If colors have gender: Color-gender stereotype and the impact on impression evaluation and interpersonal interaction.

Abstract

There are gender-related associations in people's perceptions and judgment of color. This study verified the existence of more diverse gendered colors in the Chinese cultural context (pre-study). Furthermore, individuals hold color-gender stereotypes at both implicit and explicit levels. In explicit measurements, individuals generally believe that colors with male labels have more masculine qualities, while colors with female labels have more feminine qualities (Study 1). In implicit measurement, participants' response times for target lexical categorization and judgments increased significantly when lexical gender did not match the color gender in the Stroop Task (Study 2). In addition, color-gender stereotypes influence people's decisions and judgments in impression evaluation and interpersonal interactions. In impression evaluation, when presented with the target person using a color that is inconsistent with the existing gender stereotype, the original impression of the subject on the difference between warmth and competence is weakened (study 3). In interpersonal interaction, individuals tend to show higher negative social attractiveness evaluation and avoidance tendency in choices of friend-making when the target person uses a color that is inconsistent with the existing color-gender stereotype (study 4). Finally, the study extends the boundaries of the negative effect of color-gender stereotype inconsistency, with individuals evaluating the social attractiveness of color-gender stereotype inconsistent group significantly higher than that of color-gender stereotype inconsistent individual (Study 5).