New gender biases discovered

There have been many studies on gender biases, and I have followed, written, and spoken about many of these biases over the years (over a decade actually) but two studies have just come out that caught my eye.

One out of New York University focused on gender natural words and found that they are not gender neutral! Specifically, the two most neutral or inclusive words, presupposedly, “person” and “people”.

By analysing language and how similar words are used together (much like words tea and pot may collocate and be related). They found that there is a bias to relate the word person and people more to men than women. This is important because these are precisely the words used in public policy.

In another unrelated and contrasting study another form of bias was uncovered and this was in faces and voices of men and women on neutral characters. What the researchers at the University of Essex found is that faces, and voices were more likely to be judged as male if they were angry and female if they were happy.

Is this good for men or women? I don’t know but shows how there are natural inbuilt biases in us in many ways! Many of which we are probably completely oblivious to.

References:

April H. Bailey, Adina Williams, Andrei Cimpian. 
Based on billions of words on the internet, people = men. 
Science Advances, 2022; 8 (13)
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abm2463

Sebastian Korb, Nace Mikus, Claudia Massaccesi, Jack Grey, Suvarnalata Xanthate Duggirala, Sonja A. Kotz, Marc Mehu. 
EmoSex: Emotion prevails over sex in implicit judgments of faces and voices.. 
Emotion, 2022
DOI: 10.1037/emo0001089