Gender schema theory predicts that sex-typed people are more likely than non-sex-typed people to invoke gender in processing information. This was tested in a covert semantic classification task in which male and female college students selected "and" or "but" to conjoin pairs of personality traits from the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI). Use of "and" indicates the traits are considered to be congruent, and use of "but" indicates they are seen as incongruent. Sex-typed and non-sex-typed subjects, as determined by administration of the BSRI, equally conjoined gender-congruent traits with "and" and non-gender-congruent traits with "but," with results predicted by the degree to which the traits were stereotyped as masculine. Subjects also conjoined pairs of traits that were congruent or incongruent with respect to both the gender schema and the self schema. Both gender and self-congruity affected responses and, as predicted by gender schema theory, sex-typed subjects were more likely than non-sex-typed to select "and" for gender-congruent and "but" for non-gender-congruent pairs. However, the largest effect for all subjects was that of gender congruity. (Author/MSE)