Cognitive Explanations of Gender Development

12 Key excerpts on "Cognitive Explanations of Gender Development"

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  Children's Understanding of Society

  • Martyn Barrett, Eithne Buchanan-Barrow(Authors)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  In sum, there is no doubt that the media present stereotyped, if occasionally heterogenous, representations of gender roles and there is no doubt that children are avid consumers of the media, especially television. However, this correlation does not confirm a unidirectional causal relationship in respect of children's own gender role development or their understanding of gender roles in society. Instead, consistent with the broad thrust of cognitive developmental theories (and some aspects of social cognitive theory), children turn out to be discerning viewers who attend selectively to the material available and interpret it in accord with their developing naїve social psychologies of gender and their personal (though gender-linked) preferences. They also, once again, filter the information through affective processes, and are quite ready to reject ideas and images if they are incompatible with their theories and values.

  CONCLUSIONS

  Gender is given, grown, imposed, expected, regulated, learned, reflected upon, enacted, experienced, and shared. In this complex, multifaceted, and multidetermined minefield, children are actively engaged as thinkers and as emotional beings striving to determine who they are and how they relate to the social structure. Early attempts to explain gender role development tended to ignore or neglect the child's understanding. Cognitive developmental theories corrected this and inspired a large body of fruitful research, though these theories in turn have tended to neglect how children feel about gender. As in much cognitive developmental work, they tended to treat the child as a cognitive isolate or mini-scientist engaged in interesting epistemological quests with little reference to anyone else. Recent developments within cognitive developmental theory and at the points of intersection with social psychology have brought social processes and motivational and affective considerations more to the fore.

  Two issues emerge to guide future research. First, although children's understanding of gender roles in society is, of course, subject to developmental processes, it is becoming apparent that it is misleading to conceive of it as an incremental body of knowledge that is static at a given point in development. Instead, it is fluid, context sensitive, and socially shared and may be expressed or accessed in different ways in different circumstances.Thus, the task ahead is not so much to refine our maps of what is known at different ages or stages but rather to investigate how children draw upon their developing knowledge to meet specific demands as social actors.Second, understanding gender in society is closely linked to emotional processes. Gender is motivating to children as highly personally salient information, as a fundamental organising feature of any community, and as a framework of values in relation to which feedback is received almost continuously from other people and institutions. Importantly, the cognitive engagement can be constrained by the emotional engagement. For example, increasingly sophisticated and flexible knowledge can be put aside in suf- ficiently motivating contexts of intergroup rivalry, where the young person may revert to simplistic, even prejudiced, stereotypes, or in contexts where gender identity might be threatened in other ways (for example, by being asked to wear frilly pink dresses, which will be declined not only by 5-year-old boys with strong gender stereotypes but by a majority of males in most other age groups). We still have much to understand about how children come to understand gender roles in society, but finding out more holds enticing prospects of improving our accounts of how developing human beings mediate the complex relations between biology and social structure.

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  Psychology of Personality

  Viewpoints, Research, and Applications

  • Bernardo J. Carducci(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  In addition to cognitive processes, the degree to which other underly- ing motivation and external social and cultural factors contribute to gendered development and the expres- sion of gendered behavior has been raised (Bandura & Bussey, 2004). Integrating the Psychological Processes: Bringing Them All Together Although each of these three general explanations—the psychoanalytic, social-cognitive, and gender schema—have been discussed separately, gender identity, like so many other psychological processes, rarely operates individually. Instead, these processes tend to operate in conjunction with each other by focusing on a principal set of psychological process. That is, identifying with specific models helps the individual to focus his or her attention on certain attitudes and behaviors. Based on gender schemas, these attitudes and behaviors are organized along social roles, based on the skills necessary to perform them, and categorized according to gender, which makes them easier to organize, remember, and reproduce later. Receiving rewards or observing similar others receiving rewards makes the likelihood of expressing these attitudes or performing these behaviors much more likely. Thus, while each explanation emphasizes a slightly different psychological process, it is possible to integrate them. Social Role Theory: A Hierarchy of Role Distribution and the Consequences for Gender It Creates As is true for social-cognitive theory, in social role the- ory the processes of observation and sex differences are critical to the development gendered behavior and gender identity (Eagly, Wood, & Johannesen-Schmidt, 2004b). And, like cognitive theories, social role theory also considers the beliefs that people have about the classification of behavior along gendered lines (Eagly et al., 2004).

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  Growing Points in Developmental Science

  An Introduction

  • Willard W. Hartup, Rainer K. Silbereisen(Authors)
  • 2005(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  selective imitation, such that boys would adopt behaviour depicted by male models, or adapt their own behaviour according to the reinforcement patterns they saw being provided for male, rather than female, children. At the least, this required that children would know their own gender and that of the people whom they observed. Then too, it required that children should be able to summarise and generalise from multiple exemplars, and deal with exceptions. In addition, it called for some motivation to adopt the behaviour patterns of people who are “the same as me” with respect to gender. Clearly, the theory called for the extensive incorporation of cognitive elements in gender development.

  THE COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE

  In the 1970s and 1980s, there was a strong surge of interest in gender cognitions. Although a cognitive perspective on developmental processes had been strongly anticipated in Europe for many decades, it was the “cognitive revolution” that took place in American psychology beginning in the 1960s that set the stage for an active revision of American views about child development. Children were increasingly seen not as passive recipients of socialisation pressures, but as active selectors and users of information pertinent to their developmental levels and personal goals. And children began to be seen as developing the capacity to adopt standards, and regulate their own behaviour in conformity to these standards, thus contributing to their own socialisation.

  Vast amounts of information are available to children concerning the way gender is enacted in the world around them. In the 1970s and 1980s, and continuing into the 1990s, research focused heavily on how children acquire knowledge and develop stereotypes and scripts concerning what is usual, or considered “appropriate”, for people of the two sexes. (See Ruble & Martin, 1998, for a review.) It became evident that gender is a highly salient category for children, perhaps because it is neatly binary, because it is so heavily culturally emphasised, and because socially ascribed sex and biological sex are so completely redundant. The distinction, in other words, is easy to make, and there is good evidence that children do indeed make it very early in life. Gender categories, once applied, have been shown to be a convenient hook on which children can easily hang stereotypes about gender attributes (Gelman, Coleman, & Maccoby, 1986) and assimilate new incoming information to these stereotypes. Gender schema theories introduced in the early 1980s held that children form cognitive structures that organise their gender knowledge into a set of expectations that guide and organise their social perceptions (Bern, 1981; Martin & Halverson, 1981).

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  Our Voices

  Psychology of Women

  • Elizabeth A. Rider(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Cognitive-developmental theory is not particularly concerned with cul- tural differences. Cognitive developmentalists assume that understanding gender depends on children’s cognitive processing of information as well as their ability to categorize themselves and others as male or female. They as- sume this process operates across differences related to ethnic and social backgrounds. Once again, though, this has not been empirically established. CRITIQUE: HOW WELL DO THE THEORIES DO? ❘ 85 Of the theories they eval- uated, Reid and colleagues believe that gen-der schema theory offers the best hope for understanding the process of gender typing in children of various ethnic and social class backgrounds. Gender schema theory integrates the individ- ual’s cognitive understanding of gender from cognitive-de- velopmental theory with the available social models and expectations of gender from social-learning theory. Gen- der schema theory explicitly acknowledges that culture, as well as individual family differences, influences chil- dren’s interpretation of gen- der. Katz (1987) described how gender schemats can be influenced by family vari- ables, including socioeco- nomic level and ethnicity. For example, African American families often present more egalitarian gender models to their children, which is re- flected in the children’s understanding of their roles. Katz also points to the need for further research to clarify the relationship between ethnicity and gender roles. Social-role theory also accounts for gender development of girls from different cultural backgrounds. Accordingly, the social roles we adopt or are placed into affect our beliefs and behaviors and affect how others perceive us. Women of minority groups often assume different roles in society than white, middle-class women. These roles influence how they think and behave as well as how others perceive them.

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  Gender Development

  • Judith E. Owen Blakemore, Sheri A. Berenbaum, Lynn S. Liben(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  1966 , p. 82). This statement is as interesting for what it denies (biology and culture) as it is for what it offers (cognition) because it reflects Kohlberg’s felt need to reject the prevailing notion that the origins of gender outcomes can be attributed to the “interaction between biological givens and cultural values” (p. 82). For Kohlberg—as for Piaget from whom Kohlberg drew his fundamental theoretical premises—the self actively selects from, organizes, and transforms the “aliment” (the metaphorical food or material) that is available in both the physical and social worlds. Again, this position does not deny that both biology and culture have important roles in gender development. But it places the child’s own cognitive processes in the driver’s seat for determining how gender development progresses.

  Thus, Kohlberg’s theory, like Bandura’s social cognitive theory, stresses the role of cognition. There are, however, two ways in which the treatment of “cognition” differs dramatically between them. The first concerns the origins of cognitions, and the second concerns the mechanisms by which those cognitions evolve.

  With respect to origins, for Bandura, cognitions are primarily internal consequences of prior experiences. For example, cognitions might be stored symbolic representations of previously witnessed events (such as how a same-sex model acted with a Bobo doll), or might be rules that have been internalized from prior reinforcements and punishments (e.g., internalized “self-sanctions” developed from how others rewarded or punished the child’s gender “appropriate” vs. “inappropriate” behavior). In contrast, for Kohlberg (1966 ), cognitions are the product of self-driven processes: “In regard to sex-role, these

  schemata

  that bind events together include concepts of the body, the physical and social world, and general categories of relationship (causality, substantiality, quantity, time, space, logical identity, and inclusion)” (p. 83). In Kohlberg’s view, then, children develop gender-related beliefs and behaviors as the result of using their own basic conceptions about the world (including those concerning their own and others’ bodies). “Learning is cognitive in the sense that it is selective and internally organized by relational schemata rather than directly reflecting associations of events in the outer world” (Kohlberg, 1966 , p. 83).

  The two theories also differ with respect to change, that is, with respect to what behaviors or concepts evolve over the life course. Social cognitive theory, like learning theory on which it is founded, begins from the position that there is stability or a steady state, and that change occurs as the result of newly encountered experiences or events that are imposed from the outside. Positions like these fall into the category of

  mechanistic theories

  (Overton, 1984 ). These are theories in which machines serve as the metaphor for human development: machines change only as a consequence of the application of an external force. In contrast, cognitive-developmental theory takes movement or change as a given, that is, as something that is entailed in the very nature of the individual. Positions like these fall into the category of

  organismic theories

  (Overton, 1984

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  Gender in Childhood

  • Christia Spears Brown, Sharla D. Biefeld, Michelle J. Tam(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  For example, social learning theory originally asserted that external environmental influences were the main drivers of gender development (Mischel, 1966). Social learning theory argues that gender roles are learned through reinforcement, punishment, and modeling, such that children are rewarded and reinforced for behaving in concordance with gender roles and punished for breaking gender roles. In addition, social learning theory argues that children learn many of their gender roles by modeling the behaviors of adults and older children and, in doing so, develop ideas about what behaviors are appropriate for each gender. This emphasis on socialization is reflected in trends in gender research. In a 2011 analysis of gender development research in the journal Sex Roles, Zosuls and colleagues (2011) documented that most research on gender development in the 1960s and 1970s (at least, the research published in Sex Roles) concentrated on parents’ socialization of girls and boys through different expectations and attitudes toward their children. This approach was ultimately limited, however, because parent socialization practices could not fully explain the high degree of gender-stereotypical behaviors among children (Lytton & Romney, 1991). Newer theories incorporated children’ s own cognitive processes into learning from the environment. Social cognitive theory (Bussey & Bandura, 1999), for example, incorporates cognitive perspectives into social learning and asserts that children’ s conceptions of gender roles are the result of a broad network of social influences, which operate interdependently from one another in different contexts. The focus is on how children contribute to their own gender develop- ment through “agentic actions within the interrelated systems of influence” (Bussey & Bandura, 1999, p. 1). One way children seek out same-gender- consistent information, according to social cognitive theory, is by modeling relevant others (Bussey & Bandura, 1999).

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  The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Social Development

  • Peter K. Smith, Craig H. Hart, Peter K. Smith, Craig H. Hart(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Maccoby and Jacklin (1974) also examined the role of modeling in children’s development of sex-typed behavior and concluded that the imitation of same-sex parents does not play a major part in this process. They argued that boys did not closely resemble their fathers, or girls their mothers, which would be expected if children imitated their same-sex parent more than their other-sex parent. Moreover, in observational studies, children did not necessarily imitate adults of the same sex as themselves. It is no longer thought that children learn sex-typed behavior simply by imitating individual same-sex models. Instead, it seems that children learn which behaviors are considered appropriate for their sex by observing large numbers of males and females and by noticing which behaviors are performed frequently by each sex. Children then model the behaviors that they consider appropriate for their sex (Perry & Bussey, 1979).

  Children observe a wide variety of role models – not just their parents. Friends, in particular, appear to be important role models. As already discussed, school-aged boys and girls show a strong preference for same-sex peers (Maccoby, 1988). But it is gender stereotypes (widely held beliefs about the characteristics that are typical of males and females), rather than specific individuals, that seem to be most influential in the acquisition of sex-typed behavior. Gender stereotypes are pervasive in our society, and children are aware of these stereotypes from as early as 2 years of age (Martin, 1991; Signorella, Bigler, & Liben, 1993; Stern & Karraker, 1989).

  Cognitive theory

  For cognitive theorists, the role of parents is minor. A central tenet of this approach is that children play an active part in their own development; they seek out information about gender and socialize themselves as male or female. Parents are viewed as simply one source of gender-related information. Early studies of cognitive processes focused on children’s developing understanding of the concept of gender (see above). More recently, gender schema theorists have examined the way in which children organize knowledge about gender (Bem, 1981; Martin, 1989, 1991; Martin & Halverson, 1981). Gender schemata refer to organized bodies of knowledge about gender, and are functionally similar to gender stereotypes. Gender schemata influence the way in which we perceive and remember information about the world around us so that we pay greater attention to, and are more likely to remember, information that is in line with our gender schemata than opposing information.

  An important step in gender understanding occurs when children can categorize themselves as belonging to one gender or the other. From as early as 2 to 3 years, soon after they begin to consistently label themselves and others as male or female, children organize information according to gender. If told that a person is male or female, they will make gender-related inferences about that person’s behavior (Martin, 1989; Martin et al., 1990). For example, preschool children will say that boys like to play with cars and trains. Older children have a more complex understanding of gender and become more flexible in their understanding of gender stereotypes (Martin, 1993; Martin et al., 1990). Although they may know that boys in general like football, cars, and trains, and that girls in general prefer dolls and dressing up, they also come to understand there are many exceptions to the rule (Signorella et al., 1993). Thus, it seems that gender stereotypes are more strongly held by younger than by older children.

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  Handbook of Child Psychology and Developmental Science, Cognitive Processes

  • (Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Although children commonly use gender concepts to guide encoding and interpretation of information, some children demonstrate gender-typed behaviors (e.g., play preferences) before the acquisition of a gender concept. Although this point has been used to discount the validity of gender schema theory and cognitive-developmental theory (Bussey & Bandura, 1999), cognitive-developmental and gender schema theorists do not consider this problematic because they acknowledge that no single process or factor accounts for every facet of gender development (Martin et al., 2002). Consistent with this idea, allowing for both automatic and deliberate cognitive processes helps to explain more fully how cognitions influence gender development.

  Automatic cognitive processes can result from priming, conditioned associations, and habits. First, when the salience of gender is primed in the environment, children are more likely to use gender stereotypes to interpret events (see Bigler & Liben, 2006). Second, when certain attributes (e.g., traits, activities, roles) are repeatedly paired with a particular gender, children form semantic associations linking gender with the attributes. Positive or negative associations may be made if these associations additionally coincide with social approval and personal enjoyment or with social sanctions and displeasure, respectively. Third, when children themselves repeat certain actions, they can become scripts (e.g., Levy & Fivush, 1993) or procedural memories that are automatically engaged when prompted.

  The influence of automatic processing is further implicated in studies illustrating ways that children's gender schemas can bias information processing. For example, studies find children tend to distort their memories of previously observed counter-stereotypical events by recalling them as stereotypical (e.g., Martin & Halverson, 1983).

  As explained earlier, people's explicit and implicit gender beliefs sometimes differ (see Greenwald et al., 2002). For example, a person may consciously express nonstereotypical views when explicit measures are used, but the same person may demonstrate evidence of automatic gender stereotyping when implicit measures are applied. In one study, when school-age children's explicit and implicit gender stereotypes about math ability were assessed, some children who explicitly viewed girls and boys as equal in math ability additionally demonstrated implicit gender stereotypes associating math more with boys than girls (Cvencek, Meltzoff, & Greenwald, 2011). These findings imply that some persons may unconsciously internalize cultural gender stereotypes through repeated exposure despite consciously rejecting them.

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  Sex and Gender

  A Biopsychological Approach

  • Heidi R. Riggio(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  gender-incongruent behavior is still punished and condemned in many cultures, experiences that are clearly meaningful for ideas and feelings about the self. In this way, questions about gender identity and the sociocultural construction of gender are necessarily intertwined. This is perhaps why there are multiple theories describing one or the other or both; how gender identity is formed, how social constructions of gender arise, or how social constructions of gender influence gender identity content and formation.

  Evolutionary psychology provides one perspective, emphasizing how individual gender identity and ideas and norms about gender enhance ability of humans to survive and reproduce. Many other explanations are offered, with different theories providing insight into and explanation of how gender identity and sociocultural ideas about gender develop and how they influence individual and group behavior. Why are there so many explanations, with not one single theory necessarily standing out as the best and most comprehensive? As with most human behaviors, the development and experience of gender identity is complex; it is linked with genetic processes, physiological and hormonal processes, in utero events, socialization, family experiences in early childhood, exposure to various media, experiences with developing sexuality, and so on. It influences individual self-concept, self-esteem, feelings of belonging and well-being, lifestyle, relationships, career pursuits, and many other important psychological and social outcomes. How about ideas that societies and cultures develop to explain what it means to be female, or what it means to be male? Gender as a social construction, as an ideology involving traditions, expectations, and norms for behavior, is extremely complex in trying to observe, understand, and explain. Because of the complexity involved in human behavior, sometimes there are various complementary and competing explanations for particular phenomena. As such, there are various theoretical approaches one can use in attempting to explain individual and social constructions of gender. This chapter will present prominent, important, and “good” theories of gender.

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  Gender

  Sociological Perspectives

  • Linda L. Lindsey(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  It generally views early childhood as rigid in gender stereotyping, setting the path for continued gender intensifica-tion. Adolescents, especially girls, however, are more flexible and less stereotyped in many gender-related activities and choices. Girls are allowed, and frequently encouraged, to cross gender barriers in behavior. Cues shift as contexts change. Gender is assumed to be the core schema, but it competes with race, ethnicity, sexuality, and age schemas, for example, as children move between settings. These schemas crosscut and intersect with gender schemas as guides to behavior. Primary socialization of childhood masks the continuing socialization throughout life that displaces gender schemas (Causadias and Cicchetti, 2018; Knight et al., 2018; Oleschuk, 2019). Gender stereotypes may be in place by adulthood, but they tend to weaken—not intensify—over time. Social Cognitive Theory Social cognitive theory (SCT) taps into the other theories to help understand how chil-dren actively choose their gender roles (a key element in cognitive development and gender schema theories) and how much imitation and reinforcement are needed for gender roles to be learned (a key element in social learning theory). It also stresses the continuous develop-ment of gender learning over time to account for their unique experiences in the life course (Halimi et al., 2016). As articulated by Albert Bandura, a prominent name in social learn-ing theory, a social cognitive approach to gender socialization highlights rapidly expanding knowledge from observations, self-regulation of behavior once knowledge is gained, and the Gender Development: The Socialization Process 109 reflection of the behavior (Bandura and Bussey, 2004). Like social learning theory, Bandu-ra’s social cognitive theory emphasizes role models as guides to behavior. SCT additionally accounts for a child’s expectations for outcome.

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  Cognition and Sex Differences

  • Colin Hamilton(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  A recently constructed model of sex differences by Halpern (1992) indi-cates how an interaction explanation could account for cognitive differences between women and men. At the core of this model is cerebral organization, a key factor underpinning cognitive ability. This neural organization is influ-enced by both the genetic characteristics and the differential life experiences of the individual. The model therefore strongly advocates a consideration of interaction processes in neural development. However, one would have expected to see bidirectional arrows between differential life experiences and sex role stereotypes and expectations, as a strongly gendered culture might be expected to constrain an individual’s life experience. More importantly the model really looks at cognitive abilities rather than cognitive processes such as perception, attention and memory. Thus it adopts the conventional approach to the explanation of individual differences between women and men; that is the model emphasizes similarities and differences in task per-formance or abilities rather than similarities and differences in cognitive processes. An Example of Research Within an Interactionist Framework: The Work of Casey In a review of her research programme Casey (1996) identified two theoreti-cal developmental frameworks within which to consider nature–nurture Synapses per neurone Young old High Low Relative age Relative age Young old a. Experience-expectant b. Experience-dependent Figure 11.2 Variance in experience-expectant and experience-dependent neural processes as a function of individual differences A n I n t e r a c t i o n i s t A p p r o a c h 215 issues in individual differences. Drawing from the earlier research Casey considered not only a biological–environmental interaction frame but also the notion of biological-environmental correlations.

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  Child Psychology

  A Canadian Perspective

  • Alastair Younger, Scott A. Adler, Ross Vasta(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  The process of self-socialization requires a good deal of knowledge about gender and related attributes. What children know about gender and when they know it is the focus of the next section. Some studies have shown that young children adapt their toy preferences to win approval from peers. (Banana Stock/Media Bakery) Understand how society, parents, peers, and the self contribute to gender-role socialization. 1. How can gender-role development be viewed as a process of socialization? 2. What roles do parents play in the socialization of gender? 3. How do peers and self contribute to gender-role development? LEARNING OBJECTIVE 16.4 644 Chapter 16 – Gender-Role Development and Sex Differences UNDERSTANDING GENDER ROLES AND STEREOTYPES We have reviewed considerable evidence that socialization processes are involved in sex typing. In this section, we turn to the cognitive processes that influence gender-role development. Of par- ticular interest is the developing child’s increasing understanding of gender roles and stereotypes. THE DEVELOPMENT OF GENDER IDENTITY We have already mentioned Kohlberg’s (1966) stage model of gender constancy, which includes gender identity (“I am a boy/girl”), gender stability (“I will grow up to be a man/woman”), and gender consistency (“I cannot change my sex”) (Martin et al., 2002; Ruble et al., 2007). Data from a number of studies have confirmed this theoretical progression. By 3 years of age, almost all chil- dren display gender identity. Gender stability follows around 4 years of age, and gender consistency around age 5. Children have a full understanding of gender constancy at around 6 years of age (Halim & Ruble, 2010). Males and females progress through these stages at approximately the same rate (Bem, 1989; Fagot, 1985; Martin & Little, 1990).

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