Most contemporary theorists argue that cognitive processes need to be taken into account in order to explain how the social environment makes its mark on the child’s gender development and how the child plays an important role in directing his or her own gender development.

Cognitive processes
The theories covered in this section all relate to aspects of children’s thinking that are central to their gender development. They focus on the ways in which children attend to and then process and organise this information, and have in common a justifiable emphasis on the active role of children in shaping their own development; they are not simply passive respondents to stereotyped information that is imposed upon them. This notion of the child as active helps psychologists understand why consistent effects of social environment are so difficult to find – the effects themselves are, in one way or another, dependent on the child.

Social cognitive theory
Early social learning theories, where the main focus was on the simple, one-way effect of environment on behaviour, were criticised because they provided too simplistic a picture of human development. Bandura’s social cognitive theory (SCT) builds on the earlier social learning approaches by addressing the fact that human development involves a complex interplay of many factors. SCT is usually presented (e.g. Bandura, 1986) in terms of a ‘model of causation’ that links three sets of variables, all of which influence each other: behaviour (e.g. activity patterns), person (e.g. expectations, intentions, goals), and environment (e.g. modelling, reinforcement). The emphasis is still very much on how children’s social experiences influence their behaviour, but SCT highlights the active role of children in their observational learning. They can attend selectively to particular events or people in the environment, then mentally organise, combine, and rehearse the observed behaviours, decide when to enact the behaviour, and finally monitor the outcomes of that behaviour.

What are the implications of SCT for an understanding of gender development? Just as in early social learning approaches, Bussey and Bandura (1999) point to evidence of negative parental and peer responses to children’s behaviour that runs counter to gender stereotypes as confirmation of the idea that gender development is heavily based on external sanctions early on. Children’s socialisation history, it is argued, provides distinctive information about masculinity and femininity from birth – for example, clothes, nursery décor, and the toys and activities provided. Moreover, there is undoubtedly widespread modelling of gender stereotypes in the family as well as in wider culture. When children’s gender role-inconsistent behaviour is met with open ridicule by adults and peers there is a clear motivation for the child to behave in a gender-stereotyped manner.

However, there is also evidence of choice and flexibility in children’s behaviour, and this is where cognitive processes come into play. Once children have begun to internalise the standards of behaviour appropriate for males and females, based on the social experiences described above, their own behaviour is no longer dependent on external rewards or punishments. Rather, they become capable of directing their own behaviour in such a way as to satisfy their internalised standards. Furthermore, they monitor their behaviour against those standards, so that they can feel pride on performing gender role-consistent behaviour, even if there is no explicit external praise.In a study which supported this view of gender development (Bussey and Bandura, 1992), nursery children aged three to four years of age were asked to evaluate gender-typed behaviour by peers (as presented on videotape) and to rate how they would feel about themselves if they were playing with masculine and feminine toys.

Even the younger children disapproved of gender role-inconsistent behaviour by peers (e.g. boys playing with dolls), but when they rated their own feelings they were the same for both masculine and feminine toys. In contrast, the four-year-olds not only disapproved of others’ role-inconsistent behaviours, but were also self-critical when judging how they would feel if they were playing with role-inconsistent toys. Furthermore, these self-evaluations predicted how the children actually went on to play with masculine and feminine toys. This was taken as evidence that while social sanctions for gender-typed behaviour are clearly present in the younger children, self-regulation becomes more important with age.