Gendered languages assign masculine and feminine grammatical gender to all nouns, including nonhuman entities. In French and Spanish, the name of the disease resulting from the virus (COVID-19) is grammatically feminine, whereas the virus that causes the disease (coronavirus) is masculine. In this research, we test whether the grammatical gender mark affects judgments. In a series of experiments with French and Spanish speakers, we show that grammatical gender affects virus-related judgments consistent with gender stereotypes: feminine- (vs. masculine-) marked terms for the virus lead individuals to assign lower stereotypical masculine characteristics to the virus, which in turn reduces their danger perceptions. The effect generalizes to precautionary consumer behavior intentions (avoiding restaurants, movies, public transportation, etc.) as well as to other diseases and is moderated by individual differences in chronic gender stereotyping. These effects occur even though the grammatical gender assignment is semantically arbitrary.

中文翻译：

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COVID-19 是女性化的：语法性别通过激活性别刻板印象影响危险认知和预防性行为意图

性别语言将阳性和阴性语法性别分配给所有名词，包括非人类实体。在法语和西班牙语中，由病毒引起的疾病名称（COVID-19）在语法上是阴性的，而导致该疾病的病毒（冠状病毒）是阳性的。在这项研究中，我们测试了语法性别标记是否会影响判断。在对讲法语和西班牙语的人进行的一系列实验中，我们表明语法性别会影响与病毒相关的判断，这与性别刻板印象一致：病毒的女性（与男性）标记术语会导致个人对病毒赋予较低的刻板男性特征，这反过来又降低了他们的危险认知。该效果推广到预防性消费者行为意图（避免餐馆、电影、公共交通等）。) 以及其他疾病，并且受到长期性别刻板印象的个体差异的影响。即使语法上的性别分配在语义上是任意的，这些效果也会发生。