Poster #190 - Children Considered Both Gender and Gender Conformity in Reasoning about Social Affiliation

• In Event: 1-115 - Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Section - Sex, Gender

Integrative Statement

Gender’s influence is pervasive in children’s social cognition, shaping their friendship decisions, activity preferences, and occupational aspirations (Martin & Ruble, 2010). Two prominent sources of gender’s influence on children’s social cognition are (1) a child’s gender group and (2) the gender norms for that group (Martin & Ruble, 2004). Specifically, when making social evaluations, children prefer same-gender individuals (Shutts, 2013), and gender-norm-conforming individuals (Carter & McCloskey, 1984). Previous research, however, has almost always examined the two sources separately (see Mulvey and Killen, 2015 for an exception). What would happen if the preference for same-gender peers is in tension with the preference for gender conforming peers? Would, for example, boys be viewed as more likely to befriend another boy who wants to become a ballet dancer or a girl who wants to become a soldier? Assessing children’s views of how gender non-conformity might affect friendships is especially important, given the increasing visibility of gender non-conforming children (Dunham & Olson, 2016).

In this study, we examined 197 children’s (age: 4-12) third-party judgments about friendship. Participants were shown pictures of groups of boys or girls, and then judged how much the group would like to be friends with different target children. The target children depicted were either the same- or different-gender as the group, and either gender conforming or non-conforming in their occupational aspiration (ballet dancer vs. soldier), appearance (hair bow vs. suit and tie) or play preference (doll vs. football). Children judged each target on a 4-point scale (really no; kind of no; kind of yes; really yes).

As shown in the figures, we found first, not surprisingly, that participants expected both boy and girl groups to be very accepting of same-gender, conforming targets. When reasoning about the other target children, however, judgments differed depending on whether the group of children in the vignette were girls or boys. Children expected the group of boys to prioritize whether someone shared boy-stereotypic preferences and to favor those who did regardless of gender. For example, children expected the group of boys to likely be friends with a girl who wanted to be a soldier but not with a boy or girl who wanted to be a ballet-dancer. In contrast, children did not think the group of girls would differentiate the targets based on gender or conformity except for the highly rated gender-conforming girls.

Together, we found that, across a broad age range, children expected boys and girls to make somewhat different decisions about who to be friends with when preference for same-gender collides with preference for gender conformity. They expected boys to focus more on possession of boy-stereotypic traits and even welcome girls who shared those traits, while they expected girls to be clearly accepting when someone is a conforming girl and somewhat reasonably accepting of other children regardless of gender or their traits. Future studies should explore the implications of these different consequences of gender non-conformity in shaping children’s peer relationships.

Authors

• Cai Guo, Stanford University
  Presenting Author

• Catherine Xie, Stanford University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Carol S. Dweck, Stanford University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ellen M. Markman, Stanford University
  Non-Presenting Author