Gender can be considered an embodied social concept encompassing biological and cultural components. In this study, we explored whether the concept of gender varies as a function of different cultural and linguistic norms by comparing communities that vary in their social treatment of gender-related issues and linguistic encoding of gender. In Study 1, Italian, Dutch, and English-speaking participants completed a free-listing task, which showed Italians and Dutch were the most distinct in their conceptualization of gender: Italian participants focused more on socio-cultural features (e.g., discrimination, politics, and power), whereas Dutch participants focused more on the corporeal sphere (e.g., hormones, breasts, and genitals). Study 2 replicated this finding focusing on Italian and Dutch and using a typicality rating task: socio-cultural and abstract features were considered as more typical of “gender” by Italian than Dutch participants. Study 3 addressed Italian and Dutch participants’ explicit beliefs about gender with a questionnaire measuring essentialism and constructivism, and consolidated results from Studies 1 and 2 showing that Dutch participants endorsed more essentialist beliefs about gender than Italian participants. Consistent with socio-cultural constructivist accounts, our results provide evidence that gender is conceptualized differently by diverse groups and is adapted to specific cultural and linguistic environments.

中文翻译：

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不同文化中性别的概念化方式不同

性别可以被视为包含生物和文化成分的具体社会概念。在这项研究中，我们通过比较对性别相关问题的社会处理和性别语言编码不同的社区，探讨了性别概念是否会随着不同文化和语言规范的变化而变化。在研究 1 中，意大利语、荷兰语和英语参与者完成了一项自由列出任务，这表明意大利人和荷兰人在性别概念化方面最为不同：意大利参与者更关注社会文化特征（例如，歧视,政治， 和力量），而荷兰参与者更关注物质领域（例如，荷尔蒙,乳房， 和生殖器）。研究 2 重复了这一发现，重点关注意大利和荷兰人，并使用典型性评级任务：社会文化和抽象特征被意大利人认为比荷兰人更典型的“性别”。研究 3 通过测量本质主义和建构主义的问卷调查了意大利和荷兰参与者对性别的明确信念，并综合了研究 1 和研究 2 的结果，显示荷兰参与者比意大利参与者更认可关于性别的本质主义信念。与社会文化建构主义的观点一致，我们的研究结果提供了证据，表明不同群体对性别的概念不同，并且适应特定的文化和语言环境。