Personal pronouns and person perception – Do paired and nonbinary pronouns evoke a normative gender bias?

Abstract

AbstractResearch on gender‐fair language aims to identify language inclusive to a multitude of individuals, for example, increasing the visibility of women by using paired pronouns (he/she) instead of generic masculine forms (he). However, binary presentations like he/she might come with unwanted side effects and evoke what we label as normative gender bias. A normative gender bias is defined as when words lead to stronger associations with individuals with normative gender expressions than with individuals with non‐normative gender expressions, thus contributing to making non‐normative individuals invisible. In three experiments, we compared the extent to which the paired pronoun he/she (Swedish and English), the neo‐pronouns hen (Swedish), ze (English), and the generic pronoun singular they (English) evoked a normative gender bias. Swedish‐ (N = 219 and 268) and English‐ (N = 837, from the UK) speaking participants read about individuals referred to with the paired pronoun he/she or with hen, ze, or they. In Experiment 1 (Swedish), there was no main effect of condition on a normative bias, but in Experiment 2 (Swedish), the paired pronouns he/she evoked normative gender bias while hen did not. In Experiment 3 (English), both ze and singular they evoked normative gender bias, although normative associations were lower in these conditions compared to he/she. Furthermore, the normative bias was lower among participants who had knowledge about the use of ze as a nonbinary pronoun. Finally, neither ze nor they evoked a normative gender bias when their use was explicitly stated to be nonbinary. A potential explanation for why singular they did not generally result in less normative associations, despite almost all participants knowing about it, may include its more common use as a generic pronoun. Taken together, our results suggest that neo‐pronouns, but not paired pronouns, have the potential to evoke less normative associations, but that they must be both (1) actively created new words and (2) well‐known to language users as nonbinary pronouns.