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For example, creating an experiment in which the words "male" and "female" would be presented on the left or right side of a screen, and participants had to click a left button for "male" and a right button for "female" (and vice versa in a second group), would we find shorter reaction times when one gender was presented to a particular side of the participants' bodies?

Are there studies that have researched this?

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    Could you elaborate on the motivation for this hypothesis? – Steven Jeuris May 20 '16 at 11:00
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    There is a lot of research going on at our institute on embodied cognition, and I am involved in a study on gender stereotypes, and the two things just came together in my mind and I wondered if gender stereotypes where embodied in some way. The idea that they could be embodied laterally came from associations between right hand and good / active / etc. in the beliefs of some cultures (e.g. the "dirty" left hand in some Arab cultures) and the association of women with uncleanliness and men with work. All just a vague idea at the moment. A Google Scholar search did not turn up anything useful. –  May 20 '16 at 11:33
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    @what I also can't find evidence for this anything like this. Lateralised attentional biases regarding gender seems unlikely. Classical artists did genderise sides, however in reality the world isn't like this, and that is what the brain is concerned with. There are of course biases in visual processing for different races, and sexes, and arbitrary groups, although these are merely in and out group effects caused by the brains natural development to detect differences which help promote survival and propagation. Although I don't think that research will help this qu. – Comte May 20 '16 at 16:36
  • Something like the word male or female is not going to have a bias like that, because it is a symbol, not a thing that we naturally respond to. You could try using silhouettes of male and female bodies. Research has shown that part of the male brain responds to hip to waist ratio. Also, people can identify whether a distant person or someone moving in darkness is m/f in a small part of a second. That ability might be lateralized, but I have never heard of such a thing. –  May 20 '16 at 20:23
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    Looks like I need to do that experiment myself, then. –  May 21 '16 at 10:24

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