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In many languages, feminization has been used as a strategy to make language more gender-fair, because masculine terms, even in a generic function, exhibit a male bias. Up to date, little is known about possible side effects of this language use, for example, in personnel selection. In three studies, conducted in Polish, we analyzed how a female applicant was evaluated in a recruitment process, depending on whether she was introduced with a feminine or masculine job title. To avoid influences from existing occupations and terms, we used fictitious job titles in Studies 1 and 2: diarolozka (feminine) and diarolog (masculine). In Study 3, we referred to existing occupations that varied in gender stereotypicality. In all studies, female applicants with a feminine job title were evaluated less favorably than both a male applicant (Study 1) and a female applicant with a masculine job title (Studies 1, 2, and 3). This effect was independent of the gender stereotypicality of the occupation (Study 3). Participants' political attitudes, however, moderated the effect: Conservatives devaluated female applicants with a feminine title more than liberals (Studies 2 and 3).

Agentic qualities are associated with self-interests of the trait possessor and communal qualities are associated with interests of other people (with whom the trait possessor interacts with). Based on this idea we hypothesized that information on behavior serving self-interests leads to inferences of agency while information on identical actions performed in the service of others' interests leads to inferences of communion. These hypotheses were supported in a study where participants perceived a politician who acted for or against his own interest and (orthogonally) acted for or against interests of other people. Additionally, actions serving other-interest influenced attitudes toward the politician to a higher degree than actions serving his self-interest. The other-interest influence on attitudes was mediated by inferences of communal qualities of the politician while the self-interest influence on attitudes was mediated by inferences of agentic qualities of the politician. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Three experimental studies demonstrate that momentarily accessible conflict-schemas moderate the relationship between need for closure and conflict-strategy preferences, with the relationship between a high need for closure and increased competitiveness reduced to non-significance when a cooperative conflict-schema is made salient but strengthened when a hostile one is activated. Study 1 manipulated the accessibility of competitive versus cooperative conflict-schemas using different descriptions of a contemporary political conflict, while Studies 2 and 3 manipulated conflict-schema accessibility using primes embedded in an ostensibly unrelated lexical decision task. Together, the present studies provide a strong pattern of experimental support for the moderating effect of conflict-schema accessibility suggested by earlier correlational studies. The implications for conflict reduction are discussed. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.