The processing of the Dutch masculine generic <i>zijn</i> ‘his’ across stereotype contexts: An eye-tracking study

Language users often infer a person’s gender when it is not explicitly mentioned. This information is included in the mental model of the described situation, giving rise to expectations regarding the continuation of the discourse. Such gender inferences can be based on two types of information: gender stereotypes (e.g., nurses are female) and masculine generics, which are grammatically masculine word forms that are used to refer to all genders in certain contexts (e.g., To each his own). In this eye-tracking experiment (N = 82), which is the first to systematically investigate the online processing of masculine generic pronouns, we tested whether the frequently used Dutch masculine generic zijn ‘his’ leads to a male bias. In addition, we tested the effect of context by introducing male, female, and neutral stereotypes. We found no evidence for the hypothesis that the generically-intended masculine pronoun zijn ‘his’ results in a male bias. However, we found an effect of stereotype context. After introducing a female stereotype, reading about a man led to an increase in processing time. However, the reverse did not hold, which parallels the finding in social psychology that men are penalized more for gender-nonconforming behavior. This suggests that language processing is not only affected by the strength of stereotype contexts; the associated disapproval of violating these gender stereotypes affects language processing, too.语言使用者常会在未被明确提及的情况下推断他人的性别。该性别推断信息会被纳入所描述情境的心理模型中，进而引发关于话语后续走向的预期。此类性别推断可基于两类信息：性别刻板印象（例如“护士多为女性”），以及阳性通用语（masculine generics）——即在特定语境下用于指代所有性别的语法阳性词形（例如“To each his own”）。 本研究开展了一项眼动实验（N = 82），这也是首个系统性探究阳性通用代词在线加工的实验。我们测试了荷兰语中高频使用的阳性通用代词zijn（对应英语的“his”）是否会引发男性偏向。此外，我们通过引入男性、女性及中性刻板印象，考察了语境的影响效应。 我们未发现证据支持“用于泛指的阳性代词zijn（对应英语的“his”）会引发男性偏向”这一假说。但我们发现了刻板印象语境的显著效应：在引入女性刻板印象后，阅读提及男性的语句会延长加工时长；反之则未出现该效应，这与社会心理学领域的相关发现一致——即男性因不符合性别规范的行为会受到更多指责。 这表明，语言加工不仅受刻板印象语境的强度影响，对违反这些性别刻板印象行为的连带反感也会作用于语言加工过程。