Cognitive Explanations - Gender Schema Theory Flashcards
What are Schema?
A schema is a mental representation. It is a cluster of concepts relating to something in particular; a packet of knowledge; acquired through experience.
What are Gender Schema?
contain information about how males and females should behave (gender-appropriate behaviour).
How do children acquire these schemas?
Through experience and interaction with their environment.
At what age do children start to develop gender schema?
Once children have a basic gender identity (at the age of 2-3 years) i.e. understand that they are either male or female, then they use schema to interpret and organise new information about gender and appropriate behaviour.
Gender Schema Theory vs. other theories
Like Social Learning Theory, Gender Schema Theory assumes that children learn ‘appropriate’ patterns of behaviour by observation. But, it is not a passive social learning process that occurs simply through observation and imitation. Instead, similar to Kohlberg, gender schema theory assumes that children’s active cognitive processing of information also contributes to sex typing
Martin and Halverson (1981) suggested that
once children have a basic gender identity (at about the age of 2-3 years), they look increasingly to their environment for information about the sexes to enrich their gender schemas.
Ingroup schema
information that relates to a group an individual identifies with.
In the context of gender, it contains information that relates to an individual’s own gender.
E.g. toys they should play with; games they should play; clothes they should wear; school subjects; sports; cars they should drive; jobs they should do.
Outgroup schema
the group an individual does not identify with.
It contains information that relates to the opposite gender.
Experiences are assimilated: this means their experiences will ‘fit into’ existing schema.
Once these schemas have developed, they can provide a basis for interpreting the environment and children can concentrate on learning which activities are more appropriate for their gender
(i.e. filling out their ingroup/outgroup schema) and show ingroup favouritism and outgroup discrimination e.g. girls will focus on feminine behaviours and avoid masculine behaviours.
They therefore develop fixed gender attitudes, ignoring any information that is not consistent with ingroup information.
Children show a preference for same-gender playmates and for gender-stereotypical activities, actively ignoring the other gender.
Play with other children leads children to believe that all girls share the same interests, and all boys share the same interests, and causes them to avoid children of the opposite gender because they are ‘not like me’ and therefore less fun to play with. Same gender peers, on the other hand, are ‘like me’ and therefore more fun to be with whatever they are doing.
Children also develop knowledge of the potential consequences associated with different social relationships: they may come to realise that their peers will tease them if they play with members of the opposite gender, so avoid this type of interaction.
Gender schemas therefore influence children’s likelihood of developing social relationships with same- and opposite-gender peers (Martin, 1991).
Martin and Little (1990) measures
understanding of gender concepts and stereotyped knowledge in children aged 3-5 years. They found that these children had a very rudimentary understanding of gender, yet had strong gender stereotypes about what girls and boys were permitted to do.
This suggests that children acquire information about gender roles before Kohlberg suggested - as soon as a child identifies as male/female they start to learn about what is appropriate and incorporate it into their schema.
- Children appear to pay greater attention to ingroup rather than outgroup schemas:
Bradbard et al. (1986) told
4-6 year olds that certain gender neutral items (e.g. burglar alarm, pizza cutter etc.) were either boy or girl items.
Participants took most interest in the items labelled as ingroup.
This shows that…the child’s gender schema affects what is paid attention to.
Furthermore, one week later the children remembered more details about ingroup items.
This demonstrates that when information does not seem relevant/fit in with their ingroup schema it is less likely to be remembered.
- Children pay greater attention to information consistent with gender schemas and remember this better:
Martin and Halverson (1983)
Found that when children were asked to recall pictures of people, children under 6 recalled more of the gender consistent ones (e.g. male firefighter) than gender inconsistent ones (e.g. male nurse).
This suggests that information that fits in with the child’s existing schema is remembered, whereas information that is inconsistent with the schema may be ignored.
This is in line with GST as it proposes that children are concerned with fitting in with their ingroup schema so ignore behaviour that is inconsistent with this.
- Gender schemas may DISTORT INFORMATION, affecting memory recall:
Martin and Halverson (1983)
In the same study the researchers found that sometimes when recalling the images that were inconsistent e.g. boy holding a doll, the child’s memory had distorted the image - insisting for example that it was in fact a girl holding a doll.
This is in line with Gender Schema Theory, as previous research has shown that schemas may distort information that is not consistent with what is already known to make it fit with the schema.
P: This theory can explain why children’s attitudes and behaviour are so rigid when it comes to gender - children focus on things that confirm their schemas and ignore/distort info that contradicts them.
For example, this explains why children are more likely to model gender-appropriate behaviour, rather than imitate a same sex model demonstrating gender inappropriate behaviour.
Children are also more likely to respond to same-gender reinforcement.
Fagot (1985) found that teachers tend to reinforce ‘feminine’ behaviours in both boys and girls (quiet, sedentary behaviour), however, despite being reinforced for it, boys are less likely to display this behaviour frequently.
This finding suggests that boys’ gender schema overrides reinforcement as the reinforcement pertains to an ‘outgroup’ behaviour.
