Is a nurse a woman? Is a programmer a man? Even if we know these are not facts, our brains often fill in the blanks with gendered assumptions. In this final post in our series on the Psycholinguistics of Gender, we will look at how language influences gender perception: How do we make mental shortcuts, what role pronouns and job titles play, and what this means for bias in thought and communication.
The power of defaults
Consider this sentence: “The surgeon walked into the room and told the nurse to prep the patient. He was running late.” Who does he refer to? Many people picture the surgeon, but that reveals more about our assumptions than grammar. This is the basic insight behind research on gender stereotypes in language processing.
Banaji and Hardin (1996) used a clever technique called the “priming paradigm” to show that even when a word like nurse or engineer is presented without gender, readers are faster to recognize a pronoun that matches the stereotype (she for nurse, he for engineer) than a mismatched one. These findings suggest that gender stereotypes are automatically activated when we process role nouns, often without us realizing it.
This is not just a reflection of culture, it becomes a cognitive habit. And habits, even when unconscious, affect what we see, expect, and remember.
Pronouns matter
Small words can have big effects. Take the use of gender-neutral pronouns. In English, singular they is widespread, both for individuals (e.g., Vic forgot their coat) and in generic contexts (e.g., Someone forgot their coat). But does using they actually reduce gender bias?
Recent research suggests it might. A study by Garnham and Yakovlev (2015) showed that when readers encountered a sentence like “Each engineer submitted their report,” they were more likely to imagine a woman than if the sentence used his. The pronoun helped loosen the grip of stereotypes, allowing for a wider range of mental images. Similar effects have been reported for the gender-neutral pronoun in Swedish too (Tavits & Pérez 2019).
Languages that force gender-marking, however, pose additional challenges. In German, for instance, the plural form Studenten (students) is grammatically masculine, but often used generically. Yet studies show that readers interpret it as referring mostly to men (Gygax et al., 2008). Gender-fair forms, like Student*innen or Studierende, have been shown to help improve the visibility of women (Hansen et al. 2016), and have been officially adopted in communications by some universities and other employers. Nevertheless, gender-fair language still faces pushback in some areas of German society.
These studies show that changes in language can support changes in perception. Even when it feels awkward or unfamiliar, inclusive language encourages us to question automatic assumptions and think more consciously about our world.
Implicit bias and mental models
From a psycholinguistic perspective, language and thought constantly influence each other. We use language to form mental models, representations of situations, roles, and people. When gendered language reinforces stereotypes, it affects those models.
One example is implicit bias tests, which measure the speed of association between concepts (e.g., male + scientist vs. female + scientist). These tests reveal how deeply gender associations are encoded in our cognition, often in ways we consciously reject.
The good news? Exposure matters. Repeated exposure to counter-stereotypical examples (like hearing about male nurses or female mechanics) can reduce bias over time. Language plays a key role in that exposure. The more we see balanced gender representations in speech, media, and everyday talk, the more flexible our cognitive categories become.
References
- Banaji, M. R., & Hardin, C. D. (1996). Automatic stereotyping. Psychological Science, 7(3), 136–141.
- Garnham, A., & Yakovlev, Y. (2015). Gender representation in different languages and grammatical marking: A psycholinguistic perspective. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 1396.
- Gygax, P., Gabriel, U., Sarrasin, O., Oakhill, J., & Garnham, A. (2008). Generically intended, but specifically interpreted: When beauticians, musicians, and mechanics are all men. Language and Cognitive Processes, 23(3), 464–485.
- Hansen, K., Littwitz, C., & Sczesny, S. (2016). The social perception of heroes and murderers: Effects of gender-inclusive language in media reports. Frontiers in psychology, 7, 369.
- Tavits, M., & Pérez, E. O. (2019). Language influences mass opinion toward gender and LGBT equality. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(34), 16781-16786.
Credits
Writer: Morgane Peirolo
Editor: Anna Mai
Dutch translation: Lieke Herraets
German translation: Jule Hafermann
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