Gender Relativism: How Context Shapes What Is Seen as Male and Female

This research explores the concept of gender relativism, whereby “gender”-or what is seen as “male” and “female”-changes as a function of context. Seven studies find that people attach gender to seemingly “gender-neutral” stimuli-bifurcating information by “male” and “female”-but that the gender of the stimuli changes as a function of the comparison set. Using stimuli from past work, including shapes (Study 1), species (Study 2), “gender-neutral” traits (Studies 3-4), faces (Study 5), and names (Studies 6-7), these studies demonstrate that gender is relative, where characteristics deemed “female” or “male” exist within a given context. Importantly, these relative evaluations shift perceptions of both gender (i.e., stereotypes) and physical sex (i.e., height, weight) characteristics, with downstream consequences for bias and target judgments (Studies 4-7). In contrast to most work in psychology, which studies gender as an independent variable (to predict differences in stereotypes and outcomes), this work calls for gender to also be considered as a dependent variable that can change as a function of context. Together, these results have theoretical implications for the construct and measurement of gender in psychology, as well as practical implications for gender stereotyping, bias, and discrimination.