Effects of the Generic Masculine and its Alternatives in Germanophone countries. A Multi-lab Replication and Extension of Stahlberg, Sczesny, and Braun, 2001

In languages such as German, French, or Hindi, plural forms of job occupations and societal roles are often in a generic-masculine form instead of a gender-neutral form. Although meant as “generic”, this generic-masculine form excludes women from everyday language and might even entail the cognitive effect that listeners and readers will less likely think of women. Several studies have demonstrated this and related cognitive effects in the past. Due to the societal relevance of gender-neutral language, we propose a direct replication and extension of a classic study by Stahlberg, Sczesny, and Braun (2001, Experiment 2) in a multi-lab setting. We already present preliminary evidence showing that people indeed come up with more female exemplars when they are asked to name celebrities from several domains, such as politics and sports in gender-neutral forms compared to the generic-masculine form. The proposed multi-lab study will be conducted among 12 labs, collecting data from more than N = 2,000 participants.