Recall of sex-role appropriate and inappropriate models in children's songs

The function of sex of model and sex-role appropriateness of models' behavior in facilitating children's recall of song characters and content was explored. Fifty-eight boys and girls, aged 6 1/2, listened to two songs in one of three treatment conditions. The songs had male-dominant/female-subordinant, female-dominant/male-subordinant, or neutral-dominant/neutral-subordinant lyrics. As expected, children attended selectively to same-sex characters, recalling more when the same-sex character was dominant. Boys reported liking males more than females, while girls had no sexual preference. Surprisingly, both boys and girls more frequently reported that they wanted to be like the subordinant characters than like the dominant characters.