Masculine Bias in the Attribution of Personhood: People = Male, Male = People

Abstract

Silveira (1 980) noted that not just masculine generics, but also neutral terms, have masculine connotations; she called this the "people = male" bias. Her hypothesis takes two forms: people = male, a male is more likely seen as a person than is a female; and male = people, a person is more likely believed to be male than female. A total of 108 female and 91 male college students participated in three studies. Study 1 tested male = people. Participants referring back to a female or male protagonist as a woman/man or as a person were significantly more likely to refer to the male with a nongender-specific term. Studies 2 and 3 tested people = male. In Study 2, reanalysis of data from Hamilton and Henley (1 982) showed that hearing unbiased generics promoted male-biased mental imagery in men. In Study 3, participants' imagined "typical person" was significantly more likely to be male than female.

Gender and Binegativity: Men’s and Women’s Attitudes Toward Male and Female Bisexuals

“…But the Biphobia Scale itself is limited in that the items specify attitudes toward''a bisexual individual. ''Since studies of gender-neutral language indicate that when gender is unspecified, participants assume maleness (Hamilton, 1991;Merritt & Kok, 1995), it is probable that the Biphobia Scale has inadvertently assessed attitudes toward bisexual men. The Biphobia Scale was chosen for use in the present study due to its greater range of items, but modification of the scale (to specify gender of the bisexual) was undertaken in order to explore our research questions.…”

Anonymously male: Social media avatar icons are implicitly male and resistant to change

“…These default avatar icons are seemingly gender-neutral. However, the research on androcentrism shows that people perceive unmarked words as being more male-typed than not (e.g., Bailey & LaFrance, 2016;Hamilton, 1991). Thus, unmarked avatar images may also be perceived as being more male-typed than not, thus perpetuating androcentrism.…”

“…The perceived over-representation of male-typed icons compared to female-typed icons illustrates the general tendency to view a man as a typical person (Hamilton, 1991). Study 2 investigated the impact of this male-bias in social media icons on people's subsequent tendency to make an androcentric choice.…”

“…We modeled our measure of androcentrism after Hamilton (1991). We prompted participants to "imagine a typical person (do NOT use yourself)" and asked them to give that person a name and a hobby.…”

“…For instance, when asked to select a typical individual from a broad, gender-inclusive population, people are more likely to select a man (Bailey & LaFrance, 2016;Hamilton, 1991). Bem (1993) characterized this phenomenon as androcentrism.…”