Research summary

Slaby and Frey, 1975
Social learning approaches suggested that children’s gender development was largely based on observation of same-sex models. However, Kohlberg’s (1966) cognitive-developmental theory suggested that children’s understanding of gender as a permanent, unchanging attribute was of critical importance. Slaby and Frey (1975) set out to determine whether children’s attention to same-sex models was influenced by their level of gender constancy.

Fifty-five 2- to 5-year-olds’ level of gender constancy was assessed by using a series of fourteen questions and counter-questions. Several questions tapped gender labelling. For instance:

Is this a girl or a boy? (showing boy/girl doll)
Are you a girl or a boy?

Further questions tapped gender stability. For instance:

When you were a little baby were you a little girl or a little boy?
When you grow up, will you be a mummy or a daddy?
Could you ever be a [opposite of previous response]?

A final set of questions tapped gender consistency. For instance:

If you wore [opposite of child’s sex] clothes, would you be a girl or a boy?
Could you be a [opposite of child’s sex] if you wanted to be?

Children were classified as low on gender constancy if they answered incorrectly on the gender labelling or gender stability items, and otherwise were identified as high on gender constancy. Several weeks after this interview the children were shown a short film showing a man and a woman engaging in simple parallel activities on different sides of the screen. The amount of time that children’s eyes were fixated on each side of the screen was measured.

Slaby and Frey found support for their hypothesis that children with higher levels of gender constancy would show more selective attention to same-sex models. The data in the table below show that high constancy boys watched the male model rather than the female model more than did low constancy boys, while the opposite was true for the girls. Interestingly, the selective attention to the same-sex model was much stronger among the high-constancy boys than among the high-constancy girls. In fact, both boys and girls spent more total time watching the male model than the female model. Overall, the results indicate the influence of both cognitive and social factors in gender development.

Table: Mean (SD) percentage of model-watching time spent watching the male rather than the female model (standard deviation in brackets).

Gender schema theory

Despite the limited research evidence for the role of gender constancy in the development of gender-typed behaviour, many contemporary researchers have built on Kohlberg’s basic point that cognitive processes play a key role in driving gender development. In fact, the question now is not whether cognition is important – everyone agrees that it is – but which particular cognitions should be emphasised. Where Kohlberg highlighted the relatively late-developing full understanding of gender constancy, the gender schema theorists argue that it is the early cognitive processes underlying children’s ability to label themselves as boys or girls that play the key role in gender development (Martin et al., 2002).

In 1981, Carol Martin and Charles Halverson presented a new account of gender typing that drew on the ideas of earlier cognitive developmental accounts but included considerably more detail about the exact cognitive processes involved in gender development (Martin and Halverson, 1981).

They proposed that the emergence of stereotypes in childhood was not purely a function of environmental input, but rather was the perfectly normal consequence of children’s information-processing. Stereotypes, in this view, are simply an efficient way of handling and predicting large amounts of information. If we do not categorise information and make generalisations (e.g. about what boys like and what girls like) on that basis, we simply would not be able to manage our lives effectively. For children exposed to an endless stream of new information and novel input, such processes of simplification are necessary in order to make sense of the complex world around them.

Activity: What’s in your gender schema?

Allow about 20 minutes
This activity will help you to explore your own use of gender schemas.

Do you make any automatic assumptions about people based on whether they are male or female to help you manage your everyday interactions? Imagine you are at a party and you meet a person for the first time. You really want to have fun and make a good impression. Would the person’s gender influence the way you approach the situation: how you behave, what you talk about, what you ask questions about, what you joke about etc.?

Now imagine that you had to look after a friend’s 8-year-old for the first time. You really want the child to have fun. Would the child’s gender influence the way you approach the situation: what activities you prepare, what you talk about, what you ask questions about, and so on?

Think about other everyday situations: going for a job interview, talking to the checkout clerk at a supermarket, meeting a new work colleague, etc. Try and list some of the inferences you make about people simply from knowing their gender.

Comment

Martin’s and Halverson’s theoretical framework reminds us that stereotypes are not necessarily an abnormal or irrational way of thinking; rather, they often play a key role in simplifying a very complex world. We often use gender stereotypes as rules of thumb to guide us in our social interactions. We have to be careful, however, that we do not rely on gender stereotypes too rigidly – we need to be prepared to revise our beliefs, expectations, and behaviour when we are presented with counter stereotypical information (e.g. a girl with ‘masculine’ toy preferences). Research suggests that children become increasingly flexible in their reasoning about gender as they grow older.

At the core of the theory is the notion of ‘schema’, a mental structure that guides the processing of information and experiences. According to the initial model proposed by Martin and Halverson (1981), two key schemas are involved. The first, the ‘in-group – out-group’ schema includes a broad categorisation of attributes, activities, and objects as being either for boys or for girls. In other words, boys and girls are said to have a mental representation of what is suitable for their in-group (boys for a boy, girls for a girl) and what is appropriate for their out-group (girls for a boy, boys for a girl). A second schema, the ‘own sex’ schema, involves more detailed information about those behaviours, traits, and objects that are considered to be characteristic of their in-group. As soon as children are able to label themselves as boys or girls, they will start to form these schemas in order to make sense of the world around them.

In many ways, the basic proposition of Kohlberg (1966) still applies: “I am a boy, therefore I want to do boy things”. The difference is that the notion “I am a boy” need only reflect basic gender labelling, as opposed to a full appreciation of gender constancy. Once this understanding is present and the environment provides information about certain toys or activities as masculine or feminine (which is organised in the in-group – out-group schema), children will be driven to find out more about the in-group set of toys or activities. In this way, the in-group – out-group schema determines what information goes into the more detailed and elaborate own sex schema: if a boy views an object or activity as masculine he will approach it, interact with it, and find out more about it. Thus, unlike the SCT view that internal standards for behaviour are formed through the internalisation of social rules taught through rewards and punishment (or observed through the outcomes of others’ behaviour), children are seen here as having internal, self-regulating standards as soon as they label themselves as boys or girls.

A major advantage of the gender schema approach is that we can begin to trace stability and change in children’s gender-linked cognition and behaviour by tracking the development of children’s schemas. For example, it offers a good insight into why children seem to cling so tightly to gender stereotypes, sometimes despite the best efforts of parents who are attempting to reduce or eliminate stereotyping. Schemas govern what we pay attention to, what we try to find out more about, what we interact with, and what (and how) we remember. For example, Bradbard et al. (1986) gave 56 4- to 9-year-olds some new objects to explore for six minutes. The children explored new objects more when they were labelled as being for their own sex than for the other sex, and subsequently remembered more detail about the own-sex toys than the other-sex toys one week later. In a similar vein, Liben and Signorella (1993) showed 106 primary school children sixty drawings of male and female characters engaged in masculine, feminine, and neutral activities/occupations (e.g. firefighter, washing dishes), and then asked them to recall as many of the pictures as possible. Children recalled more pictures of men performing masculine behaviours than of men performing feminine behaviours. The influence of gender schemas can be so strong that counter stereotypical information may be distorted to make it fit in with the schemas. Martin and Halverson (1983) showed 48 5- to 6-year-olds pictures of males or females engaged in activities that were consistent or inconsistent with gender roles. A week later the children showed distorted memories of role-inconsistent pictures, for example, a picture of a girl sawing wood was remembered as a picture of a boy sawing wood.

The gender schema approach also helps us understand why younger children often seem to adhere to stereotypes more rigidly than older children. When children were asked to predict how much the characters in a story would like masculine and feminine toys the younger children relied only on the sex of the character to make their judgements (Martin, 1989). They predicted that a boy character would like to play with trucks regardless of the information given about that character’s interests. By contrast, the older children took into account both the sex of the character and the ‘individuating’ information about that particular character. So they would predict that a girl who is described as having counter stereotypical attributes (e.g. likes playing with airplanes) would be less likely to want to play with a doll than a stereotypical girl. This kind of flexibility is likely to be the result of changes in children’s cognition, such as an increased understanding of masculinity as distinct from maleness and femininity as distinct from femaleness, and an increased ability to draw on several sources of information (e.g. both sex and idiosyncratic interests) simultaneously. Younger children, with a more simplistic gender schema that links certain activities with boys and certain other activities with girls, seemed to rely only on the character’s sex when inferring his or her toy preferences.

Summary

The psychoanalytic perspective highlights the importance of early childhood experience in gender development, but the emphasis on psychosexual dynamics within the family has not received empirical support.

A dominant debate in current research on gender development concerns the relative importance of social and cognitive factors.

Mischel’s social learning approach suggested that children’s gender development is a product of their social experiences. This theoretical approach focuses on reinforcement of gender-typed behaviour by parents and peers, and on children’s observation of gender stereotypes in the world around them.

Bandura’s social-cognitive theory is a more recent version of social learning approaches that highlights the active role of children in their observational learning.

Kohlberg’s cognitive-developmental theory proposed a developmental sequence of stages in children’s concept of gender. Children’s appreciation of the unchanging permanence or ‘constancy’ of gender was thought to underlie their tendency to seek out and adhere to gender role information.

Martin’s and Halverson’s gender schema approach suggests that children form cognitive schemas about gender as soon as they discover their own sex. These schemas drive gender development, guiding children’s attention and memory in such a way that they focus on and remember gender-typed information much more than counter stereotypical information.

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