Policing Gender Nonconformity: Negative evaluations of people with nonconventional pronouns

This study examines how pronoun sharing affects evaluations of people who use nonconventional pronouns in collaborative settings. Drawing on normative discrimination theory, the investigators tested whether sharing nonconventional pronouns (e.g., they/them, or binary pronouns paired with a gender-incongruent name) leads to negative perceptions of interpersonal qualities and penalties in how a person is evaluated as a potential teammate. The preregistered experiment was conducted in December 2023. It was fielded on Prolific with a national sample of 1,697 U.S. adults, constructed to approximate the U.S. population on binary sex, age, and political affiliation, with an oversample of Black and Hispanic respondents. Participants were randomly assigned to evaluate a fictitious college student profile in which the student's name (Amy, Brian, or Jamie) and pronouns (she/her, he/him, they/them, or no pronouns) were independently varied across twelve conditions. Participants rated the student's perceived warmth, interpersonal demandingness, agenticism, competence, and similarity to themselves, as well as their comfort working with the student and their assessment of the student as a teammate. The survey also collected open-ended responses about participants' impressions of the student and their views on pronoun-sharing practices. We also collected information about participants' gender identity, sex assigned at birth, age, race/ethnicity, education, region, political orientation, political party, prior experience with pronoun-sharing practices, and personal acquaintance with transgender or nonbinary individuals.<br>

本研究探讨了协作场景中代词共享行为对使用非常规代词的个体的他人评价的影响。本研究依托规范歧视理论（normative discrimination theory），检验了共享非常规代词（例如they/them，或与性别不符的姓名搭配的二元代词）是否会引发对个体人际特质的负面感知，以及对其作为潜在队友的评价施加惩罚。本预注册实验于2023年12月开展，通过Prolific平台招募了1697名美国成年人组成的全国性样本，该样本在二元性别、年龄与政治倾向维度上与美国总体人口结构相匹配，并对黑人和西班牙裔受访者进行了过采样（oversample）。参与者被随机分配至评估一份虚构的大学生档案，该档案中学生姓名（Amy、Brian或Jamie）与代词（she/her、he/him、they/them或无代词）在12种实验条件下被独立操控。参与者对该学生的感知温暖度、人际要求性、能动性（agenticism）、能力水平、与自身的相似性进行评分，同时也评价了与该学生共事的舒适度，以及对其作为队友的适配性评估。本次调查还收集了参与者关于该学生的印象，以及对代词共享行为的看法的开放式回答。研究同时收集了参与者的性别认同、出生时指派性别、年龄、种族/族裔、受教育程度、所在地区、政治倾向、党派、代词共享行为相关过往经历，以及是否认识跨性别或非二元性别个体的相关信息。