Gender Development Flashcards
What are the two types of gender differences?
- biological: chromosomes, hormones
- cognitive and behavioural: gender identity, gender roles, gender typing, gender stereotypes
What is the similarity hypothesis?
There is much more evidence that males and females are similar than dissimilar
What are some common gender stereotypes?
- verbal ability
- spatial ability
- aggression
- empathy
- activity level
- developmental vulnerability
What were the effects of anonymity on aggression?
if participants were anonymous they dropped bombs more often in game, and females dropped bombs more often than males
What is the difference b/w male and female aggression?
males are not necessarily more aggressive than females but just express it in different ways e.g. physical/ relational aggression/cyber aggression
What does Eagly’s social-role and bio-social hypothesis show?
biosocial - focuses on the physical aspects of men & women e.g. differences in strength and child bearing responsibilities set the stage for different social rules, despite technological advances
How does gender affect the child at birth?
- v. few differences at birth. sons and daughters seen differently - boys more active, girls more passive even though there is no scientific evidence of any difference.
- parents respond differently to the same infant’s emotional response depending on whether they believe the infant is a boy or a girl - fear/anger Jack in the Box
- parents provide different environments - rooms, toys, clothes
How do parents encourage gender?
- conversation - talk technical/science things with boys, engage in more emotional discussion with girls
- parental stereotypical gender expectations impacted their son’s and daughters maths and sport performance
How do peers affect gender?
becomes stronger with age - praise gender stereotypical conformity, tease them for not, guide children’s activites in gender stereotypical directions
ridicule, harassment & exclusion
gender segregation in early childhood
What are three things that create/encourage gender stereotyping?
- parents
- peers
- media
How does the media affect gender?
for centuries the print media has presented gender stereotypical content and from the 1950s, television has increased this
music videos, computer games, the internet & social media all affirm gender stereotypes
men are often in top roles: authoritative, powerful muscular whilst women are in low status roles that focus on their appearance with provocative sexual implications
magazines - body images
Discuss gender-linked preferences in early infancy
infants do not show any preferences in toys/activities associated with their gender until about two
children’s gender stereotypical activity stayed constant over the younger years - same at age 2 1/2 and 5
boys exhibit gender behaviour patterns at a younger age more than girls
What is gender identity?
refers to a person’s gendered self-characterisation. It involves more than self-characterisation as male or female.
What is the preferential looking paradigm?
used to study pre-verbal children to demonstrate infant’s association with gender stereotypical objects within gender categories
What was the result of the preferential looking paradigm task?
girls, but not boys between the ages of 18-24 months have been shown to possess gender stereotypical knowledge
