title: The dark side of gendered language: The masculine-generic form as a cause for self-report bias.
abstract: Language reflects sociocultural structures, such as gender, and affects individuals' perceptions and cognitions. In gendered languages, male-inflected parts of speech are generally used for both sexes (i.e., masculine generics), thus proliferating stereotypes, inequality, and misattributions. We hypothesized that masculine-generic inflection in a questionnaire would bias women's reports compared with a gender-neutral inflection (e.g., "he or she"). We tested our prediction using an academic motivation questionnaire. We found that women reported lower task value and intrinsic goal orientation in the masculine-generic form compared with the gender-neutral form, and lower self-efficacy than men in the masculine-generic form. These findings suggest that questionnaires and surveys written in gendered languages or translated into them may contain construct-irrelevant variance that may undermine the validity of their scores' interpretations, thus risking the possibility of false conclusions.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychological Sciences, Tel Aviv University.
authors.forename: Sigal
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Vainapel
authors.affiliation: School of Psychological Sciences, Tel Aviv University.
authors.forename: Opher Y
authors.initials: OY
authors.lastname: Shamir
authors.affiliation: School of Psychological Sciences, Tel Aviv University.
authors.forename: Yulie
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Tenenbaum
authors.affiliation: School of Psychological Sciences, Tel Aviv University.
authors.forename: Gadi
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Gilam
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D005783:Gender Identity; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D020377:Self Efficacy; D057566:Self Report / Q000592:standards*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards*