How People Perceive Pronoun Sharing

In English, the pronouns that we use to refer to other people are gendered—so every time we talk about someone, we're also talking about their gender, whether we realize it or not. Telling people your personal pronouns indicates how you should be addressed, and avoids misgendering by preventing assumptions about what pronouns to use based on your appearance. For instance, when introducing yourself to someone new, you might say, "Hi, I'm Sam, and I use he/him pronouns." For transgender and nonbinary people, using the correct pronouns is a sign of respect and inclusivity.

A practice that first began in LGBTQ spaces, pronoun sharing is becoming common in virtual spaces and in real-world settings offline—you might see people share their pronouns in their email signatures or Twitter bios, or state their pronouns when introducing themselves to others.

In our research, we set out to explore how pronoun sharing is perceived, using nationally representative samples of over 2,000 U.S. Americans. Our question was: when a person shares their pronouns during introductions at a workplace meeting, what do people think their motivations are? Across three studies, we find that people consistently perceive (at least) three different kinds of motivations for sharing personal pronouns:

• Identity signaling (straightforwardly indicating one's identity and how one would like to be addressed)
• Norm support (sincerely endorsing pronoun sharing as something that should be common practice)
• Reputation signaling (trying to enhance one's own reputation)

The identity signaling motivation indicates a straightforward desire to be recognized in one's personal, social, and gender identity, and to share how one would like to be addressed. The norm support motivation is similarly sincere, but is collective-oriented—someone who shares their pronouns may be signaling their support of pronoun sharing as a practice that is common and desirable. Our data suggest that the perception of this motive to endorse pronoun sharing as a norm is also accompanied by a sincere belief in the value of pronoun sharing as a trans-inclusive behavior.

On the other hand, the reputation signaling motivation can best be characterized as a self-oriented, strategic motive to gain personal benefit. Sharing pronouns might be cynically perceived as a low-cost signal of one's commitment to gender inclusivity and therefore a shortcut to enhancing one's reputation.

Of course, it's likely that different features of social context and social identity will influence how someone perceives pronoun sharing. In our research, we look at the gender identity of the person who shares their pronouns—do people perceive pronoun sharing differently if they know that the sharer is transgender versus cisgender? When the sharer is transgender, people perceive them as more likely to be signaling their identity and supporting pronoun sharing as a norm, and less likely to be reputation signaling, than when the sharer is cisgender. This is true both when the sharer is a trans man or a trans woman who uses he/him or she/her pronouns respectively, and when they are a trans person who uses they/them pronouns. Interestingly, despite potential differences in gendered expectations of LGBTQ allyship, people do not differentiate in their perceptions of cisgender men versus cisgender women who share their pronouns.

In general, regardless of the sharer's gender and even when the person who shares their pronouns is cisgender, perceptions of reputation signaling are overall much lower than perceptions of straightforward identity signaling or collective-oriented norm support. That's good news for people who may wish to adopt the practice either to signal their own identity or to benefit trans and nonbinary people who are most often misgendered. In increasingly transphobic political environments in countries such as the U.S. and the UK, more people who are willing to signal trans-inclusivity without worrying about being perceived as self-serving might be a small step in changing social attitudes.

For Further Reading           

Kodipady, A., Kraft-Todd, G., Sparkman, G., Hu, B., & Young, L. (2022). Beyond virtue signaling: Perceived motivations for pronoun sharing. Journal of Applied Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1111/jasp.12937

Johnson, I. R., Pietri, E. S., Buck, D. M., & Daas, R. (2021). What's in a pronoun: Exploring gender pronouns as an organizational identity-safety cue among sexual and gender minorities. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 97, 104194. https://doi.org/10. 1016/j.jesp.2021.104194

Berman, J. Z., & Silver, I. (2022). Prosocial behavior and reputation: When does doing good lead to looking good. Current Opinion in Psychology, 43, 102–107. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.06.021

Aditi Kodipady was a post-bac research associate at Boston College. Their research focuses on perceptions of social norms and social signaling in the context of novel prosocial behaviors.