When perceivers encounter novel others, perceptual cues to gender (vocal tones, facial structure) and gender labels (e.g., pronouns) can influence impression formation. However, most work examining gender cues and impression formation examines the effects of either a perceptual cue or a gender label on judgments of others. The current work aimed to understand how perceptual cues from others’ faces (Study 1) or voices (Study 2) combined with binary (e.g., she/her) and nonbinary (e.g., they/them) gender labels influence perceivers’ anticipated anxiety and avoidance. Both studies found that perceptual cues and gender labels interacted to inform anticipated anxiety and avoidance. For binary gender labels, cue-label pairings that diverged from societal expectations of gender (e.g., he/him paired with feminine faces or voices) led perceivers to report greater anticipated anxiety and avoidance than pairings consistent with societal expectations (e.g., he/him paired with masculine faces or voices). For nonbinary gender labels, findings were inconsistent across studies. Faces paired with nonbinary pronouns led to more anticipated anxiety and avoidance when the faces were masculine or androgynous vs. feminine. These findings did not extend to voices. This work provides initial evidence that gender labels and perceptual cues to gender may interact to influence perceivers’ anticipated anxiety and avoidance, thereby providing insights into gender-based impression formation that may be consequential for biases toward and discriminatory treatment of gender-diverse individuals.
Perception of gender is ubiquitous and consequential in social life. People who are perceived as women are expected to enact femininity, whereas people who are perceived as men are expected to enact masculinity. How do gender nonbinary people fit into these binary assumptions? The present work examined the perceived femininity and masculinity of nonbinary people. In particular, cisgender, primarily straight/heterosexual, U.S.-based participants reported their assumptions about the assigned sex (Study 1; N = 315) or their perceptions of the femininity and masculinity (Studies 2–3; N s = 216 and 277) of the average nonbinary person. No apparent bias in terms of assumed sex or perceived femininity emerged, yet participants rated the average nonbinary person as reliably below the scale midpoint on masculinity. Accordingly, cisgender straight Americans’ perceptions of the average nonbinary person may in part reflect a tendency to safeguard masculinity.
Racial/ethnic minority diversity in the mass media has increased in recent years, in part due to racebending—non-White performers portraying traditionally White characters. Racebending is, however, frequently met with backlash, with opponents expressing nostalgia for original representations and decrying racebending as deviating from traditional portrayals. Although expressing nostalgia is seemingly race-neutral, we reasoned that expressing nostalgia to decry racebending is, for some people, an indirect means of expressing biased attitudes that allows racially biased people to oppose racebending without having to appear biased. Three studies ( N = 694) found that White supremacist attitudes predicted self-reported media nostalgia, which in turn predicted racebending opposition. However, nostalgia was inconsistently predictive of opposition to media changes. Specifically, we found that people higher in nostalgia opposed racebending, but not other deviations from traditional presentations (i.e., Whitewashing). These results suggest that nostalgia is used by some to indirectly oppose racial diversity in the media.
Gender salience is a core construct in theories of gender-related affect, cognition, and behavior. This research suggests a novel, subtle trigger of gender salience in mixed-gender negotiations: the self-observation typically involved in online interaction. This trigger maps onto everyday experience and is qualitatively different from other documented triggers. We reasoned that given individuals’ enduring alertness to the possibility of being viewed unfavorably by others, seeing their own image would lead them to imagine that their interaction partner was focused on their gender—a visible distinctive group membership in the interaction context. A mini meta-analysis across three studies in which mixed-gender dyads negotiated online with self-view on or off (total N = 366 dyads) indicated that overall self-observation increased women’s but not men’s metaperceived gender salience, although there was some inconsistency across the studies. Analyses of indirect effects suggested that higher gender salience was associated with greater female disadvantage in negotiation outcomes.
The collective efforts of individuals with the least amount of resources, status, and power in a society can be a powerful tool for reducing inequality. In the current research, we examine the links between identity and support for reducing inequality . Recruiting two online surveys of individuals with objectively low social class standing (i.e., low education, low income) and applying regression analysis, we find that those who subjectively identify as lower (versus higher) social class were more likely to support reducing economic inequality (e.g., support policies that reduce economic inequality; Studies 1 and 2). Additionally, the more central their lower social class was to their identity, the more likely people were to support reducing economic inequality (Study 2). Taken together, these results provide novel support for the importance of social class identity in efforts to reduce economic inequality.
