Women Assimilate Across Gender,Men Don't: The Role of Gender to the Own‐Anchor Effect in Age,Height, and Weight Estimates1

This paper reports 2 studies of the own‐anchor effect (i.e., assimilation in age, height, and weight estimates) in same‐ and cross‐gender age, height, and weight estimates. The own‐anchor effect is believed to be stronger for same‐gender estimates, but the investigation reported here is the first to test this hypothesis with participants and target persons of both genders. Several own‐anchor effects were found in females' same‐ and cross‐gender estimates, whereas males only showed own‐anchor effects in same‐gender estimates. These results lean toward the possibility that women assimilate across gender, whereas men do not. Explanations of these results with reference to Krueger's ( Krueger & Zeiger, 1993 ; Robbins & Krueger, 2005 ) theory of social projection and the consequences for witness reliability are discussed.