GENDER SCHEMA THEORY (COGNITIVE) Flashcards
AO1 AO3
1
Q
gender schema
A
- A gender schema is an organised set of beliefs and expectations related to sex and sex appropriate behaviour that are derived from experience.
- It helps people understand their own gender and gender appropriate behaviour.
2
Q
A01
A
- The theory states that once a child has established gender identity around the age of 3 they will begin to search the environment for information that encourages the development of gender schema.
- It’s argued this process starts at 2-3. Gender scripts are developed from observing activities that M+F perform (women cooking dinner, father going to work).
- Once children have developed these GS + scripts, they monitor their environment for information that is consistent with their ideas of gender appropriate behaviours and add this information into their thinking.
- Any inconsistent ideas are ignored so that their stereotypes or schemas don’t need to be changed.
- Children have a much better understanding of the schemas that relate to their own gender, and view their own group as the ‘ingroup’ and the opposite as the ‘outgroup’- ignoring their behaviours.
-
In-group identity serves to increase the child’s level of
self-esteem. - They tend to focus on activities that align with their gender identity (gender bias).
3
Q
One strength of GST is that there is supporting research.
A
- For example, Martin & Halverson found that recall for schema-consistent pictures was better than schema-inconsistent in 5-6 year olds.
- Furthermore, Martin and Little found that children under the age of 4 demonstrated strongly sex-typed behaviours + attitudes despite the lack of gender stability and gender constancy.
- These studies show that children develop gender schema at 2-3 and are more likely to remember gender consistent images as they’ve added that information into their thinking and view the images to be consistent to their ‘ingroup’.
- This is an advantage as it demonstrated the key principles of GST as well as contradicting KT- showing GST is a more accurate explanation
4
Q
One limitation of GST is that it’s a limited explanation.
A
- For example, focusing on cognitive factors at the expense of social factors such as parental influences is not desirable.
- Overlooking social factors means that the theory does not really explain why gender schema develop and take the form they do.
- This suggests that GST is oversimplified and reductionist as it only looks at cognitive factors when explaining gender development.
- Whereas, the social learning theory may better explain the role of social factors and accounts for the environment in gender development
5
Q
One strength of GST is that it can complement Kohlberg’s theory.
A
- For example, Stangor and Ruble suggest that gender schema and gender constancy are different processes.
- This is because a schema relates to the organisation of memory (it allows children to store information) whereas gender constancy is about motivation (once children have a firm idea of what it means to be a boy or girl they are motivated to engage in gender-appropriate activities).
- This suggests that the two theories both accurately explain the GD at different stages.
- This is an advantage as it allows psychologists to gain a holistic understanding of GD and make accurate conclusions based on these two theories
6
Q
One strength of GST is that it can explain young children’s rigid beliefs.
A
- For example, the idea of ingroup schema explains why children discount information that conflicts with existing schema, such as a woman working in a building site, in favour of information that confirms ingroup schema, such as a woman working as a secretary.
- Similarly, children display ingroup bias by paying more attention to information that is relevant to their own experience.
- This demonstrates that GST can explain many aspects of young children’s thinking about gender.
- This is an advantage as the theory has some explanatory power
