RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Fluidity of gender identity induced by illusory body-sex change
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2020.01.13.905315
DO 10.1101/2020.01.13.905315
A1 Tacikowski, P.
A1 Fust, J.
A1 Ehrsson, H. H.
YR 2020
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/01/14/2020.01.13.905315.abstract
AB Gender identity is the inner sense of being male, female, both, or neither. How this sense is linked to the perception of one’s own masculine or feminine body remains unclear. Here, in a series of three behavioral experiments conducted on a large group of healthy volunteers (N=140), we show that a perceptual illusion of having the opposite-sex body was associated with a shift toward more balanced identification with both genders and less gender-stereotypical beliefs about one’s own personality characteristics, as indicated by subjective reports and implicit behavioral measures. These findings demonstrate that the ongoing perception of one’s own body affects the sense of one’s own gender in a dynamic, robust, and automatic manner.