We are now moving on the psychological theories of gender development, and the
first is cognitive. Cognitive psychology is all about how information is mentally processed,
so is our experience of our own gender, and our expectations of other people's gendered behaviour
not a biological inevitability, but simply due to the development of certain schemas and not others?
Before I discuss the two cognitive theories, we need to understand that
both of these cognitive theories think gender development happens
actively. This means as children process information, and as they mature, they are
more able to mentally consider what gender is, and they want to interact with the world
to develop expectations of how gender applies to them and the people around them.
So, children’s ideas on gender are influenced in this process by the experiences they have had
as they grow up as well as their intellectual development as they mature.
Using this definition we would call cognitive theories active processes, a way to separate
this from social learning theory is we would say the process of learning gender via observation
is a more passive process of simply responding to external events, or stimuli.
Kohlberg’s theory
Kohlberg's theory of gender is one of maturing through three stages.
As the child grows up their brain develops, and they are socialised. They also become
less egocentric, meaning they stop thinking in terms of only their perspective, they realise
that other people have different experiences and viewpoints. Different children do cognitively
develop at different ages, but according to Kohlberg they should follow this pattern.
In the first gender identity and labelling stage which happens in between two to three
years old children are only able to simply identify themselves as a boy or girl,
they can also label other people's gender identity,
but they are not aware that their gender or other people’s gender is a permanent state.
In the second gender stability stage around 4-5,
children start to become aware that their own gender is fixed over time and will start
to be confused by gendered appearance that is non-normative in the people around them.
Finally in the third gender consistency stage children over the age five is when
children will finally understand that people's gender is fixed over time
even despite physical changes like to hair and clothing.
Kohlberg argued that after children reach the consistency stage
they will then actively seek out and want to interact with
other children and adults of the same gender, only then will they imitate gendered behaviour,
developing an understanding of gender appropriate and inappropriate behaviour and roles.
Quick side note on the ages that children are thought to pass through Kohlberg’s stages.
Different sources give different approximate ages,
I can tell AQA are aware of this because in the mark scheme for a 2019 question
they say they will accept “approximate ages attached to Kohlberg’s stages”.
Evaluations of Kohlberg
So, to investigate if children after the consistency stage
do selectively attend to members of their own sex Slaby and Frey set up the following study,
they first conducted interviews with the children to asses thier stage of gender development.
Here are the actual questions and materials they used.
Now you don't need to memorise this, but its here if your interested, or in class
you could role play the interviews to get a better understanding of how this study was carried out.
After the interviews the researchers got the children to watch a film
on a movie screen. On the screen there were male and female models on
opposite sides of the screen, they carried out the same activities.
The children were placed close to the screen so they could only focus on one model at a time.
A researcher hidden behind a one-way mirror then recorded how long each child looked at each model.
Well, as predicted, children when interviewed did fall into the identity,
stability and consistency stages, with older children in the later stages.
And the children in the consistency stage spent longer looking at the same sex model,
but this effect was much stronger in the boys. This suggests children
do pass through the stages predicted by Kohlberg, and will selectively seek out and pay attention
to same sex models to learn social rules, what the researchers call self-socialisation.
# Gender Schema Theory
Our second cognitive theory is gender schema theory.
This was created by Martin and Halverson, hopefully you remember our definition of a schema,
they are packages of information about a concept that help us to navigate the world.
See the cognitive video in the approaches unit if you are feeling a little rusty on schemas.
So if we apply our knowledge of schemas to gender. Gender schemas are a mental representation,
a package, of stereotypically masculine and stereotypically feminine gendered behaviours.
Those schemas then both influence our own behaviour, keeping it inline with
our gender schema, and the type of behaviour we automatically expect from the people around us.
Gender schema theory suggests that children develop their gender schema
around the age of two or three, not over 5 years as suggested by Kohlberg.
Another important feature of gender schema theory is the presence of ingroups and outgroups.
The ingroup is the gender the child feels they belong to.
The theory suggests that’s children will develop a stronger understanding of their own gender
before developing an understanding of the opposite sex typed gender. Now this process
is reinforced by what adults do, giving certain toys and the language they use.
I'm not going to use the Smith and Lloyd study again here where adults gave gendered toys and
encouragement to infants depending on sex typed clothing, but you can see that as
part of developing a gender schema of what is and what isn't appropriate to play with.
# GST Evaluations
We have two research evaluations here, now you will notice I only
gave one for Kohlberg, because depending on how we write it,
we could use one of these if we needed to write a long essay on Kohlberg.
In the first Martin and Haverson conducted research to support their theory, in this study
5 and 6 year olds were shown drawings of males and females doing activities. In 8 of the pictures the
activity was sex consistent, so a male doing a masculine activity, and in the other 8 pictures
it was sex inconsistent, so a female doing a feminine activity, like sawing wood.
When asked about the pictures they had seen one week earlier, it was found that the children’s
recall tended to switch the sex of the person in the picture so it matched the activity.
The researchers argue this is evidence of the presence of gender schemas,
influencing the process of recall so recall matches gender stereotypes.
If you have done the memory unit, this study probably reminds a bit you of the work of Loftus,
and the theory is based on similar principles.
Another study by martin, this time with her colleague little,
looked at a difference in the predictions of Kohlberg’s theory and gender schema theory.
Remember, Kohlberg suggests its only children who have reached the consistency stage
that start to develop sex role gendered behaviour. While gender schema theory
suggests this can happen much earlier. So the researchers measured the stage of
gender development of children between the ages of 3 to five and a half,
actually with a slightly adapted version of the Slaby and Frey interview.
Then the researchers used a range of tasks to find out the children’s gendered toy preference,
understanding of sex appropriate clothing and willingness to play with a novel object
like a hole punch that the researcher said was “for boys” or for “girls”.
The results showed even the youngest children before the consistency stage
showed sex typed preferences and stereotypical gender knowledge.
Now finding the stages of gender does in part support Kohlberg, but this evidence suggests
that children don't need to reach gender consistency to perform gendered behaviour.
# General Evaluations
As a general evaluation in this area, we could suggest that showing gendered behaviour
may not be a psychological cognitive process of developing schemas, it may be innate, with males
and females having innate biological, instinctual drives. To support this idea, we can point to the
vast majority of the world's cultures having very similar stereotypical male and female behaviour.
Men tend to be more aggressive and competitive, and women are more cooperative and caring.
This would fit with evolutionary explanations of gender behaviour.
If schema creation was the explanation for gender behaviour,
we would expect to see greater variability in the schemas we have for male and female behaviour.
An interesting addition to this point is a study by Alexander and Hines who found sex toy
preferences in vervet monkeys, with the males preferring cars and females preferring dolls.
These monkeys had no prior experience with these toys and are not socialised in the same way as
humans. This suggests that gendered toy preference may not be due to the development of schemas,
but a result of biological instinctual processes
predisposing females to infant care. This study isn’t a fluke, after this study
similar results have been found with a number of primate species, so it does raise questions.
You can watch a YouTube clip of a TV demonstration here.
We can criticize many of the studies discussed due to their use of young children in their research.
Young children find it difficult to effectively communicate their ideas of gender and researchers
often have to depend on their own interpretation and inferences which can result in bias,
meaning we may not truly be able to trust data from gender research.
Now if we want to compare cognitive theories to other psychological theories
we can point to males showing stronger sex typing than girls. This can't really
be explained by Kohlberg’s theory, as he suggests it's the same process for both males and females.
But social learning theory and culture can explain this difference as there may be a
stronger social pressure on males to conform to gender ideals. Also Freud would suggest
males resolving the Oedipus complex is more formative than the female Electra experience.
But a final positive, cognitive theory does focus on internal mental processes,
not just a measurement of external behaviour. While this is difficult to measure objectively,
it makes sense to research cognition, how information is processed, as we are all aware
as humans that we do think about gender and the appropriateness of actions in relation to what we
think other people expect, and we see children's understanding of gender develop as they grow.
(content)
Here is a real gender exam question from 2019
on Kohlberg’s explanation for gender development. Give it a go see how you do.
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in the next psych boost video. The psychodynamic explanation of gender development.