Gender-Inclusive Pronouns and Mental Representation of Nonbinary Individuals: The Role of Political Orientation

Previous research has shown that gender-inclusive pronouns can facilitate mental representation of nonbinary individuals. However, considering that gender and pronoun use are politicized in many countries, such that individuals with a right-wing political orientation show more skepticism toward nonbinarity, these effects may be compromised. Across four studies ( N total = 2,847), we tested whether the gender-inclusive pronouns hen (Swedish) and they (English) evoke mental representations of individuals with stereotypical gender-nonconforming versus gender-conforming appearances, depending on the participants’ political orientation. Studies 1a and 1b showed that a right-wing political orientation was related to a lower likelihood of associating gender-inclusive pronouns with stereotypical gender-nonconforming appearances. Studies 2a and 2b showed that these results were robust both when the function of the pronoun was to anonymize the referent and when the function was to refer to a nonbinary individual. Study 2b further showed that binary gender beliefs contributed to this relationship. These results suggest that the capacity for gender-inclusive pronouns to contribute to mental representation of nonbinary individuals varies in part with the recipient's political orientation and preexisting beliefs about gender. More broadly, the results contribute to the understanding of how political orientation influences the processes of social categorization related to gender.