The Impact of ‘Violating the Heterosexual Norm’ on Reading Speed and Accuracy

doi:10.4236/psych.2011.25071

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Psychology

2011. Vol.2, No.5, 456-459

The Impact of ‘Violating the Heterosexual Norm’ on Reading

Speed and Accuracy

Joël Dickinson

Psychology Department, Laurentian University, Sudbury, Canada.

Email: [email protected]

Received April 28th, 2011; revised June 9th, 2011; accepted July 15th, 2011.

This study explores the impact of “schema non-congruent” content on reading speed that has been found in rela-

tion to non-stereotypical gender roles. The goal of the present study is to assess if this effect translates to mate-

rial that violates the “heterosexual norm”. Further, the present study explores whether the impact can be mini-

mized by providing context prior to the exposure of sentences. Data indicated that the impact of sexuality was

dependent on the gender of the main character and whether participants had been primed with context or not.

Regardless of the time taken to read sentences, accuracy of material was recalled at a constant rate. In conclu-

sion, the activation of “heterosexuality” does seem to be an automatic process such as the activation of gender.

Keywords: Schema, Reading, Accuracy

Introduction

From a mental model perspective, readers are continually

updating their ‘representation’ of what is being read as they

gather more and more information from a passage (Carreiras,

Garnham, Oakhill & Cain, 1996). However, much of what we

read demands that we already have a representation of the

topic/object/individual being read about, even prior to the read-

ing of a passage (Carreiras et al., 1996). Schemas are mental

representations of individuals, objects, or events, can serve to

facilitate text comprehension via the organization and categori-

zation of information presented within a text. Schemas have

been demonstrated to aid in the organization of, and therefore

understanding of information that is being read (e.g., Bransford

& Johnson, 1972). However, development of schemas is not

always beneficial in reading comprehension. For example,

stereotypes (schemas about social groups such as women, or

minorities) can sometimes interfere with processing the true

meaning of a passage (e.g. Carreiras et al., 1996; Duffy & Keir,

2004; Oakhill, Garnham, & Reynolds, 2005).

Data from several experiments suggest that activation of

stereotypes is automatic, and for the most part, unintentional

(e.g., Banaji & Hardin, 1996). Banaji and Hardin (1996) con-

cluded that response latencies, such as the semantic priming

procedure are quite useful in assessing implicit stereotype be-

liefs. This automatic activation has also been found in the con-

text of reading longer passages (e.g., Reynolds, Garnham, &

Oakhill, 2006), where reading speed was shown to slow upon

reaching a ‘seemingly incongruent’ part of a sentence. For ex-

ample, Sanford’s (1985) now famous conundrum about the

surgeon: “A father and son are driving home one day, when

they are involved in a serious accident. The father is killed out-

right, but the son is driven to hospital, where he is about to

undergo an emergency operation. However, the surgeon refuses

to operate, saying: I can’t operate on him: he’s my son” (p. 311).

It was hypothesized that this slowing would not have occurred,

unless the participant had previously developed a mental repre-

sentation of the surgeon as “male”.

Recording reading latency, combined with eye-movement

measurements, Duffy and Keir (2004) investigated the effect of

using reflexive pronouns which denoted a non-stereotypical

gender to refer to a previously stated role name. For example,

the reflexive pronoun “she” when referring back to the previ-

ously stated role of “electrician”. It was hypothesized by Duffy

and Keir (2004) that the reading of a stereotypical role (such as

electrician) would automatically activate the gender stereotype

associated with it (in this case “male”). Thus, upon reaching the

non-stereotypical pronoun further in the sentence, ambiguity

arises, interfering with the processing of the sentence and cre-

ating a delay in the completion of the sentence. Furthermore,

Duffy and Keir (2004) explored whether providing a discourse

context prior to the introduction of the non-stereotypical role

pronoun could diminish the impact of said pronoun. Results did

support the notion of interference of sentence comprehension

(with longer reading times for sentences that contained non-

stereotypical gender pronouns), however, only if the stereo-

typical role was previously stated without the context of gender.

That is, if gender was referred to prior to the mentioning of the

role, the effect was diminished. Eye-movement analysis also

showed that within the “extra” time to read the sentences con-

taining seemingly incongruent material, participants had in-

creased fixation times for the reflexive pronouns

The impact of gender on word processing speed has even

been shown when the task was not in the context of gender

stereotyping (Banaji & Hardin, 1996). Banaji and Hardin (1996)

found that the word “he” was responded to faster when asked if

it was a pronoun, than the word “she”. Banaji and Hardin’s

(1998) concluded that the reason for the gender priming effect

in their study was a reflection of the social position of the dif-

ferent genders in society, where the faster processing of male

primes reinforced the notion that society is mal e-centered.

Heteronormative expectations (heterosexual Norm) are pre-

sent within society and heterosexuality is taken for granted or

assumed (Nielson, Walden, & Kunkel, 2000). The present

J. DICKINSON 457

study is an attempt to generalize the interference generated by

gender stereotype incongruency to the area of sexuality. That is,

is the activation of “heterosexuality” automatic when reading

material about an individual? It is hypothesized that the same

interference in reading speed will be seen upon reading the

word “wife” in relation to reading about a previously men-

tioned “woman”, as is seen when reading the word “she” when

referring to a previously mentioned ‘electrician’. The second

goal of this study was to evaluate if, as in Duffy and Keir (2004)

providing context would eliminate this possible interference.

That is, if participants are primed with a homosexual context,

will it eliminate or reduce the hypothesized impact on reading

speed? If data from Duffy and Keir (2004) generalize to the

context of assumed sexuality, it is hypothesized that context

will reduce the impact. Given Banaji and Hardin’s (1996) find-

ings concerning the processing differences found when refer-

ring to men versus women, it is also important to explore the

impact of gender in the current study to evaluate whether this

would extend to current context. We are also interested in

evaluating if reading speed has an impact on subsequent mem-

ory of the read material.

Methods

Participants

The participants were forty students from Laurentian Univer-

sity. Participants had a mean age of 19.25 years (S = 2.25) with

a mean year of study of 2.08 years (S = .62). Thirty-six of the

participants considered themselves to be heterosexual, while 4

did not. Thirty-five females and 5 males participated in the

study.

Materials

Video Primes

Context was manipulated as a grouping variable using a video

prime: either heterosexual context, or homosexual context:

Heterosexual Context: depicts a heterosexual family, where

the mother of a young son is discussing the issue of parenting

her son. Approximately 6 minutes in length.

Homosexual Context: features a young boy discussing issues

that he encountered growing up with two lesbian mothers.

Approximately 6 minutes in length.

Sentences and Comprehension Questions

In the sentence reading task, twenty sentences (10 with ho-

mosexual main characters and 10 with heterosexual main char-

acters, each with 5 male characters and 5 female characters)

were read. The sentences appeared one at a time on a computer

monitor. Participants responded via mouse key when they

completed reading the sentence. Each sentence was followed by

a yes/no question pertaining to the sentence previously viewed.

The comprehension questions all consisted of Yes/No re-

sponses. All of the sentences and questions were centered on

the screen against a white background in black font. In addition,

the order of the sentences was randomly generated using

E-Prime software package (2.0) (Schneider, Eschman, & Zuc-

colotto, 2002), reading speed and accuracy were also recorded

using this program.

The sentences were structured as anaphora reflexive, where

the referring expression and the critical noun phrase are de-

pendent on one another and are bound and controlled by means

of a subordinating conjunction in order to force them together

grammatically. For example, “Last night, in the packed movie

theatre Hannah screamed loudly until her wife held her close”.

All twenty sentences were 22 syllables and 16 words long.

The comprehension questions were always about content unre-

lated to the main character’s sexuality and gender. For example,

“Was the theatre full?”

Questionnaire

In addition to typical demographics, the following questions

were asked of each participant: 1) Do you consider yourself to

be heterosexual? 2) Do you know anyone who is not hetero-

sexual? 3) If yes, how many people do you who are not hetero-

sexual? Describe the relationship with them (e.g. family mem-

ber, friend, other). 4) How often do you interact with this per-

son(s)? 5) How much influence does this person(s) have in your

life (1 “no influence”-5 “very influential”)

Procedure

Participants attended one session in groups of four, and were

greeted by a female experimenter. Each group was randomly

assigned beforehand into one of two context conditions (het-

erosexual prime vs. homosexual prime). With half of the par-

ticipants primed with the heterosexual video and the other half

with the homosexual video. Participants then completed the

sentence reading task as described above.

Results

Results were analysed through a 2 (Context: heterosexual

prime vs. homosexual prime) × 2 (Sexuality of the main char-

acter: heterosexual vs. homosexual) × 2 (Gender of the main

character: male vs. female) mixed model ANOVA.

Reading Time

Four participants were removed as univariate outliers (2 from

each Context condition) leaving 18 in each group. A significant

main effect was found for gender (F(1,34) = 20.60, p < .05, η2

= .38), however there was a significant Context x Sexuality x

Gender interaction (F(1,34) = 4.12, p < .05, η2 = .12) therefore

the main effect will not be interpreted. See Figure 1. Bon-

feronni post hoc tests were conducted for the homosexual prime

group and indicated a significant difference between reading

Figure 1.

Mean reading times in milliseconds per condition.

J. DICKINSON

458

times which contained heterosexual female main characters (M

= 8.36 seconds), and those which contained heterosexual male

characters (M = 6.92 seconds), t = 4.04, p < .0125, this differ-

ence was not found in the homosexual main character condition

(female M = 7.66 seconds, male M = 7.46 seconds). Inversely,

for the heterosexual prime group there was no significant read-

ing speed difference found between female (M = 8.85 seconds)

and male (M = 8.29 seconds) main character sentences for the

heterosexual condition, but there was for female (M = 9.47

seconds) and male (M = 8.47 seconds) characters in the homo-

sexual character co nd iti on t = 2.51, p < .0125.

Accuracy

A Sexuality by gender interaction was found to be significant

(F(1,34) = 1.95, p < .05, η2 =.17). (Please note that the accuracy

rates are presented in Figure 2 to mimic the 2 × 2 × 2 design

shown in the reading time figure). Post-hoc analysis (with

Bonferonni correction) revealed accuracy levels for questions

regarding heterosexual females (M = .85) versus homosexual

females (M = .86) not to be significantly different. Accuracy

rates for questions regarding heterosexual male (M = .69) ver-

sus homosexual male questions were found to be significantly

different F(1,35) = 39.38, p < .025.

Does Homosexuality Count?

Among the demographic questions asked of participants if

they considered themselves to be heterosexual, along with

questions regarding how many (if any) individuals that they

knew who did not consider themselves heterosexual, and how

important were these people in their life. All but one participant

indicated that they had people who were close to them who

identified as “non-heterosexual”. It was thought that how well

people identified with homosexuals would mediate the auto-

matic activation of heterosexuality of the characters in the sen-

tences, however including “influence” (number of people close

to the participant who identified as non-heterosexual) as a fac-

tor in an ANCOVA did not result in significant differences to

the results. Four participants identified as being “non-hetero-

sexual”, excluding them from the analysis did not alter the re-

sults of any analyses.

Discussion

A three way interaction (Context × Sexuality × Gender) was

found for reading times, indicating that the impact of each of

Figure 2.

Mean accuracy rates per condition.

the main effects was dependent on the level of the other two

variables. Although the main effect of Sexuality was not found

to be significant, the hypothesis that activation of “heterosexu-

ality” was automatic, and would therefore result in a slowing of

reading speeds if a character was later identified as homosexual,

was partially supported. Evaluation of Figure 1 shows that the

impact of reading the word “husband” in relation to a previ-

ously mentioned man results in a slower reading time than

when reading the word “wife” in relation to a previously men-

tioned man. This holds true for both the heterosexual context

condition: heterosexual main character, homosexual main

character and for the homosexual context condition: heterosex-

ual main character, homosexual main character. However, for

female main characters, although the heterosexual context

group data do support the impact of introducing homosexual

content leading to a slowing of reading speed (heterosexual

main character, homosexual main character), the homosexual

context group showed the opposite effect. That is, for the ho-

mosexual context, the impact of reading the word “wife” in

relation to a previously mentioned woman results in a faster

reading time than reading the word “husband” in relation to a

previously mentioned woman. This result suggests that the

impact of priming of a homosexual context had an opposite

impact when the mai n cha r acter is female versus mal e .

The question as to whether a previously denoted context

could act to reduce the automatic activation of “heterosexual-

ity” was also partially supported. The combined reading speed

means for male and female characters for the heterosexual con-

text, were greater than the combined means for the male and

female main character homosexual context. This data support

the generalization of findings of Duffy and Keir (2004) who

found that providing the context of gender prior to the men-

tioning of a non-stereotypical noun can reduce the interference

of the processing of the sentence.

The evaluation of the impact of gender results in an expected

finding. The data from Banaji and Hardin’s (1998) study would

suggest that sentences with males as a main character would be

processed faster than sentences with a female main character.

Not only did the significant main effect from the present study

support this, when evaluating the individual cell means it is

evident that the reading times for sentences containing male

characters were consistently faster for those containing females

characters within each condition (see Figure 1).

The most interesting result with the accuracy with which

material was immediately recalled within the sentences, is that

regardless of the amount of time spent reading the sentence

(and therefore processing it), accuracy for information of sen-

tences with homosexual main characters remained consistent.

Figure 2 shows that the speed/accuracy trade off (Ollman, 1966)

holds true for information from sentences with heterosexual

main characters for all conditions. That is, the difference be-

tween accuracy for the male and female sentences for both the

heterosexual context group and homosexual context group

mimic the response time differences. However, for the homo-

sexual main character sentences, accuracy remains consistently

high, even for conditions that resulted in significantly faster

response times. The bizarreness effect (e.g., Richman, 1994;

Macklin & McDaniel, 2005) showed a facilitation of informa-

tion processing for items/sentences that are “bizarre” relative to

other stimuli in a task where memory is later tested (e.g., im-

J. DICKINSON 459

agery task). It could be argued that sentences which contain

homosexual main characters are a novel enough experience to

be considered “bizarre” in this context. It has been hypothe-

sized that memory for sentences including “bizarre” material

are encoded in more than 1 way, one where it is attempted to

remember the sentence in a verbatim way, and 1 where the

information is restructured into a more meaningful way (Nelson

& Hill, 1974). This dual encoding thus results in more effective

retrieval of all of the information contained within the sentence.

Alternatively, more cognitive effort could be responsible for the

increased processing of information that is “bizarre” (Tyler,

Hertel, McCallum, & Ellis, 1979), with more elaborative proc-

essing being performed on sentences which contain ‘bizarre’

material, therefore resulting in a higher accuracy in memory of

material contained within the sentences.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the activation of “heterosexuality” does seem

to be an automatic process such as the activation of gender

biases (Duffy & Keir, 2004). Providing context prior to expo-

sure to sentences which contain homosexual main characters

which were male did not negate the interference in reading

speed. Conversely, providing context prior to exposure to sen-

tences which contained female homosexual main characters

acted to speed up the reading process. Regardless of the time

taken to read sentences, accuracy of material was recalled at a

constant rate.

Future research could examine longer passages containing

more complex material to confirm if the absence of accuracy

rate differences is not an artifact of the material being too sim-

ple. Eye-movement could also be recorded in order to compare

Duffy & Kier’s (2004) finding of elongated fixation rates on

“incongruent” material.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Angelica Sourini for her assis-

tance in collecting data used in this study.

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