Beyond He and She: Does the Singular Use of “They, Them, Their” Function Generically as Inclusive Pronouns for Cisgender Men and Women?

Abstract

The American Psychological Association’s (Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, American Psychological Association, 2019) style manual recently updated its guidelines to include the use they/them/their pronouns for situations where gender is unknown or irrelevant, which includes situations involving cisgender men and women. As such, we experimentally tested whether non-binary pronouns (“they/them/their”) would function as generic and inclusive singular pronouns for cisgender men and women. As a replication and extension of previous research (i.e., Crawford and English in J Psycholinguist Res 13 (5):373–3381, https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01068152, 1984; Stout and Dasgupta in Personal Soc Psychol Bull 37 (6):757–769, https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167211406434, 2011), cisgender U.S. college students (N = 381; 269 women and 112 men; M age = 19.41 years old) were randomly assigned to read a job advertisement using: (1) masculine pronouns “he/him/his”, (2) binary pronouns such as “she or he”, or (3) singular non-binary pronouns “they/them/their”. Participants’ memory for the content of the job advertisement was tested along with assessments of sexism and belongingness (i.e., ostracism or feelings of exclusion, whether they identified with the described job, and whether they would be motivated for the work). As predicted, there were gender differences in memory scores in the masculine (men scored higher) and binary (women scored higher) pronoun conditions, but not in the non-binary condition. For all three indicators of belongingness, as predicted, men’s belongingness scores were similar across the three conditions (i.e., men were included or represented by the pronouns used in all three conditions), whereas women’s scores indicated less belongingness when masculine condition pronouns were used (i.e., where women were excluded by the pronouns used) in comparison to when the binary and non-binary pronoun were used (i.e., where women were included by the pronouns used). Together these findings provide empirical support for the use of “they/them/their” as singular non-binary pronouns to refer generically and inclusively to both cisgender men and women.

Appendix

Participants were instructed to read the following job advertisement. Depending on which condition they were randomly assigned, they received one of three versions. The only difference between this and the other versions was the pronouns used. *The bolded pronouns were either non-binary (as shown here), binary (e.g., “he or she”), or masculine (“he/him/his”).

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