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Gender can be considered an embodied social concept encompassing biological as well as cultural components. In this paper, we explored whether the concept of gender varies as a function of different cultural and linguistic norms by comparing communities that vary in their social treatment of gender-related issues and linguistic encoding of gender. In Study 1, Italian, Dutch, and English speaking participants completed a free-listing task which showed Italians and Dutch were the most distinct in their conceptualization of gender: Italian participants focused more on sociocultural features (e.g., discrimination, politics, power), whereas Dutch participants focused more on the corporeal sphere (e.g., hormones, breasts, genitals). Study 2 replicated this finding focusing on Italian and Dutch and using a typicality rating task: sociocultural and abstract features were considered as more typical of “gender” by Italian than Dutch participants. Study 3 addressed Italian and Dutch participants’ explicit beliefs about gender with a questionnaire measuring essentialism and constructivism, and consolidated results from Study 1 and 2 showing that Dutch participants endorsed more essentialist beliefs about gender compared to Italian participants. Our results provide evidence that gender is conceptualized differently by diverse groups more in line with sociocultural constructivist accounts and is adapted to specific cultural and linguistic environments. |
