Mind: Firmness of Touch May Evoke Gender Stereotyping

Holding a hard or soft ball can influence a person's perception of how masculine or feminine others are.

In their study, Slepian and his colleagues had subjects clench either a hard ball or a squishy ball in their hands while looking at pictures of faces that had been altered to appear gender-neutral. They then were asked to categorize the faces as either male or female.

When touching the hard ball, volunteers were about 10 percent more likely to categorize a face as male; for those clutching the soft ball, the results were slanted toward females.

In another experiment, a different set of volunteers viewed these faces and were told to either press down hard or press lightly while circling "male" or "female." The researchers reported the same effect: Those told to write hard were more likely to see the faces as male, and the others were more likely to see them as female.

For more, see Firmness of Touch May Evoke Gender Stereotyping by Jennifer Welsh, January 12, 2011 at Live Science.