Priming Effects in Lexical Decisions on Sex-Stereotypical Adjectives

Abstract

To investigate the semantic memory organization of gender concepts, we used gender words to prime lexical decisions on stereotypically feminine and masculine adjectives (e.g., emotional and aggressive, respectively) in two experiments. Under certain conditions, gender primes facilitated performance on both stereotypically appropriate and inappropriate adjectives. Female subjects were facilitated when either the word woman or man primed stereotypically feminine adjectives. Male subjects were facilitated when the word male primed either stereotypically masculine or feminine adjectives (and they were inhibited when woman primed these adjectives, especially the masculine ones). These results suggest overlap in the memory representations of traits associated with the two genders.