Schedule of Events | Symposia

Neural Responses to gender stereotypes in a word-face priming paradigm

Poster Session E - Monday, March 31, 2025, 2:30 – 4:30 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Francesca Pesciarelli^1,2 (francesca.pesciarelli@unimore.it), Luana Serafini¹; ¹University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, ²San Diego State University

The present study aims to extend our previous priming works on the neural correlates of gender stereotypes in language to human face processing. We recorded Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) to a pronoun (lui “he” or lei “she”) or face (male, female), preceded by grammatically marked or stereotypically associated words (e.g., amica “friend”, badante “caregiver”). Participants were asked to categorize the gender of the pronoun or face. The ERPs showed a larger LPP for male participants to feminine pronouns preceded by grammatically masculine than feminine primes and larger N400, P300, and LPP (limited to women for female faces) for faces when preceded by grammatically incongruent than congruent primes. Interestingly, faces showed a gender stereotype asymmetry: a larger N400 to male faces, and a larger P300 to female faces, when preceded by stereotypically incongruent than congruent primes. The present results revealed that faces are influenced more strongly by gender stereotypes than linguistic stimuli. These results could provide new insights for future research in the context of biased communication.

Topic Area: LANGUAGE: Semantic