Conflation of sex and gender is implicated in the development of essentialist thinking, which has been linked to the justification of systems of prejudice in modern society. This exploratory study presents findings from a person randomized control trial conducted with 460 students in 8th–10th grade that investigated the extent to which students conflate sex and gender in their writing about genetics. Students were randomly assigned to one of three short readings that either (1) explained the genetics of sex in plants; (2) explained the genetics of sex in humans; or (3) refuted neuro-genetic essentialism, offering instead a social explanation for why women receive fewer PhDs in science, technology, mathematics, and engineering than men. While previous findings from the authors suggest links between the condition students were assigned to and psychological indicators related to essentialist thinking, no work was done to investigate how students’ use of language might implicate cognitive conflation as a possible factor in understanding these results. In this study, student responses to a constructed response writing task given after the reading were analyzed to investigate the use of sex and gender language. Students in all three conditions used both sex and gender language. However, students in the refutational text condition tended to use sex and gender language deliberately in order to explain PhD attainment, while students in the traditional genetics conditions used the terms interchangeably, suggesting subconscious conflation. Students in the genetics of human sex condition were more likely to manifest this conflation than students in the genetics of plant sex condition. Implications for instruction are discussed.

中文翻译：

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调查学生关于遗传学写作中性别和性别语言的混淆

性与性别的混淆与本质主义思维的发展有关，本质主义思维与现代社会偏见系统的正当化有关。这项探索性研究展示了一项对 460 名 8 至 10 年级学生进行的随机对照试验的结果，该试验调查了学生在撰写有关遗传学的文章时将性别和性别混为一谈的程度。学生被随机分配到三个短读物中的一个，要么（1）解释植物性别的遗传学；(2) 解释了人类性别的遗传学；或 (3) 驳斥神经遗传本质主义，而是为女性获得的科学、技术、数学和工程博士学位比男性少的原因提供了一种社会解释。虽然作者之前的发现表明学生所处的条件与与本质主义思维相关的心理指标之间存在联系，但没有开展任何工作来调查学生的语言使用如何将认知混淆作为理解这些结果的一个可能因素。在这项研究中，分析了学生对阅读后给出的构建响应写作任务的反应，以调查性和性别语言的使用。在所有三个条件下的学生都使用性语言和性别语言。然而，反驳文本条件下的学生倾向于故意使用性别和性别语言来解释博士学位，而传统遗传学条件下的学生则交替使用这些术语，暗示潜意识混淆。研究人类性条件遗传学的学生比研究植物性条件遗传学的学生更有可能表现出这种混淆。讨论了对教学的影响。