Psychology B3 - behaviourist approach to explaining gender Flashcards
operant conditioning and gender: rewards and punishments
-children behave in ways considered typical of their gender, parents (and teacherse peers, etc.) tend to reward them with praise, encouragement and approval
-reinforces the behaviour
-gender-atypical behaviours may be punished (or at least ignored), which weakens those behaviours
-example, boys are encouraged to play football or with toy cars, to be active and rough in their play and are discouraged from ‘girl-type’ activities
-girls = encouraged to play with dolls or engage in craft activities, to be passive, gentle and considerate
-a girl who is active, who fights and gets into scrapes may well be labelled a ‘tomboy’ - she isn’t seen as being a ‘proper’ girl.
operant conditioning and gender: differential reinforcement
-kind of reinforcement often given to children = differential reinforcement because boys are reinforced for masculine behaviours and girls are reinforced for different, feminine behaviours
-Kerig et al. (1993), the driving force behind differential reinforcement is
usually the father, is most likely to apply differential rewards and punishments for gender-typical behaviours
-differential reinforcement of gender-typical behaviours is a key process in learning gender identity
-continues throughout life and is not confined to childhood (Block 1978)
social learning and gender: modelling
-parents encourage gender-typical behaviours by modelling them
-example, a mother may model feminine-typical behaviour whenever she tends to her child’s needs
-modelling also occurs from the child’s perspective - a girl may observe her mother’s behaviour and imitate it
social learning and gender: vicarious reinforcement
-children also observe the consequences of a model’s behaviour, experiencing them indirectly
-if consequence is rewarding, the child is likely to imitate the behaviour (e.g. if a girl observes her older sister being praised for looking after her doll)
-But if consequence is punishment, then imitation is less likely (eg. if a boy observes a classmate being bullied for being girly)
social learning and gender: identification
-modelling and vicarious reinforcement are more powerful when the observer identifies with a model
-observer perceives the model as like me and/or someone I want to be
-happens because the model has qualities the observer finds particularly rewarding (e.g. a gender-atypical model who is attractive or interesting)
social learning and gender: influence of the media — modelling
-gender-typical models are available to observers through traditional media (e.g. characters in TV soap operas, talent-show contestants)
-online media increasingly provides gender-atypical models, such as influencers who are attractive and have high status
social learning and gender: influence of the media — vicarious reinforcement
-consequences of figures in the media behaving in gender-typical and gender-atypical ways are indirectly experienced by an observer
-example, a gender-atypical pop star being praised on TV may lead to an observer imitating the pop star’s behaviour
social learning and gender: influence of the media — identification
-observer is more likely to imitate a gender-atypical model when they identify with them (ie. they perceive the model as more like me than gender-typical models)
-illustrated by beauty vlogger Manny MUA, high-status figures may provide a more gender fluid kind of role model for observers to identify with
evaluation: research support (+)
-support from ‘Baby X’ studies where the same baby is identified either as a ‘boy’ or a ‘girl
-Smith and Lloyd (1978) dressed the same babies half the time in ‘girls’ clothes’ and half the time in ‘boys’ clothes
-mothers who believed the babies were boys gave them a hammer-shaped rattle and encouraged them to be active
-dressed as girls, the same babies were given a cuddly doll and reinforced for being passive
-evidence of a gender curriculum’ in the home - gender-typical behaviour is reinforced differentially for boys and girls from a young age
evaluation: explains changing norms (+)
-approach offers a convincing explanation of how gender can change over time
-distinction between what is considered typical behaviour for men and women is much less clear-cut now than it once was
-new forms of gender behaviour are increasingly reinforced, whereas in earlier decades they would have been punished or ignored
-Portrayals in the media (e.g. advertising, dramas, online) of gender-atypical behaviour are much more common and widely accepted
-therefore, social learning can explain the growth of fluid and non-binary gender identities
evaluation: children are active not passive (-)
-children are more active in acquiring gender than the learning approach suggests
-is more to learning gender than just passively observing models, imitating them and receiving reinforcement
-otherwise children’s gender identities would be carbon copies of their parents
-many children grow up to be much more gender-atypical than their parents, which suggests they actively construct gender rather than passively receive it (e.g. adolescents may deliberately seek out gender-typical models in the media)
-hard for the learning approach to explain purely on the basis of reinforcement and modelling
