Cultural sex-role expectations and children's sex-role concepts

Middle-class children between the ages of 4 and 8 were interviewed about their sex-role attitudes, in order to determine the extent to which recently changing cultural mores have influenced children's sex-role concepts. The children were asked about their career goals; the careers they would choose if they were the opposite sex; the reasons why they like being a boy or girl; and their opinions regarding the appropriateness of men and women participating in 14 sex-stereotypic occupations and activities. The children's parents provided demographic information. The children expressed very nonstereotypic attitudes towards the 14 occupations and activities, compared to children in recent studies; but they chose very traditional careers for their own choices and opposite-sex career choices, and often gave stereotypic reasons for preferring their own sex. Parents' education, mothers' employment status, fathers' nontraditional careers, and the children's gender predict responses to several of the sex-role-related questions. Implications for research are discussed.     

Sex-Typed instructions and sex-role preference in young children's task performance

Two measures of sex-role preference were administered to 32 male and 32 female preschool children. Each group of children was divided according to sex-role preference scores, assigned to a male experimenter or a female experimenter, and performed two sorting tasks after being instructed that one task was masculine and the other feminine. One analysis was based on the sex preference of subjects as measured by the IT Scale for Children and the other was based on subject assignment from Toy Preference Test scores. The hypothesis that sex-role preference would predict performance on sex-labeled tasks was partially confirmed. All subjects performed better on the female task than on the male task and more accurately on all tasks with a male experimenter than with a female experimenter.This report is based on a master's thesis submitted to the University of Guelph by the first author. Acknowledgments are due to MacDonald, Aladdin, Jack and Jill, Wee Y'rs, Cambridge, and Christopher House preschools in Guelph and Cambridge, Ontario, for their cooperation.     

'Fear of success' imagery as a reaction to sex-role inappropriate behavior

Cue effects on TAT imagery, often considered evidence of fear of success, were examined. The cue generally used to assess this motive (Horner, 1968) was modified to depict success in an occupation traditionally considered appropriate for females (ballet). This new cue and Horner's original "medical student"cue produced very different results in fear of success imagery, the modified cue eliciting significantly less of this imagery from females and more from males. A substantial portion of what has been interpreted as "fear of success" imagery appears to involve anxiety about engaging in achievement activities that have traditionally been considered inappropriate to one's sex-role. The implications of this finding for female achievement conflict are discussed.     

Nonsexist curricula,sex of teacher,and children's sex-role learning

This study examined the impact of nonsexist curricula and teacher's sex on children's sex role learning. Thirty-two boys and 32 girls, aged three to five, were equally divided among four programs: nonsexist curriculum, female director; nonsexist curriculum, male director; control curriculum, female director; and control curriculum, male director. Sex role discrimination and preference were measured at the beginning and end of a six-month period. Exposure to the nonsexist curriculum produced significantly greater reductions in sex stereotyping on all measures than exposure to the control curriculum. Moreover, children in the male-directed nonsexist program displayed greater decreases in stereotypic knowledge and preference for sex-typed children's activities than those in the female-directed nonsexist program, while children in the male-directed control program showed more stereotypic increases on these measures than their counterparts in the female-directed control program. Finally, children under the direction of an opposite-sex teacher exhibited less stereotypic changes in preference for adult activities than children under the direction of a same-sex teacher. Implications for early childhood programs are discussed.This research was partially supported by an Oregon State University Foundation grant from the Shell Foundation and a grant from the Milne Computer Center.     

The effect of appropriate and inappropriate stimulus color on odor discrimination

Color can strongly affect participants' self-report of an odor's qualities. In Experiment 1, we examined whether color influences a more objective measure of odor quality, discrimination. Odor pairs, presented in their appropriate color (e.g., strawberry and cherry in red water), an inappropriate color (e.g., strawberry and cherry in green water), or uncolored water were presented for discrimination. Participants made significantly more errors when odors were discriminated in an inappropriate color. In Experiment 2, the same design was utilized, but with an articulatory suppression task (AST), to examine whether the effect of color was mediated by identification or by a more direct effect on the percept. Here, the AST significantly improved discrimination for the inappropriate color condition, relative to Experiment 1. Although color does affect a more objective measure of odor quality, this is mediated by conceptual, rather than perceptual, means.     

Measures of play behavior: The influence of sex-role stereotyped children's books

Preschool children significantly more often chose a sex-stereotypic toy following exposure to a sex-stereotypic children's book. Conversely, boys and girls exposed to a nonstereotypic book significantly more often selected a nonstereotypic toy. Boys and girls individually played with stereotypic male, female, and neutral toys; each child was then read a sex-role stereotypic or nonstereotypic picture book; another play session followed. Measures of visual regard and manipulation were applied to the observed play behavior of 32 preschool children to determine the significance of the findings.     

Attributes and roles assigned to characters in children's writing: Sex differences and sex-role perceptions

This research examined the creative writing of 180 elementary school children for evidence of sex difference and sex-role perceptions. Stories were analyzed for frequency of male and female characters, attributes, and roles. Writers were equally divided by sex and into three age groups—grades 1–2, 3–4, and 5–6. Results suggest that the total number of characters, roles, and attributes was equivalent. However, the distribution of male and female characters, roles, and attributes differed with male and female writers. Female writers included significantly more female characters and assigned more attributes and roles to these characters. Nevertheless, in the stories of both male and female writers, there was a predominance of male characters and assignment of attributes and roles to male characters. The findings support the development and implementation of a nonsexist curriculum.     

The effects of sex-role taking on children's responses to aggressive conflict situations

The effects of sex-role taking on children's responses to aggressive conflict situations were investigated in the present study. Subjects were 40 boys and girls aged 8–9, who were asked to take the role of boy and girl story characters involved in the following kinds of aggressive situations: victim of a verbal attack, victim of a physical attack, and witness to an attack upon a friend. A significant interaction effect between type of conflict situation and sex of story character was obtained. Subjects expected boy characters to retaliate more strongly than girl characters when intervening in an attack upon a friend, and girl characters to retaliate more strongly than boy characters when being verbally or physically assaulted. These findings suggest the importance of situational factors in determining children's sex-stereotyped expectations for aggressive retaliation.     

Sex, sex-role identification, and awareness of sex-role stereotypes

An experiment was run to determine if androgynous people have transcended traditional sex roles or merely incorporated both sex roles into their repertoire. Masculine sex-typed, feminine sex-typed, and androgynous people listed as many masculine and feminine stereotypes as they could think of in a time-limited task. Highly sex-typed individuals showed more awareness of their own sex's attributes than the other sex's stereotypes. Androgynous people showed greater awareness of both sexes' attributes as compared with sex-typed people, indicating support for the incorporation hypothesis rather than the transcendance hypothesis. However, the stereotypes androgynous people listed were somewhat less evaluative in tone compared with those of sex-typed people, Overall, subjects listed more stereotypes of females than males, and female stereotypes were more negative than male stereotypes.     

The effects of verbal operant training and response interruption and redirection on appropriate and inappropriate vocalizations

Past research has shown that response interruption and redirection (RIRD) can effectively decrease automatically reinforced motor behavior (Hagopian & Adelinis, 2001). Ahearn, Clark, MacDonald, and Chung (2007) found that a procedural adaptation of RIRD reduced vocal stereotypy and increased appropriate vocalizations for some children, although appropriate vocalizations were not targeted directly. The purpose of the current study was to examine the effects of directly targeting appropriate language (i.e., verbal operant training) on vocal stereotypy and appropriate speech in 3 children with an autism spectrum disorder. The effects of verbal operant (i.e., tact) training were evaluated in a nonconcurrent multiple baseline design across participants. In addition, RIRD was implemented with 2 of the 3 participants to further decrease levels of vocal stereotypy. Verbal operant training alone produced slightly lower levels of stereotypy and increased appropriate vocalizations for all 3 participants; however, RIRD was required to produce acceptably low levels of stereotypy for 2 of the 3 participants.     

Measurement and structural models for children's problem behaviors

This article considers an analytic strategy for measuring and modeling child and adolescent problem behaviors. The strategy embeds an item response model within a hierarchical model to define an interval scale for the outcomes, to assess dimensionality, and to study how individual and contextual factors relate to multiple dimensions of problem behaviors. To illustrate, the authors analyze data from the primary caregiver ratings of 2,177 children aged 9-15 in 79 urban neighborhoods on externalizing behavior problems using the Child Behavior Checklist 4-18 (T. M. Achenbach, 1991a). Two subscales, Aggression and Delinquency, are highly correlated, and yet unidimensionality must be rejected because these subscales have different associations with key theoretically related covariates.     

Persistence and change in sex-role stereotypes

Persistence and change in sex-role stereotypes were examined by replicating in 1978 a study of sex-role conceptions published by Sherriffs and McKee in 1957. Results suggested that in many particulars sex-role stereotypes have changed little over the intervening two decades. Respondents of both sexes continued to view men as more forceful, independent, stubborn, and reckless than women; and women continued to be viewed as more mannerly, giving, emotional, and submissive than men. On the other hand, many changes in sex-role conceptions were also found to have occurred. Especially for female respondents, results suggested that stereotypes have changed in the direction of greater favorability toward women and less favorability toward men. The relevance of these findings to the psychological understanding of social change is discussed.     

The relationship among sex-role stereotyping,sex-role preference,and the sex difference in spatial visualization

At an early age, children attain concepts of sex-appropriate activities, behaviors, attitudes, and goals, i.e., sex-role stereotypes. These conceptual stereotypes seem to assign a less favorable role to females. Thus it seems plausible that their acceptance (by both sexes) might be at least partly responsible for the performance differences that begin to arise in adolescence and adulthood. In view of the importance of early adolescence as a transitional period during which sex-role requirements are augmented and intellectual sex differences emerge, 105 11-year-olds and 102 14-year-olds were selected as subjects. Their spatial abilities, sex-role concepts, and sex-role preferences were assessed. Stereotyping sex roles (in general) was not associated with spatial performance; stereotyping sex roles that included information regarding subjects' views about intellectual competence was related to performance. The sex difference in spatial ability that emerged at age 14 was among subjects with own-sex preferences only; there were no sex differences among subjects who preferred to be boys.This article is based upon a doctoral dissertation presented to the Department of Psychology of Columbia University. The author would like to express her thanks to her advisers, Phillip Shaver and Deanna Kuhn; to her committee members, Robert Krauss, Norma Graham, Patrick Lee, and Wayne Proudfoot; to Carol Jacklin and Ruth Wylie for their advice and support; and to Flora Churnin, Douglas Churnin, and Carl Nash for their invaluable assistance during all phases of this study.     

A comparison of two sex-role androgyny measures in a study of sex-role identity for incarcerated delinquent and nondelinquent females

A sample of 100 incarcerated delinquent females and 100 nondelinquent female matched for age and socioeconomic status were compared on three aspects of sex-role identity. The Bem Sex-Role Inventory and the PRF ANDRO scale were used to assess sex-role androgyny; the Traditional Family Ideology scale was used to assess sex-role attitudes; and several questions concerning heterosexual relationships were asked. Correspondence between the two androgyny measures was moderate at the interval level of measurement and poor at the nominal level. Repeat offenders were significantly higher than first-time offenders and nondelinquents on the BSRI masculine scale; a significantly higher percentage of repeat offenders were classified as androgynous by the BSRI. No differences were observed using the PRF ANDRO scales. Heterosexual relationships were more important in the lives of delinquent females on both friendship and helping dimensions.