In this class we are going to discuss another psychological approach to explaining gender,
social learning theory. I imagine you are familiar with the basic principles SLT
and we will cover what you need for gender here,
but if you want a slightly deeper look at some of the key principles, or just a reminder,
you can check out the social learning theory video in the approaches unit.
The specification also asks us in this area to consider the impact of culture
and media on gender, so we will look at some additional studies so we can
answer those questions directly. So, is gender learnt from those around us? Let’s find out.
Social Learning theory
Social learning theory is a combination of cognitive and behaviourist ideas,
its main idea is we learn our behaviour through experience with the world,
and this of course will include behaviour that is gendered.
The process of socialisation is when children learn the norms and values of a society,
these vary depending on the culture they belong to, and they learn to imitate members
of the culture by seeing those people being rewarded in some way for gendered behaviour.
So, a female child may see an older girl praised for completing housework
or playing quietly, while a male child may see an older boy get praised for helping with DIY or
taking part in a competitive and aggressive sport. These younger children experience
vicarious reinforcement and are likely to want to imitate the behaviour they have seen.
The fact that in society different behaviours are reward depending on the sex of the individual
is called differential reinforcement.
In social learning theory we consider role models, those older children are
role models for the younger children, and they are likely to be siblings, but role
models could also be friends or parents. These real-life role models are called live models.
But importantly we also have symbolic models, these are people in the media,
so storybook characters, and TV and film characters.
If they are live or symbolic these models are more likely to be imitated if the individual
identifies with them, sees the model as like them, so that is factors like gender and age.
As this is social learning theory, behaviour, including gendered behaviour is only going to
be imitated if the individual performs the mediational processes of attention,
they have to see the gendered behaviour happen, retention, they need to remember the gendered
behaviour, reproduction, they have to think they are capable of performing the gendered behaviour
and they need to have the motivation to reproduce the gendered behaviour, such as having seen
someone else rewarded for that behaviour and are hoping for the reward themselves.
Now you can think of any gendered behaviour and plug it into this process.
SLT research Evaluations
Our first research evaluation is a really clever study that examined if differential reinforcement
is real. Smith and Lloyd got 32 mothers who had recently had their first child to be participants
and told them they were doing a study investigating play.
They then introduced them to a stranger's 6-month-old baby
and asked them simply to play with the baby for 10 minutes in a room with a selection of
toys. The researchers recorded the participant playing with the baby from a hidden camera.
Now the babies used were either biologically male or female, and they were either given
sex appropriate names and clothes or they were given crossed sex names and clothes.
So, half the time the mothers were playing with babies that were dressed and named in a way
that made them think they were the opposite sex. I think you can guess what the researchers found.
When measuring first toy choice the masculine squeaky hammer toy was
only ever given to the babies dressed as males,
and the feminine doll was only given as first toy choice to the babies dressed as females. So,
the infants are being encouraged immediately to play with gender appropriate toys.
Not only that, but the researchers assessed how the babies were encouraged in their play,
and what they found was the babies dressed as boys were given significantly more encouragement
for large physical actions like attempting to crawl or walk,
showing even as infants boys are encouraged to be more athletic and be confident in taking risks.
So pretty good evidence there of differential reinforcement,
the mother’s play style being shaped by their gendered stereotypes.
Now I’ve said that identification is more likely if you are the same gender
but growing up siblings are going to be a massive role model because of
the similarity in age and the likelihood of seeing them rewarded and punished by parents.
Well, what if that an older sibling the opposite sex to you,
will seeing them rewarded and punished for their gendered behaviour alter your gender
development. Another study by Rust looked at the influence of sibling role models.
Gendered behaviour was assessed in five and a half thousand 3-year-old children,
over 2000 of these children had one older sibling,
half the same sex, half the opposite sex, and over 3000 had no siblings.
Analysis of this data revealed that if you had an older brother,
you were likely to show more masculine behaviour yourself if you were a boy or a girl. If you had
an older sister, you were more likely to show more feminine behaviour if you were a boy.
Now this is correlational research so there may be other factors that explain this finding,
but it is in line with social learning theories' suggestion that children will observe
and imitate their sibling’s behaviour, potentially picking up cross sexed gendered behaviour.
Culture and media
We may need to answer questions specifically about culture and the media's role
in influencing gender roles, and we have already hinted at some things.
But let’s add to this, the gender stereotypes we see
in each culture do vary, the socialisation that is performed by peers, teachers and parents,
so the society, depends on the culture you are living in.
This means each culture's exact gender stereotypes are distinct and get passed down each generation.
We have already mentioned that symbolic models are what we see in the media. But the role of
the media in people's lives and shaping values is thought to be pretty big. If normative gender
roles are displayed as attractive, then we are likely going to want to imitate them,
and if you think about it, what happens in movies, especially aimed at kids?
Often the pretty princess is rewarded by being saved by a prince and living happily ever after
in a castle, the strong male superhero uses justified violence to save the day and is
praised by society. Is watching this content from an early age teaching little girls the
most important thing is to focus on fitting a beauty standard and being dependent on males,
while telling little boys that it's justifiable to use aggressive violence to solve your problems
and people around you will be grateful?
We can add to this that that media varies between cultures,
and is often a reflection, and reinforcement of that culture's ideals.
Culture and media research Evaluations
So, we are likely going to need some evaluations of culture and medias role in gender development.
The classic research in this area is by Margret Mead. in the 1930’s her work with
tribal communities around the world gave a view into groups of people whose cultures had
developed in isolation. In New guinea three communities had very unusual gender roles.
In the Mundugumor tribe both genders were highly aggressive and competitive, traits usually
associated with masculinity. The Arapesh had males and females showing feminine caring behaviour.
The Tchambuli people had completely reversed gender roles.
This culture expected females to show leadership and dominance
while males were passive, emotional and were responsible for child rearing.
The fact that human communities can vary so radically
suggests that gender roles are a product of culture and not a fundamental biological process.
Now these next points are about the media’s role in gender development,
but you will notice you can also adapt them to use in a
question about social learning theory or culture depending on your emphasis.
Adverts are a pretty distinctive feature of television media,
and they are about persuasion, persuading you to buy something.
Furnham and Mak collected studies from 11 countries that assessed how sex roles were
stereotyped in the adverts in that country. Now they were careful to pick countries from
across the world, the sample included the UK, Kenya, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Mexico.
Even though these adverts were from very different cultures they found some pretty clear patterns.
Women tended to be shown in dependant roles so a parent or spouse, they were more likely to be
shown in the home and as the user of a product. Men on the other hand were shown in professional
roles, they were more likely than women to be shown in locations outside of the home
and they were more likely to be the authority on the product.
What this suggests is across cultures, gender roles are shown very stereotypically in the media
and may possibly be reinforcing those gender roles by proving symbolic models.
Now an example of psychological research being
influential in the real world is in 2008 the European parliament,
concerned by the potential effects of gender stereotyping in the media, passed a resolution.
They said as the evidence suggests that gender stereotypes in the media reinforce
narrow gender roles and reduce life choices, especially for women. The resolution requested
that member states avoid stereotypical portrayals of males and females on TV.
An interesting counter study by Eisend, the researcher gathered 64 studies on gender
stereotyping in ads. And did find that gender roles were highly stereotypical.
But the data also indicated that ads were getting less stereotypical,
and the reduction in stereotyping was due to changes in the society the adverts were
shown. The researcher argues that this means gender stereotypes in the media simply mirror
the stereotypes in the culture, they don't mould the stereotypes through social learning.
General evaluations.
One significant criticism of social learning theory is when we try to apply the ideas to
examples of A-typical gender development. Many people experience their gender identity
not matching the sex they were assigned at infancy,
society’s response can result in significant distress leading to gender dysphoria.
So as social pressures punish people who don't conform to gender normative behaviour,
and constantly shows gender normative behaviour as rewarding,
social learning theory struggles to explain exactly why people would continue to show
cross sex gendered behaviour. The fact that people do display A-typical gender development
despite social pressure may be better explained by a biological explanation for gender.
While Mead’s research did show some unusual examples of gender roles, these are exceptionally
rare and may have been influenced by researcher bias. There are very few examples of societies
where the normative gender roles are not males are more competitive and aggressive and females
are more cooperative and caring. As so many cultures around the world show this pattern
it suggests there is a biological element to some fundamental behavioural differences,
these can be explained by evolutionary pressures in which men compete amongst each other for mates
and females are responsible for early child rearing.
Psychological understanding of how social learning processes can result in
reinforcement of harmful gender narratives can lead to interventions. For example,
making visible in the media positive role models of female mathematicians and scientists
as well as caring males who take an active role in childcare and housework.
The gender roles in modern culture are becoming less strict than traditional society,
for example the use of gender neutral toys, the encouragement of girls into
STEM courses, and the depictions of female and male roles in TV and films, you have
likely noticed children movies by Disney are now showing women as far more empowered.
The fact that culture’s gender roles can change so dramatically within a generation
suggests that gender is socially constructed and transmitted through socialisation not biology.
But while social learning theory fits better with the fact gender roles have changed, as it suggests
gender isn't an essential biological process. It doesn't really explain how they have changed.
Social learning theory explains how gender roles are maintained over time,
people in a culture see gender normative behaviour rewarded so it's reinforced. This in theory should
mean gender roles stay the same over time, as anyone who deviates is punished by disapproval,
and everyone else learns through various reinforcement to behave in a gender normative way.
Once new gendered behaviour becomes acceptable social learning theory
can explain how people can then adopt the new way of behaving,
but new gender normative behaviour has to become acceptable first.
Answering the question of what ended traditional gender roles is an interesting question,
but would likely move us out of psychology and into politics.
But one question you should be able to answer now is this from 2018. Give it a go,
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In them I will talk you through a model answer for the exam questions,
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exams, and I will see you in the next psych boost video. Atypical gender development.