Cognitive Explanations of Gender Flashcards
Cognitive explanations of gender development
suggest children’s understanding of gender actively develops directly seeking out experiences & intellectually organising concepts not passively responding to stimuli
Kohlberg theory on gender development
gender develops through processes of maturation (growing up brain development) socialisation (learning cultural norms from role models) and lessening ego centrism ( starting to see from other peoples perspectives)
Kohlbergs stage of gender development
Gender Identity/Labelling
Gender Stability
Gender consistency
Kohlbergs Theory: gender identity/labelling
Stage 1
2-3 yr olds are aware of their own gender as boy or girl. They can identify ppls gender but not their permanence
Kohlbergs Theory: Gender Stability
Stage 2
4-5 year olds are aware of their own gender as fixed over time
confused by non- formative appearances/roles in others
Kohlbergs theory: Gender Consistency
Stage 3
around 5 years old
recognise everyones gender is consistent over time depsite changes in unusual hair/clothes/context
Kohlbergs theory: after consistency
children actively look for the identify with and imitate the same gendered ind
what does gender schema theory suggest
mental representations of what sex is and what are stereotypically male and female behaviours
when do gender schema theory believe the reach their gender identity
2-3 years
what are ingroups
the gender the child belongs to
what is an outgroup
the opposite gender
how parents reinforce gender schema theory
saying phrases suchas you dont ant that its a boy toy, stop acting like a girl
why does he child focus more on the ingrop than outgroup
because they develop a stronger understanding of the stereotyped behavior for their gender before understanding of the outgroup
Kohlberg AO3: Slaby & Frey
They used interviews to assess the stage of 23 boys & 32 girls (2.5-5 years old). Children watched a film with a male and female model performing the same activity on either side of the screen. Researchers recorded how long each child focused on each model. finding children’s stage of gender development was associated with age and children in the gender constancy stage spent longer looking at the same sex model, especially boys this suggests that children do have observable stages to gender development as predicted by Kohlberg and children do look to same sex models for gender self-socialisation
what is gender schema theory by Martin and Halverson
they suggest gender schemas are mental representations what sex is and what are stereotypically male and female behaviours this informs our own behaviour and what is expected from others
when is it believed that children reach gender schemas
2-3 years
Gender schema theory AO3: children do have internal schemas of gendered behaviour
Martin and Halverson showed children between ages of 5-6 pictures of males and females doing sex-consistent activities. 1 week later children were asked to recall the children switched the sex shown in pictures to match the gendered activity. this suggests that children do have internal schemas of gendered behaviour, these can act as default expectations, influencing the recall of memory
Gender schema theory AO3: gender stereotypes and behaviour
Martin and Little assessed the stage of gender development of children aged 3.5-5. They then judged the childrens preference for sex-typed toys, knowledge of sex typed clothing and preference for novel items that that experimenter said was “for boys” or “for girls”. It was found the youngest children had strong sex typed preferences and stereotyped knowledge of clothes and toys, before children reached the gender behaviour form early as predicted by GST. While the existence of Kohlbergs stages is supported, it is wrong in suggesting gendered prefernces only start after children are in the consistency stage
Cognitive explanations of gender development AO3: using children can be seen as
pedohillpa
Cognitive explanations for gender development AO3: preference for gendered objects is instinctual
Alexander and Hines demonstrated that male vervet monkeys were significantly more likely to play with masculine toys (car) and females with feminine toys without previous experience. Suggests preference for gendered objects is instinctual and may have an evolutionary basis
HARD TO EXTROPOLIATION
