Gender Schema Theory

Ingroup and Outgroup

Once children understand that they are one sex and not the other, they begin to develop ingroup and outgroup schemas.

Once these schemas have developed, they can provide a basis for interpreting the environment and children can concentrate on learning, which activities are more appropriate for their gender, showing ingroup favouritism and outgroup discrimination.

They therefore develop fixed gender attitudes, ignoring any information that is not consistent with ingroup information. Over time, children's self-perceptions become sex tuped.

Ingroup: The groups with which a person identifies, if a girl, ingroup is girls

Outgroup: The opposite group to the group within which a person identifies, if a girl, outgroup is boys

Experiences are then assimilated i.e. the use of current understanding of the world (schemas) to interpret new things they encounter, in this case it means they avoid outgroup behaviours and actively seek out ingroup activities.

Differences from Kohlberg's

Peer Relations

• Process of acquiring gender-relevant information occurs before gender constancy is acheived - basic gender identity/labelling is sufficient for a child to identify themselves as male/female and to take interest in gender appropriate behaviour
• M+H go further than Kohlberg- suggesting how the acquisition of schema affects later behaviour especially in terms of memory and attention for gender-related information.

Children show a preference for same-sex playmates and for gender-stereotyped activities, actively ignoring the other gender.

• Play with other children leads children to believe that all girls share the same interests, and all boys share the same interests - causes them to avoid children of the opposite sex as 'they are not like me' and therefore less fun to play with.
• Children also develop knowledge of the potential consequences associated with different social relationships, they may come to realise that their peers will tease them if they play with members of the opposite sex and so avoid this type of interaction.

Gender schemas therefore influence children's likelihood of developing social relationships with same and opposite sex peers.

Martin and Halverson

Society's beliefs about the traits of men and women GENDER SCHEMA (influences processing of social information and self-esteem - only behaviour/attitudes consistent with gender schema are acceptable)

Suggested that once children have a basic gender identity (at about 2-3 years), they look increasingly to their environment for information about the sexes to enrich their gender schemas.

Developmental changes

Preschoolers: Children learn distinctions between what kinds of activities/behaviours go with each gender through observation of other children and through reinforcement received through parents.They also learn 'gender scripts' (sequences of events that go with each gender) e.g. women cooking dinner and men building the house.

Gender Schema Theory

Martin and Halverson

4-6 years olds: Children learn subtle and complex sets of associations for their own gender - what children of the same gender like and do not like, how they play, how they talk, what kinds of people they spend time with etc.

5-8 years old: When gender constancy develops, children's understanding of 'what people like me do' becomes elaborated. This 'rule' is treated as absolute.

8-10 years old: Children start to develop schema of the opposite gender that matches the complexity of their own ingroup gender schema.

Late childhood/early adolescence: Understood that 'rules' are just social conventions and as a consequence gender role schemas become more flexible. Teenagers abandon teh automatic assumption that what their own gender does is preferable and a significant amount (minority) of teenagers define themselves as transgender or androgynous.

Schemas

Schema: a mental representation of an aspect of the world (a cluster of related items that together represent a concept and can generate inferences and expectations).

Children acquire gender schemas from their interactions with others, as well as TV, books and toys etc. These schemas begin to develop at about 2-3 years. According to GST, the acquistion of a male or female schemas is the prime mechanism by which gender roles are learnt and maintained.

Like SLT, this theory assumes that children learn 'appropriate' patterns of behaviour by observation, but, it is not a passive social learning process, instead GST assumes the children's active cognitive processing of information also contributes to sex typing.

Research Evidence

Evaluation

+ GST explains why children's attitudes/behaviour concerning gender are rigid and lasting. Children focus only on things that confirm/strengthen their schemas, ignoring behavioural inconsistencies that contradict their in-group schema.

Martin and Little measured understanding of gender concept and stereotyped knowledge in children aged 3-5 years. They found that these children had a very rudimentary understanding of gender, yet had strong gender stereotypes about what girls and boys were permitted to do.

Children pay gretaer attention to information consistent with their ingroup schema and remember this better (Martin and Halverson). Found that hwen children were asked to recall pictures of people, children under 6 recalled more of the gender consistent ones than gender inconsistent ones. This suggests that information in-keeping with a schema is remebered whereas information inconsistent with the schema may be ignored.

- Research suggests that children's stereotypes about gender roles are not as fixed and resistant to change as GST would predict. For example, Hoffman found that children with mothers who worked had less stereotyped views of what men do, suggesting that children are not entirely fixed in their views but can be receptive to some gender inconsistent ones too.

- GST could be criticised for being reductionist. Although it offers a plausible compromise between social learning and cognitive developmental theories, it rejects the influence of biological factors, assuming that all gender orientated bbehaviour is created through cognitive means (when in fact it may be the case that brain differences, hormones etc. play a part.

- Some studies show that children act in a gender typical way before they develop gender schemas. Research by Eisenberg et al. found that children aged 3-4 justified their gender specific choice of boys without reference to gender stereotypes (indicating a lack of schema). This suggests that there is some biological basis to gender specific behaviour.