Research has shown that people who read a job description written only with male pronouns (e.g., he, his) are more likely to think of an employee as male than people who read a description that uses gender-neutral language (e.g., he or she). This fin

(A) the linguistic relativity hypothesis.

The finding that people who read a job description written only with male pronouns (e.g., he) are more likely to think of an employee as male than people who read a description that uses gender-neutral language (e.g., he or she) is most closely linked to the linguistic relativity hypothesis. The linguistic-relativity or Sapir-Whorf hypothesis holds that language influences thought. Therefore, people who read a job description written using only male pronouns are influenced to think of the person who holds the job in a particular way. Gender schema theory holds that children learn about the gender roles of their culture and that the expectations they develop then guide their behavior. The social role hypothesis is one explanation for hypnosis; specifically, this hypothesis says that hypnotized people play the role that is expected of them and do not actually experience an altered state of consciousness. Modeling, or observational learning, is Bandura’s theory that people learn by watching and imitating others. Ethnocentrism is the tendency to look at things from the perspective of one’s own culture.