Male recognition bias in sex assignment based on visual stimuli

Abstract

According to previous ethnomethodological and cognitive studies on sex assignment, if a figure has male sexual characteristics people are more likely to think it is a man than they think it is a woman when the figure has female sexual characteristics. This bias in favor of male attribution is strongly reinforced when a penis is apparent in human nude pictures. In our contribution, we reported findings of three experiments aimed at replicating previous studies by administering the Sex/Gender Attribution Test for Adult (SGAT-A) created by digitally morphing the bodies of one human male and one human female model into realistic pictures. We observed the sex attribution and response time of 1706 young adult participants. A cross-cultural comparison was also carried out with a sample of young adult Chinese students. Findings substantially reconfirmed those obtained in previous studies. The male external genitalia overshadow any other features that might rather suggest a female identity. Indeed, when male external genitalia were exposed, the odds of male sex attribution were 5.688 compared to 1.823 female attribution when female external genitalia were shown. Moreover, the shortest response times were observed with masculine stimuli. Evolutionary and cultural determinants of the male sex bias are also discussed.