Do experiences influence gender representations elicited by the gender star form?

Readers associate the generic masculine (e.g., in German, die Zuschauer , for a gender-mixed group) more with men, whereas they associate the German gender star form (e.g., die Zuschauer*innen ) more with women. However, the stability or malleability of these gender biases is unclear. In the present study ( N = 272 ), we examined whether increasing the salience of the gender star form’s inclusiveness (by anaphoric references to an equal number of women and men) in a first task influences gender representations in ensuing tasks. We observed no influence of the salience manipulation on two measures, but for a third measure, response speed, the female bias of the gender star form was neutralized by the salience manipulation. Thus, for some—though not all—measures, experiences in a previous task seem to influence how easily representations of men compared to women are available, indicating that gender representations elicited by language forms are malleable.