Activating gender stereotypes in Italian during online language processing.

Research suggests that information about stereotypical gender associated with certain occupations and characteristics is incorporated into speakers’ representations, rendering such information difficult to suppress during language processing. The aim of the present study was to investigate the activation of gender stereotypes in Italian. Participants were primed with a noun or an adjective that belonged to one of the following categories: (1) masculine stereotypical gender unmarked (conducente “driver”); (2) feminine stereotypical gender unmarked (insegnante “teacher”); (3) masculine biological without stereotypical gender bias (pensionato “pensioner”); (4) feminine biological without stereotypical gender bias (passeggera “passenger”); (5) stereotypically neutral gender unmarked (conoscente “acquaintance”). The prime was immediately followed by a target, which was a personal pronoun lui (“he”) or lei (“she”). Participants were required to decide as quickly as possible whether the pronoun was masculine or feminine. The results showed faster RTs in congruent conditions, both biological (pensionato – lui, passeggera – lei) and, crucially, stereotypical (conducente – lui, insegnante – lei), compared to incongruent ones (pensionato – lei, passeggera – lui; and conducente – lei, insegnante – lui). Although the effect was stronger for biological gender manipulations than stereotypical ones, our results provide further support for a stereotypical gender priming effect in language.