Adaptation of the Chinese Version of the FUMIE Test and Validation with Two Pairs of Chinese Spousal Terms

The present study aimed to adapt the FUMIE test (Mori et al., 2008)—a Japanese paper-based version of the Implicit Association Test—for use in Chinese and to evaluate its feasibility, validity, and reliability. In Study 1, we translated the evaluation words into simplified Chinese and asked 126 native Chinese junior high school students (Grade 7) to judge each candidate word as “good,” “bad,” or “uncertain,” enabling the selection of highly consensual positive and negative items for the core evaluation task. In Study 2, the resulting Chinese version (C-FUMIE) was administered to 111 native Chinese undergraduates to assess implicit male-centric associations toward two pairs of Chinese spousal terms: the formal pair zhàngfu (“husband”) and qīzi (“wife”), and the colloquial pair lǎogōng (“old lord”) and lǎopó (“old woman”). The C-FUMIE test detected systematic gender differences, with male participants showing more male-centric associations than female participants, a pattern consistent with findings from Japanese university students (Nin & Mori, 2025). Reliability analyses indicated low stability at the individual level but strong collective-level reliability, as evidenced by high split-half correlations of group mean implicit scores. Overall, these findings support the feasibility and construct validity of the C-FUMIE test and provide a foundation for cross-linguistic comparisons of implicit gender bias in spousal terminology.