Effects of Prime Sex, Prime Plural, and Prime Age on Reaction Times

1. Effects of Prime Sex, Prime Plural, and Prime Age on Reaction Times SAMI HAYS, BRAD LANDRUM, REBECCA LEHMAN, JAYME MORRISON, TESSA WARNKE Faculty Sponsor: Brian Cronk Missouri Western State University This study measured the effects of primes representing different sexes (male, female, neutral), ages (adult, child), and plurality (singular, plural), on reaction times for targets from the Bem (1974) Sex Role Inventory. All were involved in significant main effects or two-way interactions. Three and four way interactions were not significant. Plurals may invoke stronger stereotypes than the singular alternatives and may not, in fact, be more neutral as Gastil (1990) suggests. Other findings suggest that we stereotype female nouns, but may perceive male and neutral nouns similarly. Background Results and Discussion • Personal pronouns intended to be gender neutral are often interpreted as references to males (Harrigan & Lucic, 1988) • The effect of using he, etc., as a generic pronoun is believed likely to perpetuate the cultural stereotype that men and masculine aspects are superior and more favorable (Harrigan & Lucic, 1988). • "He, his, him, and man" are intended to be gender neutral but have been found to not always be so (Harrigan & Lucic, 1988). One proposed solution is the use of alternatives such as "he/she" or "s/he." The majority of existing research has found that using "he/she" will invoke fewer images of males and be more neutral than "he", and that "they" will be more neutral than "he/she" (Gastil, 1990; Harrigan & Lucic, 1988). • Using "they" to represent a singular entity slows down reading (Foertsch & Gernsbacher, 1997). • It is possible that the age of the person to which one is referring will impact decisions about sex associated characteristics. Sellers, Satcher and Comas (1999) found that high percentages of children tend to be classified as androgynous or undifferentiated. The percentages of children with these classifications exceeded the norms for adults from the original work by Bem (1974). • Words that elicit male ideas (e.g. man, men) should prime male traits utilizing the basic properties of spreading activation (Collins & Loftus, 1975; Schvaneveldt & Meyer, 1973). Words that do not elicit ideas related to a particular sex should not show priming effects. • Banaji and Hardin found gender information can automatically influence decisions but there are other factors that also have an influence (Banaji & Hardin, 1996). • It is critical that we determine the exact impact that the use of various sex associated words has on our cognition. • The purpose of this study is to test the effects of different primes on reaction times for masculine/feminine/androgynous traits. The effects of whether or not prime words are singular or plural, whether they portray young or old , and whether or not they are associated with a particular sex were examined. • Trials which had reaction times more than 3 standard deviation above the mean were removed prior to analysis. 484 of 28,200 trials had a reaction time greater than 7190ms and were removed. • A 3 (Bem category of the target) x 2 (whether or not the prime was plural) X 2 (age of the prime) X 3 (sex of the prime) ANOVA was calculated to compare reaction times to the choices participants made. The table to the right represents the ANOVA results. • Subjects were faster to make decisions about plural primes than singular primes. More specifically, the prime sex x prime plural interaction showed that participants were fastest to make decisions about female primes that were plural. These results suggest that we stereotype women more readily than we stereotype men, and that groups of women are stereotyped even more than individual women. These results may be contrary to Foertsch and Gernsbacher (1997) who found that “they” slowed down reading times. • We also found that participants were faster to make decisions about adults than children. More specifically, it was harder for the subjects to stereotype children as masculine consistent with Sellers, Satchers, and Comas (1999). • When studying the effects of the sex of the prime, there was an overall effect showing that subjects were much faster to make decisions about females than both males and neutrals, and that males were faster than neutrals. This finding suggests that we are more likely to stereotype when we encounter words that represent females than we are to stereotype when we encounter words that represent males or are neutral. • Previous findings that personal pronouns intended to be gender neutral are often interpreted as references to males (Harrigan & Lucic, 1988) were not upheld. • A major difference between our research and previous research was the way we referred to the gender neutral and gender specific subjects. Previous research used pronouns for the primes (he, she, they) while we used gender specific or gender neutral nouns (man, woman, child, adult). This seemingly small difference may have had a large impact on our results. Methodology Participants Participants were 235 undergraduate students enrolled at Missouri Western State University, a 5,000 student public university in northwest Missouri. Seventy-one participants (30%) were male, and 164 (70%) were female. Materials Twelve primes were words that were inherently masculine, feminine, or neutral and which varied in age (young/old) and whether or not they were plural. Thus, man, woman, adult represented the older singular versions of the masculine/feminine/neutral primes. Men, women, adults represented the older plural versions. Boy, girl, child represented the younger singular primes. Boys, Girls, Children represented the younger plural primes. Target words consisted of the 60 items from the Bem (1974) Sex Role Inventory. Seven of the items required slight changes in order to be grammatically correct when paired with both singular and plural primes. Procedure Participants were given a basic description of the task and asked to press "1" if the answer to the question was "Yes", and to press "2" if the answer was "no." All prime/target pairs were presented on the computer as questions like "Is a [PRIME] [TARGET]?" For example, "Is a man self-reliant?" Reaction times and choices were recorded using E-Prime 1.2 (Psychology Software Tools, 2006). Each participant completed 120 trials encompassing each of the 60 Bem items cycled through twice with a different random prime before each. Randomization and order of presentation was controlled by the E-Prime software. References • Banaji, M.R. & Hardin, C.D. (1996). Automatic Stereotyping. Psychological Science, 7, 136-141. • Bem, S.L. (1974). The measurement of psychological androgyny. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 42, 155-162. • Collins, A.M., & Loftus, E.F. (1975). A spreading-activation theory of semantic memory.  Psychological Review, 82, 407-428. • Foertsch, J. & Gernsbacher, M. A. (1997). In search of gender neutrality: Is singular they a cognitively efficient substitute for generic he? Psychological Science, 8, 106-111.  • Harrigan, J.A., Lucic, K.S. (1988). Attitudes about gender bias in language: A reevaluation. Sex Roles, 19, 129-140. • Gastil, J. (1990). Generic pronouns and sexist language: The oxymoronic character of masculine generics. Sex Roles, 23, 629-643. • Schvaneveldt, R.W., & Meyer, D.E. (1973).  Retrieval & comparison processes in semantic memory.  In S. Kornlum (Ed.) Attention & performance IV. New York: Academic Press. • Sellers, N., Satcher, J., Comas, R. (1999).  Children's occupational aspirations: Comparisons by gender, gender role identity, and socieconomics status.  Professional School Counseling, 3, 314-317.