Sex bias and language

Recent research has suggested that in certain contexts male terms may fail to be gender neutral (Moulton, Robinson, & Elias, 1978). Stricker (1977) has proposed that even explicitly generic terms such as adult and person may not be gender neutral. The conclusions of the highly controversial and influential Broverman, Vogel, Broverman, Clarkson, and Rosenkrantz (1970) study were based directly on the assumption that adult is a gender-neutral term. The present study consisted of a modified replication of the Broverman et al. study followed by an addendum that asked subjects in the gender-neutral condition to indicate whether they had thought of a neutral, male, or female stimulus person. As predicted, subjects did not tend to think of a neutral stimulus person. The implications of this finding for sex-role stereotype research as well as for guidlines for nonsexist language are discussed.This article is based on a master's thesis completed at Southern Illinois University by the first author.     

Sex bias in school referrals

One hundred and forty elementary school teachers completed a questionnaire on school referrals which asked them to rate the likelihood of referral of a child in five behavioral anecdotes. Boy's and girl's names were exchanged on alternate forms of the questionnaire. Statistically significant differences in likelihood of referral were found in four of the five behavioral categories, indicating that teachers would be more likely to refer boys than girls with identical problems.     

Sex bias in the Self-Directed Search investigative subscale

The Investigative (I) subscale of the Holland Self-Directed Search (SDS) vocational interest inventory was examined for sex-role stereotyping. A sample of 842 male and female psychologists, some of whom were researchers and some of whom were practitioners, completed the SDS and a revised set of investigative items (Re). As hypothesized, researchers' I and Re scores were higher than practitioners'; and the I, but not the Re, scale produced higher scores for males than females. This pattern indicates that the SDS investigative items contain sex bias, but the data suggest that item revisions or a simple correction factor for females' I scores may ameliorate the bias.     

Sex differences in interpretation bias in adolescents

Interpretation biases, in which ambiguous information is interpreted negatively, have been hypothesized to place adolescent females at greater risk of developing anxiety and mood disorders than same‐aged males. We tested the hypothesis that adolescent girls interpret ambiguous scenarios more negatively, and/or less positively, than same‐aged males using the Adolescent Interpretation and Belief Questionnaire (N = 67, 11–15 years old). We also tested whether adolescent girls and boys differed in judging positive or negative interpretations to be more believable and whether the scenario content (social vs. non‐social) affected any sex difference in interpretation bias. The results showed that girls had higher average negative interpretation scores than boys, with no sex differences in positive interpretation scores. Girls and boys did not differ on which interpretation they found to be most believable. Both sexes reported that positive interpretations were less likely to come to mind, and were less believable, for social than for non‐social scenarios. These results provide preliminary evidence for sex differences in interpretation biases in adolescence and support the hypothesis that social scenarios are a specific source of anxiety to this age group. A greater understanding of the aetiology of interpretation biases will potentially enhance sex‐ and age‐specific interventions for anxiety and mood disorders.     

Sex bias in the diagnosis of personality disorders: A different approach

There has been considerable controversy regarding a possible sex bias in the diagnosis of personality disorders (PDs). However, prior research has at times confused a bias within clinicians who fail to adhere to the diagnostic criteria with a bias within the diagnostic criteria. Rather than assess whether females are more likely than males to be diagnosed with a respective disorder, the current study assesses whether the thresholds for the diagnosis of female-typed PDs are lower than the thresholds for male-typed PDs. Subjects completed two self-report inventories for the DSM-III-R personality disorders, and three inventories that assessed 30 aspects of personality dysfunction organized with respect to social dysfunction, occupational dysfunction, and personal distress. There was no indication that the diagnostic thresholds for personality disorders that occur more often in females is lower than the thresholds for the personality disorders that occur more often in males. The implications of these findings for the issue of sex biased diagnoses are discussed.     

Sex differences and the own-gender bias in face recognition: A meta-analytic review

We review the literature on sex differences and the own-gender bias in face recognition. By means of a meta-analysis, we found that girls and women remember more faces than boys and men do (g=0.36), and more female faces (g=0.55), but not more male faces (g=0.08); however, when only male faces are presented, girls and women outperform boys and men (g=0.22). In addition, there is female own-gender bias (g=0.57), but not a male own-gender bias (g= ? 0.03), showing that girls and women remember more female than male faces. It is argued that girls and women have an advantage in face processing and episodic memory, resulting in sex differences for faces, and that the female own-gender bias may stem from an early perceptual expertise for female faces, which may be strengthened by reciprocal interactions and psychological processes directing girls' and women's interest to other females.     

Comprehension and storage of four serially presented radio news stories by mild aphasic subjects

The present study investigated aphasic subjects' ability to comprehend and store serially presented discourse. Sixteen mild aphasic subjects, eight age-matched normals, and eight younger normals listened to four serially presented radio news stories and a single radio news story. Half of the aphasic subjects performed as well as age-matched normals in a single-news-story comprehension task. However, they demonstrated a drastic deterioration in performance when asked to listen to a series of four news stories. Age-matched normals, and aphasic subjects, to a lesser extent, showed an impairment in the comprehension and storage of the news story heard last in a series of four news stories. These results were discussed in terms of the comprehension and storage resources of working memory.     

Sex bias in hiring: Effects of job demands and applicant competence

Managers in a large corporation evaluated application materials representing one of eight hypothetical job candidates. In order to examine the effects of two types of information on sex bias, three factors were manipulated in a factorial design: (1) Applicants were either male or female engineers; (2) they appeared highly competent or moderately competent based on academic performance; (3) they were applying for an engineering job that entailed either technical engineering tasks or managerial tasks in addition to the technical tasks. Greater discrimination against women occurred in evaluations for the technical-managerial job, even with highly competent applicants. These results are explained in terms of ambiguity: Because it was not obvious that applicants would succeed on the additional managerial tasks, the evaluators resorted to stereotypes in order to make their predictions.     

Children's and adults' recall of children's news stories in both print and audio‐visual presentation modalities

Research into adults' recall from different presentation modalities has demonstrated a recall advantage for print over television yet recent research indicates that children remember television news better than print news. An experiment was conducted by comparing children's and adults' recall of children's news stories presented in two different modalities, television and print, in order to establish whether children's recall advantage for television is dependent on their age or level of reading proficiency. A sample of 40 adults, 40 13‐year‐olds and 40 11‐year‐olds were presented with children's news stories, either in their original televised form or in a print version. All participants were aware they would be tested for recall. The results of the cued recall test indicated that children from both age groups learned more from the television news than from the print versions, regardless of age or reading proficiency and that adults remembered equal amounts from both presentation modalities. For the 11‐year‐olds the advantage of television was only found for information that had been accompanied by redundant pictures in the televised version, providing support for the dual‐coding hypothesis. For 13‐year‐olds the recall of television was not dependent on the addition of redundant visual information. Viewers and readers were found to invest the same amounts of mental effort, but reported levels of invested mental effort were found to be dependent on age and level of reading proficiency. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sex role egalitarianism as a moderator of gender congruence bias in evaluation

Sex-role egalitarianism, or the degree to which one perceives the gender of an individual to be independent of his/her abilities, rights and opportunities, was tested as a moderator of gender congruence in the evaluation of job applicants. It was hypothesized that scores on a measure of sex role egalitarianism would moderate the evaluation of female or male applicants in masculine-typed, neutral, or feminine-typed occupations. It was expected that the biases against an individual applying for a gender-atypical occupation would be reduced by a high degree of egalitarianism, whereas in neutral occupations, no bias would occur. A sample of 144 undergraduates participated in the study. Results from a sample composed mostly of white undergraduates supported part of this hypothesis with a three-way interaction between gender of applicant, gender type of occupation and sex role egalitarianism. In addition, the characteristics exhibited by the egalitarianism measure used in this investigation provided some interesting insights into the psychometric properties of the construct. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Sex bias in the diagnosis of personality disorders: an evaluation of the DSM-IV criteria.

This study considered whether the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) is biased against women by requiring less dysfunction for the personality disorders that are more commonly diagnosed in women (e.g., histrionic). Clinicians estimated the extent of social dysfunction, occupational dysfunction, and personal distress suggested by each of the diagnostic criteria for 6 personality disorders. The results failed to suggest a bias against women, as there was no difference in the overall level of dysfunction associated with the female-typed personality disorder diagnostic criteria (fewer criteria are also required for the male-typed diagnoses). However, the considerable variation in dysfunction across disorders and criteria, and the minimal degree of impairment implied by some of the diagnostic criteria, also raise more general issues that should perhaps be addressed in future editions of the diagnostic manual.     

Sex bias in the evaluation of performance in the scientific,artistic, and literary professions: A review

This article reviews published research on sex differential evaluation of art objects, articles, essays, and poetry that use the Goldberg paradigm in which the sex identification of the stimulus person is varied while the object to be evaluated is kept identical. Sex biases appear to be more limited in scope and more complex in nature than has at first been suspected. The occurrence of antifemale bias appears to depend upon characteristics of the stimulus object or person, characteristics of the judges and the judgment situation, and the way in which judgments are provided. However, none of the studies used professional judges, or provided realistic judgment procedures and contexts. Therefore the question of the external validity of the studies remains open.This study was performed as part of a doctoral dissertation concerning creative achievement of female and male visual artists. Portions of this paper were reported in a presentation at the First European Congress of Psychology, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, July 1989.I would like to express my appreciation to Lisette van Ardenne, Wim K. B. Hofstee, Wim B. G. Liebrand, Peter F. Lourens, Mariette Meester, and Iteke J. Weeda for their comments on earlier drafts of this article.