Testing the Limits of Structural Thinking About Gender

• In Event: Children's Understanding of Group Dynamics: Group Norms and Group Membership

Abstract

When seeking to explain social group differences people often rely on internal features of the targets, frequently neglecting structural and systemic factors external to the groups. For example, people might think women leave the job market after childbirth because they are less competent or are better suited for child-rearing than men, thereby eliciting negativity towards women and ignoring socio-cultural and economic factors that disadvantage women. Understanding how children reason about group differences is an important part of the broader project of reducing negativity towards individuals and groups. Here we explore whether tendencies towards internalist explanations can be overridden by emphasizing alternative forms of explanation. In particular, we focus on structural reasoning, or the ability to reason about features of a category in the context of the social structures that shape it (Haslanger, 2016; Vasilyeva et al., 2018).

Across two studies (total N = 192) we probe 4-5-year-olds’ and 7-8-year-olds’ internal versus structural reasoning about gender. We introduced participants to a fictional school where students tended to play with different toys (Study 1: novel toys, adapting the methodology from Vasilyeva et al., 2018; Study 2: real-world gender-stereotypical toys). To determine which toy to play with, students threw a pebble into one of two buckets and played with the type of toy indicated by the bucket their pebble fell into. In the structural condition (between-subjects), the two buckets differed in size such that the bucket corresponding to one toy was larger in the boys’ classroom and the bucket corresponding to the other toy was larger in the girls’ classroom. Thus, in this condition there was a salient structural explanation for the gender difference. In the non-structural condition, the buckets had the same size so there was no structural constraint.

We explored whether the structural manipulation promoted structural reasoning as well as influenced attitudes and behaviors. Explanations. Participants rated three explanations for the group difference: structural (focusing on bucket size), internal (focusing on inherent features of girls and boys), and incidental (unrelated to the task) on a 4-point scale (really bad to really good). Mutability. Participants predicted how likely students would switch from gender-conforming behaviors to gender non-conforming behaviors (i.e., how mutable the behaviors were). Evaluations. Participants evaluated one gender-conforming and one gender non-conforming behavior, on a 4-point scale (very right to very wrong). Playmate choice. Finally, unique to Study 2, participants indicated which student (gender-conforming or non-conforming) they would prefer as a playmate.

Results show that when structural cues are provided, children evaluate the structural explanation more positively, expect behaviors to be mutable when structures change (different toys become more accessible), and evaluate non-conforming behaviors more positively. However, children still prefer gender-conforning peers as playmates, suggesting that this form of structural information may be of limited effectiveness at reducing pre-existing group-based discriminatory behaviors. These results provide evidence concerning children’s structural reasoning about gender categories and shed new light on how such reasoning might affect social evaluations and behavioral intentions.

Authors

• Xin Yang, Yale University
  Presenting Author

• Ragnhild Naas, University of Aarhus

• Yarrow C Dunham, Yale University