Estimating the Prevalence of Gender-Biased Language in Undergraduates’ Everyday Speech

Investigating the Relationship between Resident Physician Implicit Bias and Language Use during a Clinical Encounter with Hispanic Patients

Prior research suggests that the implicit biases of physicians are negatively associated with quality of medical care and patient satisfaction among minority patients. However, relatively little is known about how physicians express these subtle forms of bias in patient interactions. This study examined the implicit and explicit anti-Hispanic biases of 53 resident physicians and the relationship between anti-Hispanic bias and language use during outpatient medical appointments with 291 Hispanic patients. Physician implicit bias was positively associated with use of interrogatives and work-related words and negatively associated with the use of prepositions and relativity-related words (e.g., words related to time and the future). These findings contribute to the growing body of evidence suggesting that, in addition to nonverbal and paraverbal behaviors, providers may communicate implicit bias to patients through the words they use during a clinical visit.

Women Versus Females: Gender Essentialism in Everyday Language

How do different words referring to gender/sex categories reflect and/or shape our understanding of gender/sex concepts? The current study examined this issue by assessing how individuals use gender/sex terms (females, males, women, men). Participants recruited through MTurk (N = 299) completed an online survey, rating the terms on nine dimensions, completing a fill-in-the-blank task, and reporting gender essentialist beliefs. Overall, participants rated the words females/males as more biological and technical, and women/men as higher on all other dimensions (e.g., appropriate, polite, warm). Preference for females/males correlated positively with gender essentialism among women. These findings suggest that use of certain gendered terms is linked to how people conceptualize gender/sex. Future research should further explore the relation between choice of gendered terms, how language choice reflects and shapes attitudes and beliefs about gender/sex, and factors (e.g., race) that may influence this relation.