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This study examines women’s and men’s likelihood to apply for leadership positions in a male-typed environment, depending on the degree to which women and men fulfill the listed requirements. In addition, we examine the role of different reasons that female and male participants may consider when making their decision whether to apply or not.

The current study investigates whether social role information affects people's double standards in prescriptive (what men and women should be) and proscriptive (what men and women should not be) gender rules. Former research by Rudman and colleagues (2012) found that prescriptive and proscriptive gender rules are aligned with social status. Specifically, their findings indicate that U.S. respondents endorse a clear set of gender rules for men, thinking men should be high in status and cannot be low in status, whereas gender rules for women are less closely tied to social status. Further, a large-scale study across 62 nations documented a double standard in gender rules such that people more strongly endorsed prescriptive (“shoulds”) and proscriptive (“should nots”) gender rules for men than for women (Bosson et al., 2022). However, whether gender rules are influenced by the social roles men and women take on or not remains unknown. It has been shown that social role information can override the influence of descriptive gender stereotypes on person perceptions. That is, regardless of gender, women and men in female-dominated occupations were perceived as similarly communal and women and men in male-dominated occupations were perceived as similarly agentic (Bosak et al., 2012; Gustafsson Sendén et al., 2020). Extending previous findings on the alignment of gender rules and social status, here we examine if prescriptive and proscriptive gender rules are also dependent on social role information.

Women frequently do not label their experiences of sexual harassment as sexual harassment (Magley & Shupe, 2005). The objective of this survey is to understand why women do not always categorize sexual harassment directed towards themselves as such, and whether there is a difference in perception and labeling when the harassment is observed rather than personally experienced. We are conducting a survey on the perception of sexually harassing behaviors among women. Half of the participants will rate on a scale of 1 ("not at all strong") to 7 ("very strong") how strongly they would label 16 harassing behaviors as harassment if they were to experience them (self-perspective), while the other half will rate how strongly another woman should label the harassing behaviors as harassment (external perspective). Subsequently, all participants will rank the overall severity of various forms of harassment on a scale of 0 ("not at all severe") to 7 ("very severe"). The assumption is that sexual harassment perceived as more severe is more likely to be labeled as such, while harassment perceived as less severe may not be labeled as such. Additionally, we will ask all participants what they believe would influence their decision to label a behavior as harassment (e.g., work relationship: supervisor or colleague). This open-ended question aims to contribute to a better understanding of the cognitive processes that precede the judgment of a behavior as sexually harassing. The participants will then answer a total of 8 items related to four potential motivations, based on Shupe's (2019) paper, for labeling or not labeling harassing behavior as sexual harassment. Shupe posits that the belief in a just world is the first motivator that encourages the labeling of sexual harassment, as addressing it requires its recognition. Motives for not labeling sexual harassment directed towards oneself, according to Shupe, can include relationship problems, self-regulation needs, and the desire to maintain control and identity. Individuals who have experienced sexual harassment are often expected to confront the perpetrator, which can lead to uncomfortable feelings or a sense of loss of control. Additionally, some survivors anticipate being treated or perceived differently by others after experiencing sexual harassment. According to Shupe, women may fear being blamed for the harassment or seen as seeking attention if they label it. These four motives identified by Shupe may also contribute to why sexual harassment experienced personally and observed sexual harassment are not always labeled the same: individuals who have personally experienced harassment may seek to maintain a sense of control, prevent relationship problems, and minimize self-regulation. Finally, all participants will be asked several socio-demographic questions regarding age, sexual orientation, educational level, and cultural background.

In this study, we will investigate how people perceive the profiles of potential mentors, and if similarity and perceived workplace requirements play a role in that perception. This study will ask participants to read the profiles of two potential mentors and to rate each profile on several measures. Moreover, participants will indicate how they describe themselves on agentic and communal values, and which agentic and communal requirements they perceive in their workplace.

Previous research has revealed that the gendered division of labor in the household leads to gender-stereotypical associations with female and male parents - people associate mothers more strongly with communal traits (e.g., affectionate, helpful, warm) and behaviors (e.g., comforting a child), and fathers more strongly with agentic traits (e.g., assertive, decisive, independent) and behaviors (e.g., providing the household income; Banchefsky & Park, 2015; Park, Smith & Correll, 2010). To refer to a person in a parental role, people can use the gender-specific nouns “mother” and “father”, or the generic noun “parent” which does not indicate the gender of the referent. So far, parental stereotypes have been investigated only for the gender-specific parental roles of “mother” and “father”. This study aims to investigate how language can reduce gender stereotyping of the parental role by comparing the generic role noun (“parent”) to gender-specific role nouns (“mother” and “father”). More specifically, this research examines whether people ascribe different traits to the generic role “parent” in comparison to the gender-specific roles “mother” and “father”. The current study is the first one to investigate the impact of language on the content of parental stereotypes. It also extends previous research by examining the different facets of agency and communion in the social perception of parental roles.

There is no doubt that the language used in the workplace and job recruitment has an impact on an individual's application attitudes and perception. This can be seen in the existing and growing literature on the use of gender-inclusive in recruitment and its effect on people’s cognitions, emotions, and behaviours (Braun et al., 2005; Stout & Dasgupta, 2011; Hodel et al., 2017; Sato et al., 2016; Sato et al., 2013; Sczesny et al., 2016; Stahlberg et al., 2001). Past research has focused on grammatical gender languages that rely on masculine forms as default, so called masculine generics. Masculine generics are common amongst both natural and grammatical gender languages. They are often used to refer to someone with unspecified gender (i.e., where there is ambiguity) or to refer to a mixed gender group. In this study, we aim to build on this work by exploring the impact of inclusive language compared to masculine language on women and men in Arabic, a grammatical gender language. Because Arabic does not possess a neuter grammatical form, attempts at making the language more inclusive have been restricted to feminisation strategies, where word pairs are used with both the masculine and the feminine instead of the masculine on its own. It is important to note that Egyptian online recruitment predominantly relies on using masculine generics for senior and high-paid positions and in male-dominated industries (Soliman, 2023). Previously, this usage has been left unquestioned, however, recent research on other grammatical gender languages has shown that when masculine generics are used in recruitment women are rated as less suitable for a senior position (Horvath & Sczesny, 2016). Therefore, we investigate how language affects perceivers' assumed job appeal, sense of belonging, and chance of success of an applicant (their friend) that is either a woman or a man, and whether they would recommend their friend to apply. Additionally, we explore whether the women or men themselves differ in their intent to apply to the job if they would be in the applicant’s position. The experiment follows a 2 (Language Condition: masculine, inclusive) x 2 (Applicant Gender: woman, man) between-participants design while utilising a 'vignette'. Vignettes are often used in qualitative research to elicit participants' beliefs and attitudes by presenting them with a specific situation that mirrors their own (Hughes & Huby, 2012; Kandemir & Budd, 2018). As the study targets university students who are future entrants into the labour market, this method was deemed the most suitable in mirroring the students' actual desire to apply to jobs in the future. Instead of explicitly asking students to imagine themselves in the applicant’s position, which would be subject to high levels of variability due to their own interests and expectations regarding the present job market, we will ask them to imagine a ‘friend/colleague’ who is currently searching for a job. Participants will be asked to rate (1) how appealing their friend would find the job presented, (2) if their friend would feel a sense of belonging to the role, and (3) their friend’s chance of success. After these judgments, they will be asked whether they would recommend and advise their friend to apply and if they themselves would apply if they were in their friend’s situation.

The aim of this experiment is to explore the impact of inclusive language compared to masculine language in Arabic on applicants with different genders. Arabic is a grammatically gendered language that does not possess a neuter grammatical form, but instead possesses two gender distinctions: masculine and feminine. Historically and presently, Arabic relies on the use of the masculine form as the default. Specifically, the masculine form is often used to refer to someone with unspecified gender (i.e., where there is ambiguity) or to refer to a mixed gender group (Aoun et al., 2009). This usage is common amongst many natural and grammatical gender languages such as Spanish, French and German. However, there is a growing movement towards the use of gender-inclusive alternatives instead of the masculine in various countries (e.g., France, Germany, and Switzerland), especially in recruitment settings. This can be seen in the literature on the use of gender-inclusive language in recruitment and its effect on people’s cognitions, emotions, and behaviours (Braun et al., 2005; Stout & Dasgupta, 2011; Hodel et al., 2017; Sato et al., 2016; Sato et al., 2013; Sczesny et al., 2016; Stahlberg et al., 2001). This movement is yet to extend to Egypt, as the majority of job advertisements in online recruitment rely on the use of masculine grammatical gender for senior and high-paid positions (Soliman, 2023).Therefore, we investigate how language affects applicants’ perceived suitability and fit, wage expectations, and hireability in an attempt to motivate a movement away from the use of masculine grammatical gender and instead promote the use of gender-inclusive alternatives in the language used in recruitment. This is a parallel study to another preregistered experiment titled “how does gendered language in Arabic affect perceivers' assumed job appeal, sense of belonging, and chance of success of an applicant in a job-seeking experiment?” (Soliman & Sczesny, 2023). Like the other experiment, this study follows a 2 (Applicant Gender: woman, man) x 2 (Language Condition: masculine, inclusive) between-participants design and instead targets those with over 5 years of work experience and people with experience working in HR, headhunting, or recruitment. Participants will be asked to imagine that they are helping their company recruit and hire new personnel and that they will be presented with the job specifications and an applicant to evaluate. Participants will evaluate the applicant based on their suitability and fit, wage expectations, and will be asked to give a judgement over whether they would recommend the applicant for the position at their company.

The current study investigates whether social role information affects people’s evaluations of prescriptive (what men and women should be) and proscriptive (what men and women should not be) gender rules. Former research by Rudman and colleagues (2012) found that prescriptive and proscriptive gender rules are aligned with social status. Specifically, their findings indicate that U.S. respondents endorse a clear set of gender rules for men, thinking men should be high in status and cannot be low in status, whereas gender rules for women are less closely tied to social status. Further, a large-scale study across 62 nations documented a double standard in gender rules such that people more strongly endorsed prescriptive (“shoulds”) and proscriptive (“should nots”) gender rules for men than for women (Bosson et al., 2022). However, whether gender rules are influenced by the social roles men and women take on or not remains unknown. It has been shown that social role information can override the influence of descriptive gender stereotypes on person perceptions. That is, regardless of gender, women and men in female-dominated occupations were perceived as similarly communal and women and men in male-dominated occupations were perceived as similarly agentic (Bosak et al., 2012; Gustafsson Sendén et al., 2020). Extending previous findings on the alignment of gender rules and social status, here we examine if prescriptive and proscriptive gender rules are also dependent on social role information.

This study investigates people's gender stereotypes about parental roles by comparing people’s ascriptions of communion and agency to “mother/s”, “father/s”, and “parent/s”. To address a person in a parental role, people can use either the gender-specific role nouns “mother” and “father” or the gender-unspecific role noun “parent”. However, to date the stereotyping of parents has been investigated only for gender-specific parental role nouns like mothers and fathers (e.g., Banchefsky & Park, 2015; Ross-Plourde et al., 2023). Thus, it remains an open question how people perceive “parent/s” in general and whether the gender-unspecific role noun can evoke different trait ascriptions compared to "mother/s" and "father/s". Previous research has shown that people associate mothers more strongly with communal traits (e.g., affectionate, helpful, warm) and behaviors (e.g., arranging for a babysitter), and fathers more strongly with agentic traits (e.g., assertive, decisive, independent) and behaviors (e.g., providing the household income; Banchefsky & Park, 2015; Park, Smith & Correll, 2010). As parents comprise both mothers and fathers, people’s stereotypes of parents, in general, should be less gendered. Accordingly, the gender-unspecific role noun “parent/s” likely reduces gender stereotypical trait ascriptions.

We will conduct a vignette study using samples of heterosexual women and men. Participants will be randomly assigned to one of four conditions in which they will read a vignette where a female employee's sexual orientations will be revealed in a work conversation, after which she is harassed by her male colleague. The study will have a 2 (gender of first partner: man, women) x 2 (gender of second partner: man, women) design. In each vignette, a male colleague called Mark will ask his female colleague Charlotte if she is still with her partner. The old partner’s gender is manipulated in the vignettes. She will respond that she now has a new partner, who’s gender will also be manipulated. In the heterosexual condition, the old and new partners each will have a male name. In the lesbian condition, the old and new partners will each have a female name. In the two bisexual conditions, the first partner will have a male name, and the second partner will have a female name, or the first partner will have a female name, and the second partner will have a male name. Mark will prompt to ask more specifically about Charlotte's sexual orientation ("Oh, so you're straight [lesbian/bi]?"), which she will confirm. Afterwards, Mark will sexually harass Charlotte, by saying that the two of them would certainly be a good match, too and that she should get in touch with him whenever she is interested. Participants will be asked to complete ten types of DVs. First, we will ask them to what extent they found the comment on Charlotte’s sexuality appropriate and whether the answer has surprised them. Second, participants will indicate what they found appropriate or surprising about the question in an open text form. Third, will measure participant’s responsibility attributions towards the victim and perpetrator, their perceived sexual promiscuity of bisexual women, and their modern homonegativity, as well as their benevolent and hostile sexism.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 953326.

Men are widely underrepresented in early childhood education and care worldwide. Professional childcare is often believed to require communal qualities typically associated with the female gender role, like being sensitive to others' needs. Men's underrepresentation in childcare work likely occurs as a result of the perceived incongruity between communal qualities required for childcare work and agentic qualities associated with men and the male gender role. Using a between- subjects design, this research examined how personality traits (communal vs. agentic) of people interested in early childcare and their gender (woman vs. man) affect evaluations of their suitability for childcare work. This online experiment further investigated the potential underlying mechanisms���ascribed childcare competence and perceived risk of perpetrating child abuse���and tested whether these explanations contribute to men's less favorable evaluations. Results showed that participants ( N = 242) evaluated the communal candidate as more suitable for childcare work than the agentic candidate, and the male candidate as less suitable than the female candidate. Structural equation modeling showed that lower ascribed childcare competence, but not greater perceived risk of perpetrating sexual or physical child abuse, contributed to men's lower perceived suitability. This research provides support for the reasoning that persisting gender stereotypes can hinder men's entry into childcare work, as people discount men's competence and ability to care for children. Moreover, this research suggests that incongruity theories are also valid in the context of men pursuing traditionally female-dominated communal roles. Practical implications are discussed in relation to strategies for increasing gender diversity in childcare work.

In this study, we will investigate the role of the perceived workplace requirements on mentoring preferences, and if potential mentees hope to find mentors that are similar at a deep level (i.e., traits, values). This study will ask people in the workplace to assess what qualities they would like to see in a mentor by rating traits and values that are communal and agentic, which agentic and communal requirements they perceive in their workplace, and the type of support they expect from mentoring.

The stereotype content model (SCM: Fiske et al., 2002) postulates warmth and competence as fundamental dimensions of social perception. It is often used to compare perceptions across groups/samples/countries with a broad variety of operationalisations. Recently, a large reanalysis of the scale properties of existing scales found that English and German scales perform poorly in terms of structural validity (Friehs, Kotzur, Böttcher et al., 2022). It is yet unknown how existing scales perform in other languages, such as Portuguese and Spanish.

We will conduct a meta-analysis on the effects of gender-fair vs. gender-biased language on the mental representation of women and men.

This research examines if and how the agentic and communal traits of the self predict the the representation of the ideal mentor and the type of support preferred in a mentoring relationship. Moreover, this study will investigate how perceived agentic and communal requirements at work influence the representation of the ideal mentor.

The present research will assess the prevalence of heterosexual aggression perpetration and victimization in Iranian women and men. Furthermore, the study will examine potential predictors of sexual aggression perpetration and victimization. Prior research suggested the following two predictors of sexual aggression victimization: Child sexual abuse (CSA) and risky sexual behavior. The potential predictors of sexual aggression perpetration are: CSA, risky sexual behavior, and for male participants also hostile masculinity.

The aim of the study is to examine natural language use among female and male candidates for a leadership position. In particular, we are interested whether women and men differ in their use of agentic (AA) and communal (CW) expressions when presenting for a masculine or feminine framed leadership role.

One topic that repeatedly sparks debates in politics and the society is “gender-neutral language”. For instance, 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 German study by Stahlberg, Sczesny, and Braun (2001, Experiment 2; https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X01020004004) in a multi-lab setting.

This project aims to investigate whether conservatives' support for gender-inclusive language, more precisely the singular they in English, can be increased by past-focused compared to future-focused temporal communication.

This three-wave longitudinal study will focus on understanding how the experience of sexual harassment harms those who are targeted by it in an organizational context. We investigate if the experience of harassment reduces targets’ self-ascribed agency and leads to more negative work outcomes (i.e., reduced work engagement, performance motivation, and leadership motivation as well as enhanced turnover intentions). We test whether self-ascribed agency predicts being targeted by sexual harassment. Moreover, we examine the role of self-blame as a mediator in the postulated effect of harassment on self-ascribed agency.