Poster #34 - Working together: Testing whether communal framing boosts children’s interest in STEM

• In Event: Poster Session 03

Abstract

In the United States, women are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). A critical factor that has been hypothesized to contribute to the gender gap in STEM is the stereotype that scientists work by themselves – that their work is solitary (Boston & Cimpian 2018). Even children endorse this stereotype, in that they perceive scientists as solitary, socially awkward individuals (Boston & Cimpian 2018). Importantly, this stereotype may create a perception of incongruity between STEM and girls, since girls and women are culturally stereotyped as being communal (Block et al., 2018). Thus, undermining the stereotype that scientists’ work is solitary may be a powerful way to motivate children – especially girls – to pursue STEM careers. However, little developmental work to date has examined how information about the level of communality involved in a STEM career impacts children’s interest in STEM.

Here, we ask how the framing of an unfamiliar science, geophysics, as more communal (working together with other people) or less communal (working alone) affects girls’ and boys’ interest and self-efficacy in this career. We chose this branch of physics because children were unlikely to already have well-formed opinions about it; in addition, fewer women pursue careers in physics as compared to other sciences (NSF, 2019). We also examine a plausible moderator of this manipulation: the source of the information about the high vs. low level of communality in geophysics. That is, we test whether the communality manipulation is more vs. less effective when the communality information is conveyed by a scientist of the same gender as the child vs. a different gender.

We predict that describing geophysics as more (vs. less) communal will increase children’s, especially girls', interest and self-efficacy in geophysics. Although not of central interest here, we also predict girls will be more interested and self-efficacious when learning about geophysics from a female (vs. male) scientist. Finally, we will explore if the communality manipulation interacts with the scientist’s gender; communality effects may be magnified (perhaps especially for girls) when the communality information is conveyed by a same-gender scientist.
We will collect data from a pre-registered sample of 192 4- to 7-year-old children (current N = 86). Children will watch animated videos of a female or male scientist discussing his/her typical workday as a geophysicist. The geophysicist will describe working together with other people (more communal) or working alone (less communal). We will measure children’s science career interest and self-efficacy, each with two questions (see Fig. 1). We will conduct separate linear regressions to examine how children’s interest and self-efficacy in geophysics differ as a function of communal framing, the scientist’s gender, the child’s gender, and all interactions.

Our study contributes to theory on effective interventions for increasing girls’ interest and self-efficacy in STEM (here, geophysics). By testing whether the perceived communality of a field affects these dimensions of motivation, we hope to inspire the creation of better cultural artifacts (e.g., science media) to increase all children’s desire to pursue STEM careers.

Authors

• Ramya Kumar
  Presenting Author

• Michele Villacres, Northeastern Illinois University

• Sophie Arnold, New York University

• Andrei Cimpian, New York University