Grammatical gender and anthropomorphism
It” depends on the language
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6204762 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Alican Mecit (0000-0002-5388-2815, SKEMA Business School), Tina M Lowrey (0000-0002-2185-6313, HEC Paris), L J Shrum (0000-0001-7112-6418, HEC Paris) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 123 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 503-517 |
| Publication date | 2022-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-3514 • E-ISSN: 1939-1315 |
| Publisher | American Psychological Association (APA) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1037/pspa0000309 |
| PMID | 35311334 |
| OpenAlex | W4220662558 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
). Unlike English, which marks gender only for humans, gendered languages such as French grammatically mark gender not only for humans but also for nonhumans. Research has shown that in gendered languages, although gender marking of nonhuman nouns is semantically arbitrary, people ascribe male and female properties to nonhuman entities consistent with their grammatical gender. Because grammatical gender conveys human-related properties, we question whether grammatically gender-marking nonhumans may elicit anthropomorphism tendencies. Across six studies, we show that gender marking of nonhuman nouns in gendered languages influences the way individuals mentally represent these entities and increases their anthropomorphism tendencies. We demonstrate the effects both by comparing anthropomorphism as a function of natural differences in languages with French-English bilinguals (Study 1) and by training native English speakers to use gender marking for nonhuman nouns as speakers of gendered languages do (Study 2). The following studies further demonstrate the effects within the French language by measuring (Study 3a) and manipulating (Studies 3b and 4) the salience of gender markings of nonhuman nouns. In Study 5 (preregistered), we replicate our basic finding and establish grammatical gender as an important linguistic element in shaping French speakers' anthropomorphism tendencies. We discuss the findings and the limitations in the culture-language-cognition triad and layout their implications for the debate on the extent to which language can mediate categorical and perceptual judgments. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
Cognition · Cognitive psychology · Grammatical Gender · Linguistic relativity · Linguistics · Noun · Noun phrase · Perception · PsycINFO · Salience (neuroscience) · Categorization, perception, and language · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Psychology
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |