Resource utilization in mixed-sex dyads: The influence of adult presence and task type

This study explores the effects of context on cross-sex dominance. An emerging finding in the sex differences literature is that boys are often more successful than girls at influencing members of the other gender. As a result, boys tend to get more than their share of a scarce resource in mixed-sex situations. Because the presence of adults inhibits just those strategies that boys use successfully when dominating girls, we hypothesize that the presence of an adult will reduce or eliminate the sex difference in access to a scarce resource. This should be particularly true for tasks in which boys' strategies are most likely to be effective. To test this hypothesis, dominance (as evidenced by asymmetry in gaining access to a scarce resource) was measured while 48 boy-girl pairs, ranging in age from 42 to 60 months, negotiated turn taking at a movie viewer in either the presence or absence of an adult (adult location factor) in a situation that either did or did not require the cooperation of the second child in order to see cartoons (task type factor). For the cooperative task, neither sex significantly dominated the other in either the presence or absence of the adult. In contrast, for the competitive task, boys dominated in the absence of the adult. When the adult was present, however, boys and girls shared more equally. An examination of the strategies children used in the competitive task indicated that boys were inhibited in the adult's presence, dropping their rate of demands and giving girls longer turns. Implications for gender segregation and for sex differences in seeking proximity to adults are discussed.Portions of this paper were presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development in Baltimore, Maryland, April 1987. This research was supported, in part, by a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship. The authors are grateful for the cooperation of the directors, staffs, parents, and children of the preschools that participated in the study; Bing School, Convenant Presbyterian Preschool, Menlo Park Presbyterian Nursery School, Buttons 'N Bows Preschool, Community Preschool, and Foothill College Child Care Center. We are also inebted to Carolyn Johnson, Robert McClure, Ennis Blount, Paul Endo, and Lara Helms for serving as experimenters, and to Colleen Kerrigan, Kathryn Shade, Diane Walters, Deborah Haley, Ira Lit, and Caroline Collins for their work in coding the data. Finally, we would like to thank Ellen Markman for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of the paper, and Mary Parpal, whose helpful comments and other contributions are greatly appreciated.