Cognitive Explanations: Gender Schema Theory Flashcards
What is the gender schema theory?
-The idea that children develop an understanding of their own gender by actively observing others to learn more about themselves
What does this theory suggest the child does once they have established a gender identity?
-This happens around age 2-3 and this theory suggests that the begin to search the environment for ideas which can expand and develop their understanding of their own gender
How are children’s gender schemas often developed?
-A child’s early gender schemas often lead them to believe that if something is ‘typical’ of their gender then they are ‘supposed’ to do it and so they are likely to continue doing things which are stereotypically associated with their gender and adding them to their gender schemas.
What happens for the child around age 6?
-This is said to be the age at which the child has formulated a firm understanding of their own gender and often disregard anything that challenges their ideas.
Why is it that children often make friends who are similar to them?
-The child has their own ideas about what is ‘normal’ for their gender and so associating with other children who support that idea is said to boost their self-esteem, these are called ingroups.
What study did Martin and Halverson conduct to support their theory?
- Children age 6 were shown some photos of people doing tasks, some were ‘gender appropriate’, others were not. they were asked to recall these photos a week later.
- It was seen that gender-consistent photos were remembered best, for the rest of the photos, the child tended to change the sex of the model
- This supports the idea that children stop incorporating new ideas into their gender schemas around this age
How can this theory be evaluated?
(+) Explains many different aspects of childrens behaviour such as rigid gender attitudes and why children tend to understand their own gender better.
(+) Whilst this theory somewhat contradicts Kohlberg’s it could be argued that they actually compliment each other since gender schemas focus on the distortion of memory while Kohlberg’s theory focuses on the child’s motivation to learn about their gender.
(-) This theory is highly focused on how the child teaches themself about their gender whereas in reality there are a lot of external influences such as vicarious reinforcement/punishment which also have significant impacts
(-) This theory suggests that changing someone’s beliefs is always going to change their behaviour when in actuality, this is not always the case
