Interpersonal verbs, gender, and implicit causality

In the present report we describe a series of studies investigating whether women and men are regarded as equivalently able to cause outcomes in social interaction. Two experiments plus a follow-up study varied sex of actors, sex of recipients, and verb type and examined who is perceived to be more causal in brief verbal descriptions of interpersonal events. Results show that the gender of participants in a social interaction significantly affects perceptions of who initiates and who elicits interpersonal behaviors. When females are described as acting or feeling in mixed-gender pairs, they are viewed as less causal than males. At the same time, when men and women are recipients of others' actions, women more than men are perceived as having elicited the acts directed toward them. Interpretation centers on the lower status accorded women and on the power of language to sustain such arrangements. The results are seen as having implications for research in implicit causality and affect control theory.

[1]  N. MacKinnon,et al.  Symbolic Interactionism as Affect Control , 1994 .

[2]  R. Corrigan.  Causal attributions to states and events described by different classes of verbs , 1993 .

[3]  David R. Heise,et al.  Impressions of Self-Directed Action* , 1992 .

[4]  L. Mannetti,et al.  Interpersonal verbs : implicit causality of action verbs and contextual factors , 1991 .

[5]  Linda L. Carli,et al.  Interpersonal Relations and Group Processes Gender, Language, and Influence , 2022 .

[6]  L. Arcuri,et al.  Effect of semantic valence on implicit causality of verbs , 1990 .

[7]  C. Hoffman,et al.  Interpersonal verbs and dispositional adjectives: The psychology of causality embodied in language. , 1990 .

[8]  David R. Heise,et al.  Predicting impressions created by combinations of emotion and social identity , 1989 .

[9]  Michael H. Van Kleeck,et al.  Pitting Verbal Schemas against Information Variables in Attribution , 1988 .

[10]  Gün R. Semin,et al.  On the causal information conveyed by different interpersonal verbs: The role of implicit sentence context , 1988 .

[11]  Lynn Smith-Lovin,et al.  Impressions from events , 1987 .

[12]  D. R. Heise,et al.  Affective bases of likelihood judgments , 1987 .

[13]  Jacquelyn W. White,et al.  Gender differences in the perceptions of self's and others' use of power strategies , 1986 .

[14]  James J. Bradac,et al.  Male/female language differences and attributional consequences in a public speaking situation: Toward an explanation of the gender‐linked language effect , 1986 .

[15]  C. Sherif,et al.  The effectiveness of men and women in problem-solving groups as a function of group gender composition , 1986 .

[16]  Terry Kit-fong Au,et al.  A Verb Is Worth a Thousand Words: The Causes and Consequences of Interpersonal Events Implicit in Language. , 1986 .

[17]  Robert Rosenthal,et al.  Sex differences in nonverbal and verbal communication with bosses, peers, and subordinates. , 1985 .

[18]  J. M. Dabbs,et al.  Vocal Patterns in Male and Female Groups , 1984 .

[19]  S. Fiske,et al.  Outcome Dependency and Attention to Inconsistent Information , 1984 .

[20]  Roger S. Brown,et al.  The psychological causality implicit in language , 1983, Cognition.

[21]  Thomas L. Ruble,et al.  Sex stereotypes: Issues of change in the 1970s , 1983 .

[22]  L. Z. McArthur,et al.  Impact of Salient Vocal Qualities on Causal Attribution for a Speaker's Behavior , 1982 .

[23]  Lynn Smith-Lovin,et al.  Impressions of Goodness, Powerfulness, and Liveliness from Discerned Social Events , 1981 .

[24]  C. Ridgeway,et al.  Nonconformity, Competence, and Influence in Groups: A Test of Two Theories , 1981 .

[25]  Adelaide Haas,et al.  Male and female spoken language differences: Stereotypes and evidence. , 1979 .

[26]  E. Lenney,et al.  Women's self-confidence in achievement settings. , 1977 .

[27]  B. Meeker,et al.  Sex roles and interpersonal behavior in task-oriented groups. , 1977, American sociological review.

[28]  H. F. Gollob.  The subject-verb-object approach to social cognition. , 1974 .

[29]  H. F. Gollob,et al.  Judgments of an actor's Power and ability to influence others , 1973 .

[30]  H. F. Gollob,et al.  Some relationships between social inference, cognitive balance, and change in impression. , 1973 .

[31]  L. A. McArthur.  The how and what of why: Some determinants and consequences of causal attribution. , 1972 .

[32]  D. R. Heise.  Affectual dynamics in simple sentences. , 1969, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[33]  C. Ridgeway,et al.  Are Gender Differences Status Differences , 1992 .

[34]  Florence Geis,et al.  Nonverbal affect responses to male and female leaders: Implications for leadership evaluations. , 1990 .

[35]  D. Hilton,et al.  Knowledge-Based Causal Attribution: The Abnormal Conditions Focus Model , 1986 .

[36]  H. David Zehr,et al.  Vocal and verbal assertiveness in same-sex and mixed sex groups. , 1981 .

[37]  David E. Kanouse,et al.  Subjective Acceptance of Verbal Generalizations , 1966 .

[38]  F. Heider.  The psychology of interpersonal relations , 1958 .