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Male recognition bias in sex assignment based on visual stimuli

According to previous ethnomethodological and cognitive studies on sex assignment, if a figure has male sexual characteristics people are more likely to think it is a man than they think it is a woman when the figure has female sexual characteristics. This bias in favor of male attribution is strong...

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Autores principales: Federici, Stefano, Lepri, Alessandro, Bacci, Silvia, Bartolucci, Francesco
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9114426/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35581328
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-12411-1
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author Federici, Stefano
Lepri, Alessandro
Bacci, Silvia
Bartolucci, Francesco
author_facet Federici, Stefano
Lepri, Alessandro
Bacci, Silvia
Bartolucci, Francesco
author_sort Federici, Stefano
collection PubMed
description According to previous ethnomethodological and cognitive studies on sex assignment, if a figure has male sexual characteristics people are more likely to think it is a man than they think it is a woman when the figure has female sexual characteristics. This bias in favor of male attribution is strongly reinforced when a penis is apparent in human nude pictures. In our contribution, we reported findings of three experiments aimed at replicating previous studies by administering the Sex/Gender Attribution Test for Adult (SGAT-A) created by digitally morphing the bodies of one human male and one human female model into realistic pictures. We observed the sex attribution and response time of 1706 young adult participants. A cross-cultural comparison was also carried out with a sample of young adult Chinese students. Findings substantially reconfirmed those obtained in previous studies. The male external genitalia overshadow any other features that might rather suggest a female identity. Indeed, when male external genitalia were exposed, the odds of male sex attribution were 5.688 compared to 1.823 female attribution when female external genitalia were shown. Moreover, the shortest response times were observed with masculine stimuli. Evolutionary and cultural determinants of the male sex bias are also discussed.
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spelling pubmed-91144262022-05-19 Male recognition bias in sex assignment based on visual stimuli Federici, Stefano Lepri, Alessandro Bacci, Silvia Bartolucci, Francesco Sci Rep Article According to previous ethnomethodological and cognitive studies on sex assignment, if a figure has male sexual characteristics people are more likely to think it is a man than they think it is a woman when the figure has female sexual characteristics. This bias in favor of male attribution is strongly reinforced when a penis is apparent in human nude pictures. In our contribution, we reported findings of three experiments aimed at replicating previous studies by administering the Sex/Gender Attribution Test for Adult (SGAT-A) created by digitally morphing the bodies of one human male and one human female model into realistic pictures. We observed the sex attribution and response time of 1706 young adult participants. A cross-cultural comparison was also carried out with a sample of young adult Chinese students. Findings substantially reconfirmed those obtained in previous studies. The male external genitalia overshadow any other features that might rather suggest a female identity. Indeed, when male external genitalia were exposed, the odds of male sex attribution were 5.688 compared to 1.823 female attribution when female external genitalia were shown. Moreover, the shortest response times were observed with masculine stimuli. Evolutionary and cultural determinants of the male sex bias are also discussed. Nature Publishing Group UK 2022-05-17 /pmc/articles/PMC9114426/ /pubmed/35581328 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-12411-1 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Federici, Stefano
Lepri, Alessandro
Bacci, Silvia
Bartolucci, Francesco
Male recognition bias in sex assignment based on visual stimuli
title Male recognition bias in sex assignment based on visual stimuli
title_full Male recognition bias in sex assignment based on visual stimuli
title_fullStr Male recognition bias in sex assignment based on visual stimuli
title_full_unstemmed Male recognition bias in sex assignment based on visual stimuli
title_short Male recognition bias in sex assignment based on visual stimuli
title_sort male recognition bias in sex assignment based on visual stimuli
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9114426/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35581328
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-12411-1
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