Are You a Natural or a Striver? Ability Stereotypes Shape Young Children’s Self-Efficacy and Interest

• In Event: 3-055 - The Developing Self: New Findings on its Social Origins and Functions

Integrative Statement

In the debates about women’s underrepresentation in STEM, one common argument is that underrepresentation is not, in and of itself, evidence that something’s gone wrong (e.g., Hakim, 2006). Perhaps girls and boys just have different preferences, and that’s why they orient toward different careers—why should we try to force girls into careers they don’t want? From the viewpoint of developmental science, one potential flaw with this argument is that exposure to various cultural messages may lead boys and girls to develop preferences that they may not have had otherwise.

Here, we test the effects of one such cultural message—namely, the pervasive belief that, although boys and girls can achieve at the same levels in domains relevant to STEM (e.g., math), boys possess more “natural ability” than girls, who have to work harder to compensate (e.g., Bian, Leslie, & Cimpian., 2017; Cimpian, Lubienski, Timmer, Makowski, & Miller, 2016). We hypothesize that, in and of itself, exposure to stereotyped beliefs might undermine girls’ self-efficacy (Eccles, 1987) in the relevant domains and, as a result, their interest in pursuing those domains.

We tested this hypothesis experimentally in the context of an unfamiliar activity (to avoid teaching children stereotypes about real-world domains such as math). This context also allowed us to test whether boys and girls would react similarly to messages that their gender needs to compensate for lack of natural ability, or whether girls are somehow particularly susceptible to such messages.

In the course of teaching children (N = 129; 65 girls; ages 4 to 7, Mage = 5.90) how to play a novel game, the experimenter described two other children, a boy and a girl, who were both said to be “really good” at the game. However, one of these characters was portrayed as a “natural” who relied on ability to succeed, whereas the other was portrayed as a “striver” who succeeded by working hard. The crucial manipulation was whether the participant’s gender matched that of the “natural” or the “striver.” Children heard nothing about their own ability at the game. After this introduction, children reported (1) their self-efficacy and (2) their interest in playing the game.
Our key prediction was that children whose gender matched that of the “striver” (vs. the “natural”) would feel less self-efficacious and, as a result, display less interest in this novel activity. We expected this effect for both boys and girls.

Indeed, children showed lower self-efficacy when the same-gender character was a “striver” (p = .051; see Figure 1), and this difference was not moderated by children’s gender (p = .95). In turn, this difference in self-efficacy between children whose gender matched the “natural” vs. the “striver” predicted a gender difference in interest as well (indirect effect in a bootstrapped mediation analysis: p = .054; see Figure 2).

In sum, these results suggest that gender stereotypes about “natural ability” can take a toll on children’s self-efficacy and—by way of self-efficacy—their interest, even in circumstances where these stereotypes are conveyed subtly and indirectly.

Authors

• Jilana S. Boston, New York University
  Presenting Author

• Andrei Cimpian, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author