Abstract
Six experiments investigated the commonly expressed view that the pronoun he, when used generically, may lead individuals to think more often of male referents. The first experiment validated a semantic differential scale which was constructed to unobtrusively measure subjects' impressions of stimulus persons. In the five subsequent experiments, descriptions of various stimulus persons were presented alternating the use of the pronouns he, they, or he/she. No support was found for a pure pronoun effect. However, some evidence was found for a masculine bias when the word man was combined with he. The results provide little support for the often cited claim that the use of the generic pronoun, per se, leads to increased thoughts of men.
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The authors would like to thank Melodie Smith for serving as an experimenter in Experiment 5 and for assisting with data summary.
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Cole, C.M., Hill, F.A. & Dayley, L.J. Do masculine pronouns used generically lead to thoughts of men?. Sex Roles 9, 737–750 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00289802
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00289802