April H Bailey, Robin Dembroff, Daniel Wodak, Elif G Ikizer, Andrei Cimpian
Pronouns often convey information about a person's social identity (e.g., gender). Consequently, pronouns have become a focal point in academic and public debates about whether pronouns should be changed to be more inclusive, such as for people whose identities do not fit current pronoun conventions (e.g., gender nonbinary individuals). Here, we make an empirical contribution to these debates by investigating which social identities lay speakers think that pronouns should encode (if any) and why. Across four studies, participants were asked to evaluate different types of real and hypothetical pronouns, including binary gender pronouns, race pronouns, and identity-neutral pronouns...
May 2024: Journal of Experimental Psychology. General