Comparing form-based and meaning-based gender biases in pronoun resolution: Inferences from names and role nouns

Abstract

Referring to people using only their name (e.g. Jones came in) is known to evoke the assumption that the individual is male. The same holds with some role nouns (e.g. mechanic, boxer). We explore these effects through the lens of pronoun interpretation in English. In two sentence-completion studies, we show that both form-based (last-name-only style) and meaning-based gender biases (from role nouns) are powerful enough to eliminate otherwise robust verb semantic effects on pronoun interpretation (implicit causality). In addition, the results provide initial evidence that meaning-based biases (at least the ones tested here) can be stronger than form-based biases, which may stem from differences in the form-function mapping.