Developmental Psychology 1

Gender Roles

PSY235

Developmental Psychology 2

1. Male and Female2. Gender Norms and Stereotypes

• expressive role• instrumental role

3. Actual Gender Differences• Re conclusions from Maccoby and Jacklin

(1974)a) Verbal Abilitiesb) Spatial Abilityc) Mathematical Abilityd) Aggression• Eagly (1987): social-role hypothesis

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4. Gender Developmenta) The Infant: gender identityb) The Child: Acquiring stereotypes; gender-typed

behaviour (gender segregation)5. The Adolescent: gender intensification6. Theories of Gender-Role Development

a) Biosocial Theoryb) Psychoanalytic Theoryc) Social Learning/ Social Cognitive Theoryd) Cognitive Theories• Cognitive Development Theory: Gender

Constancy (gender identity, gender stability,gender consistency)

• Gender Schema Theory:gender schemata

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7. Adults

• Androgyny

• Money and Ehrhardt’s biosocial theory of

gender typing (table)

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Kohlberg (1966, 1969) used the term genderconstancy to refer to the concept that aperson’s sex is a permanent attribute that istied to underlying biological properties (i.e.,the person’s genitals and geneticconstitution) and does not depend onsurface characteristics such as the person’shair length, style of clothing, choice of playactivities, and so on.

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Kohlberg’s Classic Approach

“I am a girl, therefore I want to do girlthings, therefore the opportunity to do girlthings (and to gain approval for doing them)is rewarding”.

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Kohlberg (1966)

Gender constancy

1. Gender identity

2. Gender stability

3. Gender consistency

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Gender constancy is comprised of threecomponents:

1. Gender identity2. “are you a boy of a girl?”

2. Gender stability“when you grow up, will you be a mummy or adaddy?”

3. Gender consistency“if you played with dolls, what would you be?”

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• Girl’s Gender Constancy Interview

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Sociocognitive Influences

Outcome expectations

1. Social sanctions

2. Self sanctions

Self-efficacy expectations

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• Gender Schema theory in action (table)

• The schematic-processing model of sexrole stereotyping (table)

Social Cognitive Freud Learning Development

Theory Theory

Sex drive Cultural forces Cognitive development

Directed toward father, blocked bymother

Identification with mother so as to gain father (or father substitute)

Make girl fit gender role

Emerging self-concept, whichincludes a genderidentity as a “she”

Gender role Gender identity

Acceptance of genderrole in an attempt to

live up to self-concept

Figure 14.13 (14.10) Three theories of sex typing

Femininity High Low

High

Masculinity

LowFemininesex-typed

AndrogynousMasculinesex-typed

Undifferentiated

Figure 11.7 Categories of gender-role orientation based on viewingmasculinity and femininity as separate dimensions of personality

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Serbin, Poulin-Dubois, Colburne, Sen, &Eichstedt (2001)

• Although children display toy preferences consistentwith gender stereotypes as early as 14 to 20 months,the use of gender labels does not occur until about 21/2 years of age.

• Although gender-stereotype knowledge, preferences,and behavior all emerge during the first 3 years, thedevelopmental sequence for their emergence has notbeen established.

• Two studies investigated the development ofpreferences for stereotyped toys and knowledge of theassociation of toys with gender categories between 12and 24 months, using the preferential lookingparadigm.

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• STUDY 1

• Participants: 12, 18, and 23 months

• Procedure: in a series of trials, infants wereshown stereotyped male and female toys (vehiclesand dolls). Each pair of toys was preceded byeither a male or female face and voice todetermine whether the infant could visually matchthe toy with the face by looking differentially atthe toy that corresponded to the preceding face. Inthe interspersed control trials only the male- andfemale-stereotyped toys were shown (see Figure 1for the stimuli used)

• Results:1. 12 months: children of both sexes showed a

visual preference for dolls over trucks - noevidence of any awareness of genderstereotyping of the toys.

2. 18 months: boys showed more visual interest inthe male sex-typed vehicles than girls did, andgirls looked longer at the dolls than boys did

3. 23 months - as for the 18 month old infants,these infants also displayed gender-linkedpreferences, i.e. boys looked longer at thevehicles than did the girls and girls looked longerat the dolls than did the boys - as for the youngertwo age groups there was no evidence of"matching" either dolls or vehicles with theirrespective gender category.

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• STUDY 2• Concern that in Study 1 children may have been

so drawn to the toy because it was familiar tothem (My truck!) that they did not match objectsto people. Therefore, in this study children sawtwo photos of the same toy followed by a girl andboy face.

• Participants: 18- and 24-months.• Procedure: During the trials a neutral voice said,

"See my car (doll)?" - two identical photos of thetoys were followed by the boy and girl faces and aneutral voice saying "Look at me" and "Look atthe people" for the control trials (no voice promptwas used in the first study for the control trial - itwas used here to equate attention to the photos)

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• Results1. girls looked significantly more at the faces that

"matched" the preceding toy standard than at the"mismatching" faces or control faces - nodifferences in boys looking times across theconditions

2. no preferences for either same- or other-sexchildren's faces

• Conclusion- gender-linked preferences are evident at 18months - knowledge of gender-linkedpreferences is more tentative - it occurs for girlsand not boys and is dependent on themethodology used

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Poulin-Dubois, Serbin, &Derbyshire (1998)

• the hypothesis that understanding gender as a socialcategory is an important influence on children'sgender-role learning during the preschool years hasreceived mixed support

• contrary to Kohlberg's view many aspects of genderstereotyping appear before the acquisition of genderconstancy - some argue that children may have anearlier understanding of gender than is assumed frommethods that rely verbal assessment methods

• to date no study has shown any relationship betweenthe stereotyped behavior and gender labels

• two studies aimed to evaluate intermodal genderknowledge and gender labeling in children 18 to 24months

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• STUDY 1

• 18 month old infants

• 4 pairs of black and white photos of men's andwomen's faces

• PROCEDURE: voice-matching trials: a male orfemale voice said "Hi baby! Look at me!" and apair (male and female) pictures appeared on thescreen

• - label-matching trials: a gender neutral voice said,"Where is the lady/man"? and followed by "Lookat the lady/man"

• - control trials: no voice was presented

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• RESULTS:

1. voice-matching task: the mean lookingtime was higher on the male matchingfaces than on the male mismatching orneutral faces; the mean looking time at thefemale matching faces was higher than themean looking time on the femalemismatching faces and control faces;matching of male and female faces wassignificantly greater than chance

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2. label-matching task: only girls lookedmore at faces that matched the label thanat mismatching faces; the meanpercentage of time that girls spent lookingat the faces was significantly abovechance

3. - the voice matching task was easierthan the label-matching task

4. - 65% were able to categorize faces andvoices as a function of gender but only 32%succeeded on the labeling task

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• STUDY 2

• included both 18 and 24 month old infantsand substituted pictures and voices ofchildren for those of adults

• same procedure as for Study 1 - "Where isthe girl (boy)? Find the girl/boy."

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• RESULTS:1. voice-matching task: no significant effects2. label-matching task: children looked longer at

the matching than the nonmatching faces,however, this percentage was only above chancefor boy label (52.3%) and not for the girl label(51.1%)- therefore children can match adult faces andvoices before they can match those of boys andgirls- further, children understood the label boybefore man, woman, girl and this is consistentwith a large scale normative study on the order ofacquisition of labels for adults and children(Fenson et al., 1994)