Gender relativism: How context shapes what is seen as male and female.

Abstract

This research explores the concept of gender relativism, whereby "gender"-or what is seen as "male" and "female"-changes as a function of context. Seven studies find that people attach gender to seemingly "gender-neutral" stimuli-bifurcating information by "male" and "female"-but that the gender of the stimuli changes as a function of the comparison set. Using stimuli from past work, including shapes (Study 1), species (Study 2), "gender-neutral" traits (Studies 3-4), faces (Study 5), and names (Studies 6-7), these studies demonstrate that gender is relative, where characteristics deemed "female" or "male" exist within a given context. Importantly, these relative evaluations shift perceptions of both gender (i.e., stereotypes) and physical sex (i.e., height, weight) characteristics, with downstream consequences for bias and target judgments (Studies 4-7). In contrast to most work in psychology, which studies gender as an independent variable (to predict differences in stereotypes and outcomes), this work calls for gender to also be considered as a dependent variable that can change as a function of context. Together, these results have theoretical implications for the construct and measurement of gender in psychology, as well as practical implications for gender stereotyping, bias, and discrimination. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).