Gender Schema and Social Judgments: A Developmental Study of Children from Hong Kong

Sex Roles: A Journal of Research,  July, 2000  by Thalma E. Lobel,  Eva Bar-David,  Reut Gruber,  Sing Lau,  Yoram Bar-Tal

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DISCUSSION

Our findings show that several different factors, children's age and level schematicity as well as the target's and participant's sex, affect the types of inferences and judgments children make. These factors interact differently depending on the type of inferences and judgments, be they cognitive or emotional--motivational.

As hypothesized, both age and schematicity were related to children's inferences and judgements. The age-related differences were similar to those found in previous studies (e.g., Biernat, 1991; Martin, 1989; Martin et al., 1990), showing once again that older children relied more on individuating information, whereas younger children relied mainly on the gender label. Thus far, research on gender schematicity has been conducted primarily with European American children. The fact that similar developmental processes occur not only in Western cultures, but also in Eastern societies allows a further generalization of the development of children's inferences and judgments.

However, the main novel contribution made by our study is that we found age was not the only factor related to children's cognitive inferences, but it interacted with gender schematicity. As hypothesized, for kindergarten children, the more schematic they were, the more they relied on the gender label, whereas for sixth grade children, the more schematic they were, the more they relied on individuating information. This was true when they attributed stereotypic characteristics to the counterstereotypic targets (i.e., attributed femininity to the masculine female target and femininity to the feminine male target). In the case of third graders, no difference emerged between schematics and aschematics. Previous studies showed that kindergarten children relied only on the gender label when making inferences and judgments (Berndt & Heller, 1986; Biernat, 1991; Martin, 1989), whereas older children relied on the individuating information. Our results show that this is true especially for the schematic children. At a young age, when the gender schema is less complex and less elaborated, the most salient feature of the schema is the gender label. Therefore, the more schematic a child is, the more he or she relies on the gender label. As suggested by Martin (1989), young children seem to have "blanket rules" such as "all boys like trucks," making it difficult for them to distinguish between feminine and masculine boys. Our results suggest that schematic young children use these "blanket rules" more often, probably since the most salient feature for them is the gender label. In contrast, sixth graders have a more complex and developed gender schema and the associations between the various components of the gender schema are more complex. Therefore, the most salient feature of their gender schema is the individuating information. As such, the more schematic one is, the more he or she is likely to rely on individuating information.

Multiple classification skill, i.e., the cognitive ability to sort the same objects along alternative dimensions, might also be related to the individual differences that were found regarding the use of gender-related individuating information. It has been previously demonstrated that multiple classification skill is correlated with gender stereotyping (Liben & Signorella, 1992). Thus, it could be that in our study participant's difficulty in understanding that the same person can fit simultaneously into two categories influenced their ability to process counterstereotypic gender-related information (Liben & Signorella, 1992).