Judging Masculine and Feminine Social Identities from Content-Controlled Speech

Listeners gave their impressions of psychologically androgynous, feminine, masculine and undifferentiated male and female speakers, who were tape-recorded reading a short prose passage. Speakers were judged on items relevant to Femininity (F), Masculinity (M), Social Competence (C) and Social Attractiveness (A). Listeners' attributions of F and M were not only consistent and systematic, but correspond closely to speakers' self-assessed gender identities. Attributions of C and A were also systematically related to the three independent variables. These encouraging results suggest that the attribution of sex stereotypical characteristics to people is not simply determined by their sex, and that speech cues are capable of mediating between the expression and perception of conformity to sex stereotypes.