Poster #39 - Young Children’s Gender-based Inductive Generalizations: The Influence of Stereotypes and Categories

• In Event: 3-206 - Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Section - Cognitive Processes

Integrative Statement

This experiment examined the influence of adult messages about gender on children’s inductive generalizations concerning biological and behavioral characteristics. According to Developmental Intergroup Theory (Bigler & Liben, 2007), both adult labeling of social categories and adult attributions about social categories are powerful influences on children’s social attitudes. In one of three conditions, preschool children (N = 72) heard brief vignettes set in a classroom. Children were divided into younger (3 to 4.5 years) and older (4.5 to 5.5 years) age groups. In the Stereotype condition vignette, a teacher assigned girls to play with stereotypically feminine toys (e.g. dolls) on one side of the room and boys to play with stereotypically masculine toys (e.g. trucks) on the other side of the room, and the teacher explicitly stated a gender stereotype (e.g., girls like dolls and boys like trucks). In the Salience condition, a teacher assigned girls and boys to play with different gender-neutral materials. In the Neutral condition, a teacher assigned two-mixed gender groups to play with different gender-neutral materials. The vignette was followed by 4 trials of a triad inductive generalization task, pitting gender against visual similarity. Children were asked to make generalizations about 2 novel biological (e.g., “This boy has fibro in his blood. This girl has neutros in her blood. Now here’s another boy. What does this boy have in his blood?), and 2 novel behavioral characteristics (e.g,, “This girl plays with samas. This boy plays with noyas. Etc.”). Then a second classroom vignette was presented, followed by 4 more induction trials. We predicted that children would generalize on the basis on gender most frequently in the Stereotype condition. A 2 x 3 x 2 x 2 (Age Group x Condition x Gender x Trait) ANOVA indicated that older children gave gender-based responses significantly more often than did younger children, and children gave more gender-based responses in the Stereotype condition than in either the Salience condition or the Neutral condition. In the Stereotype condition both age groups made gender-based attributions for both biological and behavioral traits significantly more often than would be expected by chance. In the Salience condition, younger children did not perform significantly different from chance for either biological or behavioral traits. Older children attributed behavioral traits on the basis of gender significantly more often than would be expected by chance, but did not perform differently from chance for biological traits. In the Neutral condition, younger children did not perform significantly different from chance for either biological or behavioral traits. Older children attributed both biological, and behavioral traits, on the basis of gender more frequently than would be expected by chance.
As predicted, children generalized on the basis of gender more often in the Stereotype condition than in the Neutral condition; however, older children also made gender-based inductions in the Neutral condition. Stereotyping seemed to increase gender-based reasoning, but did not appear to be necessary, at least among older preschool children.

Authors

• Bradford H Pillow, Northern Illinois University
  Presenting Author

• Natalie Low, Northern Illinois University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Cara Allen, Northern Illinois University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Taneisha Vilma, Northern Illinois University
  Non-Presenting Author