact that a gender-unspecified specialist is often automatically assumed to be a man due to gender stereotypes. We expected that reading a text in gender-fair language before processing the specialist riddle helps readers achieve control over automatically activated gender stereotypes and thus facilitates the restructuring and reinterpretation of the problem, which is necessary to reach the conclusion that the specialist is a woman. We randomly assigned 517 native German speakers (68% women) to reading a text on expertise written either in gender-fair language or in masculine generics. Subsequently, participants were asked to solve the specialist riddle. The results show that reading a text in gender-fair language before processing the riddle led to higher rates of answers indicating that the specialist is a women compared to reading a text in masculine generics (44% vs. 33%) in women and men regardless of their self-stereotyping concerning agency and communion. The findings indicate that reading even a very short text in gender-fair language can help people break their gender-stereotype habit and thus reduce male bias in thinking. Our research emphasizes the importance of using gender-fair language in German-language texts for reducing gender stereotypes.
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spelling pubmed-60180922018-07-03 Breaking Away From the Male Stereotype of a Specialist: Gendered Language Affects Performance in a Thinking Task Kollmayer, Marlene Pfaffel, Andreas Schober, Barbara Brandt, Laura Front Psychol Psychology This experimental online-survey study investigated if different written language forms in German have an effect on male bias in thinking. We used answers to the specialist riddle as an indicator for male bias in mental representations of expertise. The difficulty of this thinking task lies in the fact that a gender-unspecified specialist is often automatically assumed to be a man due to gender stereotypes. We expected that reading a text in gender-fair language before processing the specialist riddle helps readers achieve control over automatically activated gender stereotypes and thus facilitates the restructuring and reinterpretation of the problem, which is necessary to reach the conclusion that the specialist is a woman. We randomly assigned 517 native German speakers (68% women) to reading a text on expertise written either in gender-fair language or in masculine generics. Subsequently, participants were asked to solve the specialist riddle. The results show that reading a text in gender-fair language before processing the riddle led to higher rates of answers indicating that the specialist is a women compared to reading a text in masculine generics (44% vs. 33%) in women and men regardless of their self-stereotyping concerning agency and communion. The findings indicate that reading even a very short text in gender-fair language can help people break their gender-stereotype habit and thus reduce male bias in thinking. Our research emphasizes the importance of using gender-fair language in German-language texts for reducing gender stereotypes. Frontiers Media S.A. 2018-06-19 /pmc/articles/PMC6018092/ /pubmed/29971027 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00985 Text en Copyright © 2018 Kollmayer, Pfaffel, Schober and Brandt. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Kollmayer, Marlene
Pfaffel, Andreas
Schober, Barbara
Brandt, Laura
Breaking Away From the Male Stereotype of a Specialist: Gendered Language Affects Performance in a Thinking Task
title Breaking Away From the Male Stereotype of a Specialist: Gendered Language Affects Performance in a Thinking Task
title_full Breaking Away From the Male Stereotype of a Specialist: Gendered Language Affects Performance in a Thinking Task
title_fullStr Breaking Away From the Male Stereotype of a Specialist: Gendered Language Affects Performance in a Thinking Task
title_full_unstemmed Breaking Away From the Male Stereotype of a Specialist: Gendered Language Affects Performance in a Thinking Task
title_short Breaking Away From the Male Stereotype of a Specialist: Gendered Language Affects Performance in a Thinking Task
title_sort breaking away from the male stereotype of a specialist: gendered language affects performance in a thinking task
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6018092/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29971027
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00985
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