Which Stereotype
She sees the trees, he sees the forest: Descriptive gender stereotypes of concreteness and abstractness
Samantha Dodson et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, December 2025, Pages 1054-1082
Abstract:
We utilize social role and construal-level theories to identify and explain descriptive expectations of men's and women's cognition. We find evidence of gendered construal-level stereotypes in six preregistered studies and an internal meta-analysis. First, we find that people tend to implicitly associate the names of women with low-construal terms and men with high-construal terms (Study 1; N = 229). In Studies 2 (N = 150), 3 (N = 601), and 4 (N = 333), we found that people tend to describe women as more concrete than men in general and across 48 occupations, although Study 4 (N = 333) added nuance to the story, finding that women were also described as more abstract than men. Across these studies, we also found that women were described as more concrete than abstract, whereas men would be described as more abstract than concrete. These stereotypic associations were observable in the language used to recommend LinkedIn users from varying industries and occupations (Study 5; N = 549,059). Study 6 reveals that beliefs that women are more concrete than men affect their assignments to desirable and undesirable detailed tasks (N = 841), a mechanism that could perpetuate gender roles and organizational inequity. The Supplemental Materials include three additional studies that help validate the present results. Finally, we conducted an internal meta-analysis (including supplemental and file drawer studies) to summarize the main effects. We discuss the theoretical implications of this research and provide recommendations for future research.
Liberty, Justice, and Victory: Abstract Nouns are Grammatically and Psychologically Feminine
Carmen Cervone et al.
Journal of Language and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Grammatical gender generally implies disadvantages for women (e.g., the generic masculine leading to real-life invisibility of women). Diverging from this idea, we here postulate that abstract concepts (such as "justice" or "democracy"), arguably reflecting the most sophisticated expression of human thought, are associated with femininity. Two archival studies (Study 1a, b) show the greater frequency of feminine gender among abstract nouns across seven (out of nine) Indo-European languages. Studies 2 and 4 show that feminine abstract nouns are envisaged as female, both explicitly and through a voice-assignment task. Furthermore, through Implicit Association Tests (IATs), we show that abstract concepts are associated with women as a social category (Studies 3a, b). Together, our studies show an association between abstractness and grammatical gender that carries psychological meaning through the gender congruency effect. Arguably, these cognitive processes may contribute to the idealization of women as "super-human," through the association between abstractness and super-human imagery (Study 4).
Talk to the hand: Black and White cultural differences in gesture use
Esha Naidu et al.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
One reason that Black and White individuals often have difficulties in their interactions may stem from differences in nonverbal communication styles (Bishop, 1979; Crago et al., 1997; J. N. Shelton et al., 2023; Varonis & Gass, 1985). Here, across four studies, we examine cultural differences in gesture, a form of nonverbal communication, in Black and White speakers. In Study 1, Black participants (N = 75) rated actors who gestured more as being more natural and White participants (N = 75) rated actors who gestured less as being more natural. In addition, Black actors were rated as being more natural when gesturing more, while White actors were rated as being more natural when gesturing less. Study 2 shows that when a Black talk show host speaks with a Black guest, he gestures more than when speaking with a White guest. Study 3 found that Black speakers (N = 25) gestured more frequently and used larger gestures compared to White speakers (N = 25). Finally, Study 4 demonstrates that Biracial Black/White speakers who had their Black identity primed (N = 32) gestured more frequently and used larger gestures than those who had their White identity primed (N = 22), suggesting that gesture is culturally tied to racial identity salience. Together, these studies suggest that there are culturally learned gesture styles based on racial group membership. Thus, gesture is an understudied aspect of interracial interactions that may influence comfort in cross-cultural communication between Black and White individuals.
(Dis)orderly Bodies: Gender Identification and Disability in Social Context
Aven Peters
American Journal of Sociology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite a multitude of social processes that enforce a binary gender system, an increasing share of Americans identify as transgender. Why do some individuals adopt gender-variant identities while others do not? In this article, I propose that alienation from normative categories, in addition to social support for trans identities, shapes gender identification. I argue that people with bodies viewed as orderly are less likely to adopt trans identities than those whose bodies are perceived as disorderly. Using data from three population-based surveys of US adults, I find that people with physical disabilities are more likely than people without physical disabilities to identify as transgender, particularly in younger cohorts. I also draw from a survey of Colorado high school students to underscore that the relationship between disability and transness depends on contextual meanings of gender and disability. I conclude that gender and disability are co-constituted within social interactions.
"A Position Which my Gayness Itself Leads Me to Take": Sexual-Minority Antiabortion Activists
Isobel Bloom
Journal of American Studies, December 2024, Pages 740-767
Abstract:
Since the 1990s, the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians (PLAGAL) has positioned sexual minorities and fetuses as alike in struggle. The lesbian, gay, and bisexual members of this relatively small organization argued that tolerance and inclusivity of their positionality were strategically beneficial to both the gay rights and antiabortion movements. Ultimately, PLAGAL failed to convince many of the "legitimacy" of their campaigns, and was repeatedly expelled from both right-to-life rallies and Pride marches. This notwithstanding, PLAGAL organizing reveals much about (the limits of) identity politics and the relationship of different social and political movements in this turbulent decade.
The role of testosterone in odor-based perceptions of social status
Marlise Hofer et al.
Evolution and Human Behavior, November 2025
Abstract:
Awareness of the social status of conspecifics is crucial for members of social species, including humans. Given that testosterone is thought to promote status motivation in humans and may also alter body odor, the present study investigates whether perceptions of social status can be influenced by body odor cues associated with testosterone. Male scent donors (N = 74) provided salivary testosterone samples and scent samples from worn T-shirts. Raters (N = 797) smelled the worn shirts and provided ratings of the odor quality and the perceived social status of the wearer (i.e., perceived dominance, perceived prestige). Scent donors' self-rated dominance and prestige, as well as raters' perceptions of prestige, were not significantly associated with scent donor's testosterone levels. However, raters' perceptions of dominance were positively associated with the scent donors' testosterone levels. These findings suggest that hormonally based odor cues contribute to perceptions of dominance and may serve as one channel through which information about social status and personality is communicated.
The importance of local racial demographic changes in democratic erosion in the mass American public
Andrew Ifedapo Thompson & Stefan McCabe
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2 December 2025
Abstract:
Violent sentiment is deeply tied to racial threat from the changing racial demography of the United States. Extending the historical idea of White flight, we find shifting local racial demographic conditions in tandem with a simple prime of national conditions causally drive more violent, antidemocratic attitudes across White Americans. We term this as "White fight sentiment." Across four experiments conducted over the span of 3 y, using probability, state targeted, and convenience samples, we find that when we randomly prime national diversification among White Americans in locations that experienced local Black population increase or White decline, they become expressively, consistently more extreme when primed. Surprisingly, we consistently find null effects in communities that recently experienced Hispanic and Asian population change, short of one case across our four studies. Through a series of robustness checks we confirm national considerations specifically activate White fight.
Racial Discrimination in Asset Prices: Evidence From Horse Betting
Spencer Barnes & Luke Stein
Financial Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the presence of behavioral biases, prices can diverge from fundamentals, and the effects of racial/ethnic bias are evident in many financial and nonfinancial markets. We investigate the determinants and consequences of discrimination in parimutuel horse betting by assessing return differences across horses whose trainers have racially/ethnically distinctive surnames, which bettors may see as a proxy for quality (accurately or inaccurately) or a source of nonpecuniary returns (due to animus). Bets on horses with non-White-named trainers earn higher risk-adjusted returns, and these differences are especially pronounced among riskier bets, which receive lower average returns under the well-known "favorite-longshot" bias. Racial/ethnic return differences are stronger — overall and especially among longshots — for "win" than "place" and "show" bets, among horses with poor prior performance, and in low-stakes races with "fast" conditions. These results are consistent with the effects of discrimination being strongest among less-informed and less-sophisticated bettors.
The Growth Mindset of Beauty Promotes Risk-Taking Propensity and Behavior
Natalie Faust & Iris Hung
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Beauty has pervasive implications for success in various domains of life. Given this broad and visible nature, whether and how a belief in the improvability of this important human attribute influences judgment and decision-making is largely unknown. We found that beauty implicit theories can produce strong cross-domain impact on risk-taking behavior. Using both hypothetical choices and real behaviors in one cross-country survey and nine experiments, including three supplementary studies (N = 4,015), we found that (a) incremental theorists, who believed that beauty is malleable and improvable, took greater risks than entity theorists, who believed that beauty is fixed, and (b) an incremental belief of beauty heightens a sense of optimism that one will achieve positive outcomes in various domains of life, which consequently promotes risk-seeking behavior. These findings demonstrate that domain-specific implicit theory (i.e. beauty in our case) can affect behavior beyond that domain (non-beauty related risk-taking).