Children’s Gendered Beliefs About Confidence and Competence

• In Event: Who Knows What? Influences on and Consequences of Beliefs about Competence in Children

Abstract

In the first years of formal schooling children use gender as an informative cue to infer ability in certain domains. For example, evidence suggests that 5-7-year old boys believe that males are more likely to be “geniuses” than females, whereas girls transition from an own-gender bias around 5 years of age to egalitarian beliefs one year later (Bian et al., 2017). While these findings have been taken to suggest children hold a “male-brilliance” stereotype, they also suggest a persisting overconfidence in boys. Given demonstrated differences in confidence between males and females in adulthood (e.g., Correll, 2001), it is possible that children’s gendered beliefs about ability reflect their interpretation of males’ overconfident behavior relative to females. In the current study, we examine children’s gendered expectations of confident and competent peers by asking whether children expect peers of one gender to be more confident or more competent when playing a novel game. Importantly, we examine whether these expectations are symmetrical; that is, if a child believes males are more likely than females to be the most confident, do they necessarily think females are more likely than males to be the least confident?

Children aged 4-8 (N=79, Mage=5.72) were introduced to a novel game and then asked to help the experimenter “figure out” what had happened with other children who played the game before. Participants were told stories about confident (i.e., “one child said they would be better than everyone else at the game BEFORE playing”) and competent (i.e., “one child won against everyone else that they played the game with”) children. They were then shown pictures of male and female children and were asked to guess who the story was about. Participants also responded to stories about unconfident and incompetent children. Results reveal that older children believe boys are more confident than girls (age x gender interaction: p=.017; Figure 1) and similarly, more competent than girls (age x gender interaction: p=.005; Figure 2), with younger children showing own-gender biases. Notably, children’s responses on “positive” (confident and competent) and “negative” (not confident and incompetent) trials differed such that children showed significant biases on positive items but not negative items, except that older girls indicated a belief that girls are not confident (p=.010; Figures 1-2).

These findings are the first to suggest that around the age that children demonstrate gender stereotypes for brilliance (early in formal schooling), children also develop gender stereotypes about confidence favoring boys. Critically, for older girls, our findings regarding children’s beliefs about who is confident versus who is not confident were symmetrical suggesting that for some children, expectations of confidence favor one group (males) while disadvantaging the other (females). Because competence expectations were not significantly different between beliefs about who is competent versus not competent, this may suggest that children’s beliefs about confidence are more robust and potentially more powerful. If so, this may suggest that gender biases about confidence drive gender biases regarding competence, indicating a potential early mechanism for gender gaps in representation and wages later in life.

Authors

• Lindsey Hildebrand, Boston College
  Presenting Author

• Lesenia Fish, Boston College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sara Cordes, Boston College
  Non-Presenting Author