Week 3 Assigment

Gender stereotypes about intellectual ability emerge early and influence children’s interests

Bian, L., Leslie, S.J., and Cimpian, A. (2017) (Paper, including supplementary materials)

Precis

This paper investigated whether gender stereotypes regarding brilliance were endorsed by children aged five to seven years old, and whether these influenced children’s interests. Previous studies had looked at the effect of gender stereotypes on performance and interests in adults, along with their role in gender pay gaps. However, the lack of research on the acquisition of these stereotypes led the researchers to investigate this in children. The authors hypothesised that the earlier children acquired gender stereotypes (specifically, the stereotype that men are more intelligent than women), the stronger these would influence children’s interests. This area of research has implications for children’s future academic and career choices, as girls may avoid early subjects and careers typically associated with high-level intellectual ability.

Four studies were conducted to test this hypothesis. The first investigated the acquisition of the stereotype by looking at age differences in stereotype endorsement (and the second replicated it with a larger sample). The third and fourth investigated the stereotype’s influence on children’s interests by looking at whether sterotype endorsement shaped children’s interests in games for children who are ‘really, really smart’ or who try ‘really, really hard’.

Study one (and two) found no differences in five year old children’s association of brilliance with their own gender, but found gender differences at ages six and seven, with girls significantly less likely than boys to associate brilliance with their own gender. The authors also tested whether this difference was linked to girls’ perception of their school achievement. They found no significant age difference, suggesting girls’ idea of brilliance is not linked to their perceptions of school performance.

Figure 1. Results of studies one and two

Study three found boys were more interested than girls in the game for smart children, but not in the one for hard-working children. Authors also found children’s beliefs about brilliance mediated the relationship between gender and interest in the ‘smart’ game. Study four found no significant differences in five year olds’ interest in the ‘smart’ game, but a significant difference for 6 year olds.

Figure 2. Results of studies three and four

The researchers concluded that, although alternative explanations could be possible (boys’ delayed school entering and girls’ adhering to modesty norms), the fact that gender stereotypes about brilliance mediated children’s interests in ‘smart’ games suggest that children assimilate these stereotypes early and are influenced by these in their academic and professional choices.

Study 1, Task 2

Prior to the tasks of Study 1, the authors presented 12 counterbalanced screener questions to the children to assess their understanding of the key terms ‘smart’ and ‘nice’. The children were asked to decide if a child whose behaviour had been described by the experimenter was ‘smart’ or ‘nice’. If they were wrong they were corrected.

The first study had 96 participants of 5, 6 and 7 years old (with 32 children per age group, half boys and half girls). The sample wasn’t ethnically and socioeconomically diverse (mostly middle class children, 75% white), however the authors controlled for these moderators and found they did not significantly moderate the results they were interested in. The study design used both between-subjects factors (gender and age) and within-subjects factors (the three experimental tasks).

The second task examined age differences in children’s endorsement of the male=brilliance stereotype by giving children counterbalanced pictures of pairs of same- or different-gender adults. Two were practice trials and involved adults of the same sex as the participant, and four involved a man and a woman. Children were either told one of the adults was ‘really, really smart’ (3 out of 6 trials) or ‘really, really nice’ (other 3 trials), and then had to guess which one matched the description. Both men and women in the pictures were normed for factors that could influence children’s decision, such as professional dress and attractiveness. Children’s responses were scored as a 0 on a trial if they chose the adult of a different gender as their own, and 1 otherwise.

The authors used a multilevel mixed-effects linear model to analyse children’s gender stereotype scores (across the three tasks of Study 1), with age (5 vs 6 vs 7 years old), gender (boy vs girl) and trait (‘smart’ vs ‘nice’) as predictors (along with possible interaction terms). A further model treated 6 and 7 years old as a single group, and further tests compared boys’ and girls’ stereotype scores about both traits seperately for younger and older children. Results were not affected by a Bonferroni correction to account for the multiple comparisons.

Notes for replication

• The screener material is missing from the supplementary materials and therefore will need to be obtained before replication.
• We are currently missing the pictures the original authors used for Study 1 Task 2, and will need to contact them in order to include them in our replication.
• The issue the authors raised of ethnicity interacting with the effects is worth mentioning. Indeed, both the sample and the pictures used are not representative of ethnical diversity. The sample is largely middle class and white, and the pictures are of white men and women. Therefore we believe this must be taken into account when replicating the study. It would be worthwhile to run the study with more diverse samples and materials in order to see if we replicate the original study’s results.
• There may be an issue with using only 29 people to rate the attractiveness and professional dress of the persons on the pictures. This could have resulted in a less representative sample of norms of attractiveness and professional dress. It could be interesting to get a rating over more people.