Shafaqna English- People who speak languages with stronger grammatical gender distinctions tend to report larger personality differences between men and women, according to a large international study published in the “Journal of Personality and Social Psychology”. The findings suggest that language structure may subtly shape how people perceive themselves and express gender-related personality traits, according to PsyPost.
Analyzing personality assessments from more than “755,000 adults across 122 countries”, researchers compared gender differences in the five major personality traits with the level of genderedness in 48 dominant native languages. To avoid translation bias, all participants completed the same English-language personality test, while the researchers classified languages using expert linguistic databases, natural language processing techniques, and evaluations from advanced AI models.
The results showed a consistent pattern: speakers of languages with stronger grammatical gender—such as Bulgarian, Spanish, and German—reported larger personality differences between men and women than speakers of genderless languages like Estonian or Turkish. The strongest association was found for “Agreeableness”, with women in highly gendered-language societies reporting greater levels of compassion and cooperativeness relative to men.
The researchers also examined whether broader cultural factors could explain the findings, but the association between language genderedness and personality differences remained robust. However, they emphasized that the observed personality gaps were generally “small”, representing average differences across large populations rather than meaningful distinctions between individual men and women.
The study does “not” conclude that language directly causes personality differences. Instead, it suggests that the way languages encode gender may reinforce or reflect gender-related self-concepts over time, interacting with cultural norms and social expectations. The authors say further longitudinal and experimental research is needed to determine whether changing language use can influence how gender differences in personality develop across societies.
Source: PsyPost