Ikizer co-authors in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

Dr. Ikizer coauthors in a cross-cultural study including English- and Turkish-speaking participants, published in the Journal of Experiment Psychology: General. Across four pre-registered studies, participants were asked to evaluate different types of real and hypothetical pronouns, including binary gender pronouns, race pronouns, and identity-neutral pronouns. Participants’ reasoning about pronouns reflected a familiarity preference (i.e., participants preferred the pronoun type used in their language) and participants’ social ideologies. The more people thought binary gender and race groups are distinct (essentialism) and that social hierarchy is good (social dominance orientation), the more they endorsed binary gender pronouns and race pronouns. In other words, people tended to support the existence of gender pronouns more when they held stronger beliefs that gender is binary and that men and women are different deep down. This work contributes empirical evidence to interdisciplinary debates across psychology, philosophy, and linguistics, as well as ongoing public debates.

The paper can be reached at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38647482/

Society of Personality and Social Psychology’s blog post on the paper can be found at https://spsp.org/news/character-and-context-blog/bailey-dembroff-wodak-ikizer-cimpian-why-gender-pronouns-necessary