Francesca Pesciarelli^1,2, Luana Serafini¹; ¹University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, ²San Diego State University

While implicit and automatic gender stereotyping and its neural correlates have been widely investigated in language, their functioning in the human face processing domain remains largely unexplored. We recorded Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) to a target face (male, female) preceded by stereotypically associated words (e.g., conducente “driver”, badante “caregiver”), or to stereotypically associated target words preceded by a face (male, female). Participants performed a gender categorization task on target faces and a lexical decision task on target words/non-words. ERPs to both face and word targets showed a gender stereotype asymmetry. Female faces elicited a larger N200 when preceded by stereotypically gender-congruent than -incongruent prime words, and larger anterior P300 and LPP when preceded by stereotypically gender-incongruent than -congruent prime words; male faces elicited a larger N400 (limited to men) when preceded by stereotypically gender-incongruent than -congruent prime words. Similarly, stereotypically female words elicited a larger midline N400 when preceded by a gender-incongruent than congruent face, and stereotypically male words elicited a larger P300 when preceded by a gender-incongruent than congruent face. Results show that faces are potent triggers of gender stereotyping.