Who is Smart? Investigating Chinese Children’s Stereotypes About Brilliance

• In Event: The Origins of Inequality: Charting the Development of Stereotypes About Intelligence

Abstract

In the United States, women are perceived as less likely than men to possess high intellectual talents (e.g., Storage et al., 2020). This stereotypical belief may set a barrier to women’s engagement in many prestigious careers (Leslie, Cimpian et al., 2015). Recent developmental findings indicate that American children as young as age 6 begin to endorse this stereotype (Bian et al., 2017, 2018). However, past research has not examined (1) its developmental trajectory in non-Western cultures, and (2) its intersection with race. Here, we tackle these questions by investigating 5- to 7-year-old Chinese children’s gender stereotypes about Caucasians’ (Studies 1 and 2) and Asians’ (Study 3) intellectual abilities.

In Study 1 (N = 93), 5- to 7-year-old Chinese Children were presented with stereotype tasks adapted from Bian et al. (2017). For example, they were told a story about a “really, really smart” person, and were asked to guess which of four unfamiliar adults (two men and two women) was the person in the story. Although 5-year-old Chinese boys (M = 0.62, SD = 0.29) and girls (M = 0.67, SD = 0.20) were equally likely to associate brilliance with their own gender group, t(89) = 0.43, p = .97, Chinese girls aged 6 and 7 (M = 0.50, SD = 0.32) were significantly less likely than boys (M = 0.77, SD = 0.26) to associate brilliance with their own gender group, t(89) = -3.87, p = .001 (Figure 1). Thus, Chinese children begin to endorse the stereotype associating brilliance with White men around age 6, in parallel with the developmental pattern documented in American children (Bian et al., 2017; Jaxon et al., 2019). Study 2 (ongoing, N = 68) replicated these results by showing children with pictures of Caucasian individuals from the Chicago Face Database (Ma, Correll, & Wittenbrink, 2015), in which the pictures were normed on a number of dimensions such as emotion and age.

Study 3 (N = 101) was designed to explore the intersection between race and gender in Chinese children’s beliefs about brilliance. The procedure was identical to that of Study 1, excepted that we used pictures of Asian individuals from the Chicago Face Database. Chinese girls at all ages (M = 0.73, SD = 0.27) were more likely than boys (M = 0.52, SD = 0.30) to choose their own gender group as “really really smart”, t(97) = 3.26, p = .002, suggesting that Chinese children perceive Asian men as less intellectually gifted than Asian women (Figure 1). This pattern was replicated cross-culturally: 5- to 7-year-old American Children (ongoing, N = 30) tend to associate brilliance with Asian women more than with Asian men.

In sum, Chinese children begin to attribute brilliance to White men (vs. White women), and to Asian women (vs. Asian men) in early childhood. The present findings add to our knowledge of children’s acquisition of stereotypes about brilliance in non-Western cultural contexts, and highlight the importance of adopting an intersectional framework to understand the generalizability of these stereotypes.

Authors

• Yuhang Shu, University of Virginia - Charlottesville
  Presenting Author

• Qingfen Hu, Beijing Normal University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Fei Xu, University of California - Berkeley
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lin Bian, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author