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Comparing Prescriptive and Descriptive Gender Stereotypes About Children, Adults, and the Elderly.

ABSTRACT: Gender stereotypes have descriptive components, or beliefs about how males and females typically act, as well as prescriptive components, or beliefs about how males and females should act. For example, women are supposed to be nurturing and avoid dominance, and men are supposed to be agentic and avoid weakness. However, it is not clear whether people hold prescriptive gender stereotypes about children of different age groups. In addition, research has not addressed prescriptive gender stereotypes for the elderly. The current research measured prescriptive gender stereotypes for children, adults, and elderly men and women in 3 studies to (a) compare how prescriptive gender stereotypes change across age groups and (b) address whether stereotypes of males are more restrictive than stereotypes of females. Students (Studies 1 and 2) and community members (Study 3), which were all U.S. and majority White samples, rated how desirable it was for different target groups to possess a list of characteristics from 1 (very undesirable) to 9 (very desirable). The target age groups included toddlers, elementary-aged, adolescent, young adult, adult, and elderly males and females. The list of 21 characteristics was created to encompass traits and behaviors relevant across a wide age range. In a meta-analysis across studies, prescriptive stereotypes were defined as characteristics displaying a sex difference of d > 0.40 and an average rating as desirable for positive prescriptive stereotypes (PPS) or undesirable for negative proscriptive stereotypes (NPS) for male or females of each age group. Results replicated previous research on prescriptive stereotypes for adults: Women should be communal and avoid being dominant. Men should be agentic, independent, masculine in appearance, and interested in science and technology, but avoid being weak, emotional, shy, and feminine in appearance. Stereotypes of boys and girls from elementary-aged to young adults still included these components, but stereotypes of toddlers involved mainly physical appearance and play behaviors. Prescriptive stereotypes of elderly men and women were weaker. Overall, boys and men had more restrictive prescriptive stereotypes than girls and women in terms of strength and number. These findings demonstrate the applicability of prescriptive stereotypes to different age groups.

SUBMITTER: Koenig AM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6028777 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Comparing Prescriptive and Descriptive Gender Stereotypes About Children, Adults, and the Elderly.

Koenig Anne M AM

Frontiers in psychology 20180626

Gender stereotypes have descriptive components, or beliefs about how males and females typically act, as well as prescriptive components, or beliefs about how males and females should act. For example, women are supposed to be nurturing and avoid dominance, and men are supposed to be agentic and avoid weakness. However, it is not clear whether people hold prescriptive gender stereotypes about children of different age groups. In addition, research has not addressed prescriptive gender stereotype ...[more]

PMID: 29997558

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Project description:Modern societies increasingly show more egalitarian attitudes related to sexism and gender equality. However, there is still an important gender gap in wages and professions as well as in expectations surrounding male and female characteristics. Developmental studies carried out from an ecological perspective confirm that these influences come from the closest environments (mainly family and school) but also from more distant systems such as media or cultural values. As children are socialized in these norms and values, they increasingly internalize those schemes and use them to judge others, to choose friends and playmates, and to construct expectations of them. On this basis, the aim of this study was to examine the degree of gender bias internalization in a group of Spanish children. Two tasks were applied to a group of 149 public school boys and girls (aged 4-9 years). Results showed that, already from an early age, the participants had internalized traditional gender roles, especially when asked to assign masculine attributes. Moreover, group differences were found given that boys seemed to be more aware of expectations surrounding masculinity and girls assigned the attributes associated with femininity to women more often than boys. Furthermore, a developmental pattern similar to one obtained in previous studies was observed. Younger children already apply gender roles as part of their increasing acquisition of knowledge in the social field, but there is a big increase in the strength of this bias as they grow older. Psychological and educational implications of these findings are discussed, especially considering that the male gender role seems to be more rigid and less malleable. In this regard, developmental and environmental studies should be considered when designing early intervention programs to reduce sexism and to promote equity in schools and families. As research has already shown what type of environments affect children's acquisition of traditional gender roles, society must make an effort to promote more egalitarian environments that will serve as protective factors in their future psychological, social and professional development.

Dataset Information

Comparing Prescriptive and Descriptive Gender Stereotypes About Children, Adults, and the Elderly.

Publications

Comparing Prescriptive and Descriptive Gender Stereotypes About Children, Adults, and the Elderly.

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