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Cues to referent gender in randomly constructed names
1Psychology Department, Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.
Abstract:
50 volunteers' assignments of gender to 32 randomly constructed names confirmed previous findings with respect to the structure of actual names (men's names are shorter, women's names tend to end in vowels, especially the schwa vowel) and with respect to the emotionality of sounds in actual names (men's names sound more Active, Nasty, and Unpleasant; women's names sound softer). Assignment of sex to random names was predictable (R>.8) on the basis of combinations of these variables.
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