The influence of stereotypical information on gender inference in Chinese

Abstract

This study investigates the influence of stereotypical information on the representation of gender in Chinese, applying a sentence evaluation paradigm. Participants were required to decide whether the second sentence about the gender of the characters (e.g., women) was a sensible continuation of the first sentence containing plural phrase denoting a group of people with a role name (e.g., “the surgeons”). Participants' decisions were biased by the stereotypes of the role names, and were male-biased when reading neutral role names. Additionally, decision time was relatively longer when there was a conflict between the stereotype and the gender, showing the greatest difference between a feminine-biased role name and a male referential expression. The results support previous research showing that speakers use gender stereotype information in task, in languages that lack grammatical gender.