Gender: Cognitive explanations of gender development - Gender schema theory Flashcards
Who proposed gender schema theory?
Martin and Halverson
What’s gender schema theory?
Suggests that gender schemas drive gender behaviour and that children begin to form gender schemas as soon as they notice that people are organised into male and female categories.
It was based on the development of gender identity, boy or girl at age 2-3 years old where the child actively seeks the appropriate behaviours for their own gender and will ignore the behaviour that doesn’t fit with their schema.
It’s a generalised representation of everything we know in terms of gender and gender-appropriate behaviour.
What’s gender identity
The gender which you identify with.
This develops at ages 2-3 years
What’s a schema?
Cognitive framework that helps organise and interpret information in the brain.
Helps an individual to make sense of new information.
What are stereotypes?
A set of beliefs and ideas which come from our environment.
What are scripts?
A set of beliefs or ideas about how people behave in situations.
What does assimilate mean?
Children collate information they have relating to gender.
What’s inconsistent within Gender schema theory?
Children may just ignore information so that stereotypes or schemas don’t need to be altered.
What’s an in-group schema?
Refers to a group which serves to increase a child’s level of self-esteem. This can also be a group with which someone identifies.
An example is if you’re a boy, you’ll identify with the in-group of boys and vice versa.
What’s an out-group schema?
Any group to which one does not belong, or with which one does not identify. For example, if you’re a girl, the out-group would be the boys
What’s resilience in gender schema theory?
Fixed gender beliefs are held.
Ignore info that contradicts.
How do peer relationships link to the gender schema theory?
Children learn from same-sex peers that they’re similar to their own gender and different from the opposite.
AO3 Gender schema theory
+Supporting evidence
+Doesn’t support Kohlberg’s theory
-Methodological issues
-Individual differences
(+AO3) Supporting evidence
Martin and Little (1990).
Carried out research using 4/5-year-old children who were shown a range of toys.
Before they played with the toy, they were asked whether it was for girls or boys.
The children were then asked if they or other children of the same gender would like to play with the toys.
They found the label given to the toys affected the preference the child had.
This supports gender schemas and how children categorise and organise objects and how they match these to gender behaviour.
(+AO3) Doesn’t support Kohlberg’s theory
Bussey and Bandura (1992) found that boys and girls aged 4 said they felt good about playing with gender-appropriate toys and awful about playing with gender-inappropriate ones.
Kohlberg would suggest that this wouldn’t happen until later. Thus, gender schema theory may be a more accurate explanation of a child’s gender development than Kohlberg’s theory of development.
