Beyond Virtue Signaling: Perceived Motivations for Pronoun Sharing

Sharing one’s pronouns when introducing oneself is an emerging practice intended to prevent assumptions of what pronouns to use when referring to others. This practice may make people comfortable sharing their pronouns so that they are not misgendered and may signal inclusiveness to transgender and nonbinary (TGNB) people. What shapes people’s perceptions of the motivation behind pronoun sharing? Three preregistered experiments conducted in the United States (N=8,219) reveal that people perceive three underlying motivations for pronoun sharing when they learn that someone shared their pronouns in a workplace introduction: reputation signaling (trying to enhance their reputation), norm signaling (authentically attempting to influence others to adopt a new norm), and rule following (conforming to an existing norm). We also show that features of social context such as the sharer’s TGNB identity and the normativeness of the action influence which motivations observers infer. In general, we find that perceptions of more authentic and collective benefit-oriented norm signaling are higher when the sharer is a member of a minority (e.g., a transgender person, or someone sharing their pronouns at a workplace in which it is non-normative). However, belonging to a group whose values are strongly aligned with trans-inclusivity (i.e., working at an LGBTQ nonprofit that commonly uses pronouns) also leads to perceptions of authentic norm signaling, even though someone who shares their pronouns is not a minority in that context. This research provides novel evidence of social perceptions of trans-inclusive behavior.