How talker and listener gender identity impact spontaneous speech descriptors

Gender is an aspect of identity that listeners easily extract from speech. Even in relatively unconstrained tasks, such as auditory-free classification, gender frequently emerges as a primary perceptual dimension. However, studies have typically envisioned gender as binary and only included cisgender talkers. Here, we test how talker and listener gender identity impact person's perception of speech using a free descriptor task. Sentences produced by 20 talkers representing five gender identities (cis man, cis woman, transgender man, transgender woman, nonbinary) were presented to cisgender and gender diverse listeners. Listeners described one talker from each gender category using words or short phrases. Responses were separated into descriptor categories: psychological, stimulus, sexual orientation and gender identity (SGI), physical, social, and other. Response distribution across gender categories was similar regardless of talker's gender identity. Gender diverse listeners utilized a greater variety of SGI words than cisgender listeners, suggesting a role for listener experience and identity in spontaneous speech descriptions. SGI descriptors tended to be produced earliest chronologically, suggesting high salience, but density distributions differed across talker genders. This study provides further evidence that gender is a salient speech cue for listeners, but person perception involves a complex interplay between listener and speaker characteristics.