Poster #184 - "Girls Don't Ride Firetrucks" : Development of Executive Function and Gender Stereotype Reasoning in Middle Childhood

• In Event: 3-206 - Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Section - Sex, Gender

Integrative Statement

Gender stereotypes form early in childhood through a range of experiences, including social observations or even exposure to certain toys (Allport, 1954; Gutwald, 2017). Although research has shown that very young children hold stereotypes (Gettys & Cann, 1981), relatively little is known about how emerging cognitive processes, like executive function (EF) skills, contribute to the persistence or reduction of stereotyped thinking across childhood. In particular, the EF skill of cognitive flexibility, which allows children to interpret information across multiple dimensions (Anderson, 2002), may be a key mechanism in assisting children to see past social constructs and reduce their stereotyped reasoning and judgements. Therefore the goal of the current study was to examine if emerging cognitive flexibility in middle childhood is associated with lower rates of stereotypical thinking.

Participants were 118 children, (88 females, Mage = 7.11, SD = 0.83) that took part in a larger project assessing gender stereotypes. In the current study, participants were shown pairs of pictures depicting a man and a woman dressed very similarly in a range of occupations that are societally associated more frequently with one gender, such as a ballet dancer or a construction worker and asked: “Which one is the (occupation): the man or the woman?”. They were then asked to explain their choice. Justification of their choice was used as the indicator of stereotypical reasoning, and two independent coders (κ’s > .86) scored children’s responses on a dichotomous scale (0: non-gender-related reasoning; 1: gender-related reasoning). Responses were averaged across all professions to create two composite scores: judgement and reasoning. Parents completed the Behavioral Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF) to assess children’s cognitive flexibility via the SHIFT scale and lower scores denoted greater cognitive flexibility.

Children chose the gender that was stereotypically associated with each career, 71.85% (SD = 18.76) of the time. As anticipated, there was a significant association between their judgement and their stereotypical reasoning (B = 0.65, SEB = 0.15, p < .001), such that participants who made more gender conforming career choices also gave more gender stereotypical justification for their choice. Contrary to our hypotheses, higher levels of cognitive flexibility corresponded to greater stereotypical reasoning (B = -0.54, SEB = 0.25, p = .031). After controlling for age, gender, and stereotype threat conditions, these results remained stable.

Together, these results highlight the high rate of gender stereotyped judgements about career paths during middle childhood and also indicate that EF skills, such as cognitive flexibility, may actually contribute to stronger stereotypical thinking among this age group. Moreover, the results underscore that increased EF alone may not be enough to break perceptions of stereotypical molds and suggest that additional factors, such as child experiences with non-stereotyped examples may be important in influencing children’s perceptions. Overall, these findings reveal complex associations between cognitive processes important to learning and the development of stereotyped reasoning in middle childhood, and suggest novel directions for interventions to reduce gender stereotyped thinking in childhood.

Authors

• Ava Friedlander, Barnard College
  Presenting Author

• June Wai Lee, Smith College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sarah Jo Torgrimson, University of California Los Angeles
  Non-Presenting Author

• Deborah Jean Wu, University of Massachusetts Amherst
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jennifer M. McDermott, University of Massachusetts Amherst
  Non-Presenting Author