SIT Study: Hilliard and Liben

Question 1

What was the aim of this study?

Answer 1

To investigate how social category salience may play a role in the development and inter-group behaviour in elementary school children

Question 2

What was the procedure of this study?

Answer 2

• Took place at 2 pre-schools
• 57 US children (3-5yrs)
• Study used a pre-test and post-test design
• Each child completed a gender attitude test to measure their ‘gender flexibility’
• Shown pictures of activities of certain occupations
• Asked if boys or girls should perform it
• Test included 22 masculine, 20 feminine and 24 neutral items
• Test calculated the number of both women and men responses
• 2 conditions:
  1. High salience group: children were made aware of their gender (lined up by sex)
  2. Low salience group: teachers were given no instruction on changing their behaviour, this was a control group

Question 3

What were the findings from this study?

Answer 3

• In the ‘pre-test’ both groups had a similar number of ‘both’ responses when looking at the images
• After two weeks of the high gender salience there was a significant decrease in the number of ‘boths’ meaning that the children had more gender stereotypes
• In the low salience group there is no significant change

Question 4

What was the conclusion from this study?