All-Male Research Samples Discourage Accurate Science Communication

Research samples have historically overrepresented men, resulting in worse outcomes for women. Even when women are represented, inequity might persist due to underlying differences in how people reason about gender. Theories of androcentrism argue that, in general, people emphasize gender more about women than men. Based on this theory and building on prior archival work, we conducted three preregistered experiments (N = 1,315). Participants read scientific findings based either on all-male or all-female samples. For both, the gender homogeneity of the sample is a key limitation that should be noted when describing results. However, participants were more likely to pick women as a keyword to represent findings based on all-female samples (compared to leaving gender unlisted or listing both women and men) than to pick men to describe identical findings based on all-male samples. Grounded in androcentrism theory, this work has practical implications for accurate science communication and gender equity.