Normative Discrimination and the Gender Binary: Negative Evaluations of People with Nonconventional Pronouns

Pronoun sharing has become a common inclusion practice in U.S. schools and workplaces. Drawing on normative discrimination theories, however, we predict that pronoun sharing can lead to negative evaluations of people who share nonconventional pronouns. In a preregistered survey experiment (N = 1,516), participants rated a fictitious potential teammate whose name and pronouns were varied. Participants reported significantly less comfort working with a person with nonconventional pronouns and perceived them as a significantly worse teammate than someone with either conventional pronouns or no pronouns, effects that were mediated by the perception that people with nonconventional pronouns are less warm and more interpersonally demanding. These negative perceptions were significantly more common among conservative respondents, whereas liberal respondents expressed bias toward people who did not share pronouns. In open responses, gender-minority participants described pronoun-sharing practices as potentially either inclusive or exposing. Our findings point to the importance of ensuring pronoun sharing is voluntary.