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Gender is so fundamental to the way we understand the world that people are prone to assign a sex to even inanimate objects. We all know someone, or perhaps we are that person, who consistently refers to their computer or car with a gender pronoun (“She’s been running great these past few weeks!”) New research suggests that our tendency to see gender everywhere even applies to abstract ideas such as numbers. Across cultures, people see odd numbers as male and even numbers as female.
Scientists have long known that language can influence how we perceive gender in objects. Some languages consistently refer to certain objects as male or female, and this in turn, influences how speakers of that language think about those objects. Webb Phillips of the Max Planck Institute, Lauren Schmidt of HeadLamp Research, and Lera Boroditsky at Stanford University asked Spanish- and German-speaking bilinguals to rate various objects according to whether they seemed more similar to males or females. They found that people rated each object according to its grammatical gender. For example, Germans see the moon as being more like a man, because the German word for moon is grammatically masculine (“der Mond”). In contrast, Spanish-speakers see the moon as being more like a woman, because in Spanish the word for moon is grammatically feminine (“la Luna”).
Aside from language, objects can also become infused with gender based on their appearance, who typically uses them, and whether they seem to possess the type of characteristics usually associated with men or women. David Gal and James Wilkie of Northwestern University studied how people view gender in everyday objects, such as food and furniture. They found that people see food dishes containing meat as more masculine and salads and sour dairy products as more feminine. People see furniture items, such as tables and trash cans, as more feminine when they feature rounded, rather than sharp, edges.
Wilkie partnered with fellow Northwestern psychologist Galen Bodenhausen to demonstrate that this tendency to ascribe gender to objects extends to even highly abstract concepts. They ran an experiment where they asked American participants to rate foreign names (e.g. “Alekseev”) in terms of how masculine or feminine they seemed. When a name was paired with the number 1, it was more likely to be rated as masculine. When the same name was paired with the number 2, people were more likely to rate it as feminine. Wilkie and Bodenhausen asked people how they made their decisions, but none of their participants reported that the numbers had influenced their ratings of the names.
In another study, Wilkie and Bodenhausen showed participants photos of babies and asked them to determine for each photo the likelihood that the baby was male. They found that when a baby photo was paired with the number 1, people were much more likely to think the baby was male. Once again, people reported no awareness that the numbers were influencing their perceptions. In a separate study, the researchers had participants rate the masculinity and femininity of the numbers themselves. People readily rated the number 1, as well other odd numbers, as being more masculine. They also rated the number 2, and other even numbers, as appearing more feminine. This last finding was replicated with a sample from India, lending their results cross-cultural support.
Why would odd numbers, across cultures, be associated with masculinity? While more research is needed for a solid answer, it may have something to do with gender stereotypes. Wilkie and Bodenhausen plan to explore this hypothesis in future studies by seeing whether people associate odd numbers with more stereotypically masculine qualities, such as dominance and independence.
Our tendency to assign gender to numbers has a long history. Both the Pythagorean philosophy of ancient Greece and the Chinese philosophy of yin and yang viewed numbers as possessing gender. Both cultures also viewed odd numbers as masculine and even numbers as feminine.
Our tendency to see gender in everything, even numbers, is a reminder of how fundamental gender is to how we perceive the world. When people are led to believe that an object possesses one gender or another, it changes how they relate to that object. For example, Stanford researchers Clifford Nass, Youngme Moon, and Nancy Green had people interact with a computer that was programmed to have either a male-sounding or female-sounding voice. They found that when the computer had a female-sounding voice, people saw the computer as less friendly, credible and knowledgeable, as compared to the male-sounding computer. People did this openly, despite knowing perfectly well that they were making judgments about a machine and not a real person.
It’s no surprise that the first thing that most people ask new parents is whether they had a boy or a girl. When we don’t know somebody’s gender, it creates confusion in our minds—we have no framework from which to build upon. Gender helps us not only understand how to think about someone, or something, but it also helps us figure out that person or thing’s relationship to the rest of the world. Our brains can’t help but see gender everywhere we look.
Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? And have you read a recent peer-reviewed paper that you would like to write about? Please send suggestions to Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist at the Boston Globe. He can be reached at garethideas AT gmail.com or Twitter @garethideas.
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21 Comments
Add CommentOne of the most difficult things in learning German is the different gender designations of the language along with the case structures assigned to different words based upon the same (nominate, dative, accusative, genitive). The gender designations in that language seem somewhat inappropriate sometimes. For example, the word madchen, which means young girl in German, is "neuter" rather than feminine.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe SRY gene on the Y chromosome on the human male interferes with the process of creating a female, causing a chain of events that leads to testes formation, androgen production, and a range of both natal and post-natal hormonal effects.
The aforementioned result in vast biological,psychiatric, and intellectual differences between men and women.For example, there are twice as many men with an IQ of 120 and 30 times as many men than women with an IQ of 170.
The scientific term for the same is "sexual dimorphism."
The most damaging stereotype to women, in my opinion, is that women do not develop the stereotype masculine virtues: 1. Honor 2. Courage 3. Self Control 4. An Egalitarian Attitude and 5. Good Judgement.
Because of both the scientific and political controversy associated with the perceived social, intellectual, and emotional differences between men and women, I suggest that each person, regardless of gender, be treated with that "separate and equal" status that was highlighted in the U.S. Declaration of Independence. The same treatment, in my opinion, is, also, fundamental to science which sees every human being as being "separate and equal" to all other human beings. Recognizing gender based language differences does not recognize different treatment based upon gender. Thus, different language distinctions, based upon gender, do not and should not justify different treatment of individuals based upon gender.
This is interesting and I've thought about this quite a bit from various sources and angles. I find it interesting that the author starts by using the word sex and then changes to gender for the rest of the article. It's not really sex but gender since the things being "gendered" don't have a sex. That is, gender is an imputation or supposition whereas sex is biological.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOk, let me be the first to ask. Does anybody really care?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSince I'm interested in degrading the gender binary and concerned that persistent gender stereotypes hurt everyone more than they help, and since this study helps establish how ingrained the notion of gender is to our thinking and reveals something about how it manifests--I care.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn spanish, everything has gender... As for me, at 17 all I thought about was sex...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHumans are certainly not "equal"! If we were our species would be very uninteresting and boring. This "equality" concept permeates our justice system which I think is a shame. "A jury of your peers" is almost always a joke. We try to force fit people into "equality" with organized social entities like religion. In most cases there are only a few concepts what a person really agrees with, we put up with the rest even though they often go against our real beliefs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe are not all "equal"!
But is the number 17 masculine, feminine, or neuter? Or something else?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs worthless as one self reported anecdote is, I have trouble feeling the genders of numbers but they do have other physical interpreted traits. Even numbers feel more stable and balanced to me. It's like comparing a square with a triangle. All odd numbers feel incomplete to me like the final unit of value making them odd is sticking out the side like an electron cloud with only one electron in it vulnerable to being snapped up by nearby free flowing numbers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt makes me wonder, and I concthink they should also use this study to try to explain this, is whether this gender-concept thing is one reason for homophobism - if one is not capable of clearly distinguishing others gender, they might just get lost.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems that Sigmund Freud himself wrote some interesting comments on the sexual meaning of numbers; after reading it, you can finish looking at numbers to be entered in computing or calculations as some kind of a very wild party.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKeep cool !
@ bartonlp
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou ought to have read the article before you wrote two comments.
I wonder how this pans out for the synesthetes who crosswire other sensory perceptions with numbers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWho pays for this fluff research? Could just as well have started as follows -> "Direction is so fundamental to the way we understand the world that people are prone to assign a direction to even inanimate objects. Researchers asked a bunch of morons whether they thought a brass monkey was more like "up" or more like "down". Ethiopians thought it was more "up" and Iowans thought it was more "down". All these gender studies produce nothing to help humans. Throw in the towel and start digging ditches, or anything productive.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe # 17 is ODD - so are most men. X/y instead of xx? Doesn't that explain everything?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe # 17 is ODD - so are most men. X/y instead of xx? Doesn't that explain everything?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis discussion assumes general validity of the findings reported by researchers without giving the actual numbers, percentages or ratios. For example, what proportion of subjects rated 1-baby as female (what is the percentage of gender bias among the subjects6--55-45%,60-40%, etc.) Not every one of us has these biases.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRe learning German, if you don't recall the gender of the noun don't worry about it. You can still communicate without the exact match. You will never be a native speaker and Germans do not expect you to know the gender of every noun. Sprechen sie!
The number 17 is so gay...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think for those who have transcended normalcy, something that verifies our every-day-inevitable prejudices is a step further from them and a step towards the things in life that unify us and allow us to enjoy the human experience. I mean c'mon: everyone wants to contribute something more to the world than simply fulfilling their gender role. This article is a great case study, but it's about time we began being more concise with our classifying systems--this should be advertised as a sociological commentary to help lead those who wouldn't be able to acknowledge that for themselves.
I agree with DrLPalmer that actual figures of the research should be given for the readers to evaluate how significant the finding may be.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAt any rate, this article could be greatly improved. A lot of conclusions seem to come from this research where questions were asked to Spanish and German speakers -- two languages with clear gender terms for all (in Spanish) or many words (German). How about English speakers, where many things are that, just things ("it", not "he" or "she")? More importantly, what about speakers of languages where there is no gender at all, such as Turkish? Is there no research on that? That would be surprising (and disappointing!). If there is, then obviously it should have been discussed too.
The article doesn't make it clear if the research was done with the concept of numbers or with Arabic numerals. What if they had done it using Roman numerals instead, or the words "one", "two", etc? Would you still see this phenomenon?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne penis. Two breasts. The Penis looks like a one and acts singularly (even the testicles only add to the "odd" nature of the "three" distinction). And breasts are "round figures" to boot. I say this in all seriousness and as a woman.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm still curious about the number 17 and its gender, though. Seven is a strange number - of the first ten numbers, it's the only number with two syllables (se-ven). Similarly, seventeen is the only number - other than eleven! - that has three syllables within the 10-20 range.
I picture 17 as a female number, myself. Seventeen magazine and thoughts of the "barely-not-legal"/jail bait significance of the number in American culture remind me of the female role of this numeral. Even the "teen" distinction reminds me of femininity, for some (hopefully not hebephilic) reason...
Apologies for the bent of this post. These are "just thoughts"...
Where did the IQ information come from?
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