In an international study, participants' attitudes towards certain social groups—namely, politicians and Black people—were more strongly related to their attitudes towards the men than the women of each group, suggesting that men are the "default" for attitudes towards these groups. Curtis Edward Phills of the University of Oregon, U.S., and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on June 25, 2025.
Prior research has shown how people often discuss some social groups as though they are primarily made up of men, and studies have further explored this view of men as default group members in the contexts of stereotyping, categorization, and memory. For instance, stereotypes about Black people in general align far more closely with stereotypes about Black men than Black women.
However, research on men as the default in the context of attitudes towards different social groups—such as how warm or positive people feel towards each group—is limited. To deepen understanding, Phills and colleagues analyzed data from 5,177 undergraduate students who took a survey measuring their attitudes towards people in general, Black, East Asian, and white people, police officers, politicians, and criminals. The survey also measured attitudes towards the women and men, separately, of each group.
In general, participants' attitudes towards politicians and Black people were more closely tied to their attitudes towards the men than the women of each group—suggesting "man" as the default for attitudes towards these groups. However, attitudes towards white people were more closely tied to attitudes towards white women than white men. Attitudes towards police officers, criminals, and East Asian people were not strongly related to attitudes towards either the women or men of each group.
Further analysis suggested that female Black and white participants did not see men as the default members of their own racial group. The data also suggest that people in regions with more traditional gender roles may be more likely to view men as the default for attitudes towards social groups, but further research is needed to clarify this.
The findings could aid understanding of the different kinds of prejudice faced by women worldwide.
Curtis Edward Phills adds: "When I think about this research I am filled with so much gratitude for the opportunity to have worked with hundreds of researchers around the world. Each researcher dedicated some of their own laboratory time and space to this project because they believed in the value of collaborative team science. Team science projects like this one are powerful reminders that there is no universal human psychology—how we differ and how we're similar varies from region to region.
One of the main findings from this work is that on average across all regions in our sample, attitudes toward Black people are much more similar to attitudes toward Black men than Black women. This finding adds to the literature on intersectional invisibility demonstrating that Black women are often excluded from the category 'Black'—as in people think of a Black man when they imagine a Black person.
However, the strength of this finding varied from region to region. In fact, regional variability was a key finding for all the groups we studied (White people, East Asian people, politicians, police, and criminals). Though these regional findings should be considered 'preliminary' or 'exploratory', an important point is that regions that endorsed traditional gender roles were more likely to exclude women from their attitudes toward each group.
So, overall, the answer to the question of whether 'man' is default in attitudes is: it depends—it depends on which groups and which regions are studied."
In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS One: https://plos.io/3ZsGGjz
Citation: Phills CE, Miller JK, Buchanan EM, Williams A, Meyers C, Brown ER, et al. (2025) Multi-region investigation of 'man' as default in attitudes. PLoS One 20(6): e0323938. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0323938
Author countries: U.S., Canada, Denmark, Austria, U.K., Turkey, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Ecuador, Colombia, Slovakia, Finland, China, Serbia, Portugal, Poland, Norway, India, Israel, Greece, Germany, New Zealand, Nigeria, U.K., Ireland, Australia, Brazil, Oman, Saudia Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Hungary, Kenya.
Funding: M.A. was supported by Slovak Research and Development Agency (APVV-20-0319) ( https://www.apvv.sk/?lang=en ). R.M.R. was supported by Australian Research Council (DP180102384) ( https://www.arc.gov.au/ ) and the John Templeton Foundation (62631) ( https://www.templeton.org/ ). Z.K. was supported by János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Science (BO/00746/20) ( https://mta.hu/bolyai-osztondij/bolyai-janos-kutatasi-osztondij-105319 ) G.P.W. was supported by Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant (RPG-2016-093) ( https://www.leverhulme.ac.uk/research-project-grants ). I.R. was supported by NPO Systemic Risk Institute (LX22NPO5101) ( https://www.syri.cz )). K.B. was supported by National Science Centre, Poland (2019/35/B/HS6/00528) ( https://www.ncn.gov.pl/en ). G.B. was supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency (APVV 22-0458) ( https://www.apvv.sk/?lang=en ). P.A. was supported by Portuguese National Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT UID/PSI/03125/2019) ( https://www.fct.pt/en/ ). M.H. was supported by VEGA 1/0145/23. G.B. was supported by PRIMUS/20/HUM/009. A.L.M. was supported by FAPESP n 2018/16370-5 The funders did not play any role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. There was no additional external funding received for this study.
