Gender Stereotypes of Musical Instruments in Chinese Culture: Content, Strength, and Implicit Effects

This study investigates gender stereotypes of musical instruments in Chinese culture through four methods: (1) nomination to identify typical masculine/feminine instruments (e.g., suona[masculine], guzheng[feminine]); (2) forced-choice to verify group consensus; (3) scale measurement of explicit stereotype strength; (4) Implicit Association Test (IAT) to probe automatic gender-instrument associations. We hypothesize that Chinese participants hold systematic gender stereotypes for Chinese instruments, with stronger explicit/implicit effects for culturally familiar instruments. Results will contribute to understanding cultural specificity of gender schemas in music cognition.