The Acquisition of Gender Stereotypes about Brilliance: A Cross-Cultural and Intersectional Perspective

• In Event: 1-080 - Do People Like Me Belong in STEM? Social Cognitive Influences on Children’s STEM Motivation

Integrative Statement

Success in math and science is commonly thought to require high-level intellectual ability or “brilliance” (e.g., Chestnut, Lei, Leslie, & Cimpian, 2018; Rattan, Good, & Dweck, 2012). As a result, the cultural stereotype that associates brilliance with men rather than women (e.g., Tiedemann, 2000) may be harmful to girls. Recent evidence suggests that this stereotype is learned surprisingly early: Bian, Leslie, and Cimpian (2017) asked 5- to 7-year-old children to select the “really, really smart person” from pairs of men and women. With age, children were increasingly likely to associate men over women with brilliance.

However, the initial research on this topic was limited in two respects. First, the children were recruited from a single location (a Midwestern US city), so it is unclear whether acquisition of the “brilliance = men” stereotype generalizes across cultural contexts. Second, the men and women used for the target stimuli were white, as were the majority of the children tested, so it is unclear (a) whether children apply this stereotype to men and women of other ethnic groups and (b) whether children of other ethnic groups acquire this stereotype. Thus, the present research explores the acquisition of the “brilliance = men” stereotype from a cross-cultural and intersectional perspective.

We recruited 203 children from New York City, US (Study 1; 51.7% girls; 30.0% white, 24.1% Latino/a, 4.9% Asian, 3.9% black, 18.0% multiethnic, 19.2% for whom we did not have demographic information; range = 4.26 years to 7.27 years) and 330 ethnically Chinese children from Singapore (Study 2; 49.1% girls; range = 8.00 to 12.94 years). In each context, we assessed whether children applied the “brilliance = men” stereotype not just to white targets but also black (Study 1) and Asian (Study 2) targets. This stereotype was assessed with a measure adapted from Bian et al. (2017) in Study 1 and with an Implicit Association Test in Study 2.

With respect to cross-cultural generalizability, we found that the “brilliance = men” stereotype is acquired early in both cultures. With age, children in both the US (p = .007) and Singapore (p = .019) increasingly associated white men over white women with intellectual ability (see Figures 1 and 2). However, we also found evidence that this stereotype is applied differently depending on the ethnicity of the target: Though Singaporean children extended the “brilliance = men” stereotype to both white and Asian men (ps < .001), US children did not apply it to black men (see Figures 1 and 2). Finally, children’s own ethnic background mattered: For example, the black and Latino/a children in our US sample did not seem to have acquired the “brilliance = men” stereotype at all, not even with respect to white men.

These results fill in important information about the acquisition of the stereotype that associates brilliance with men, and about the groups that might be most vulnerable to the effects of its exclusionary implications for their motivation in STEM.

Authors

• Jilana S. Boston, New York University
  Presenting Author

• Ryan Lei, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Eleanor Chestnut, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Reut Vraneski-Shachnai, Cornell University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Siqi Zhao, Nanyang Technological University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Daniel Storage, University of Denver
  Non-Presenting Author

• Peipei Setoh, Nanyang Technological University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Andrei Cimpian, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author