Abstract
In the United States, there is a common stereotype associating brilliance with men. This gender brilliance stereotype emerges early and may undermine women's engagement in many prestigious careers. However, past research on its acquisition has focused almost exclusively on American children's beliefs of White people's intellectual talents. Therefore, less is known about how this stereotype develops in non-Western cultures and whether children consider other social identities such as race in forming this stereotype. To address these issues, the present research (a) provided the first cross-cultural test examining its development in 5- to 7-year-old Chinese and American children and (b) compared children's gender brilliance stereotype of White people with that of Asian people. Studies 1 (N = 96; Chinese children) and 2 (N = 96; Chinese children) revealed that, similar to American children, Chinese children associated brilliance with White men (vs. White women) around the age of 6. In contrast, Studies 3 (N = 96; Chinese children) and 4 (N = 96; American children; 76.9% White) showed that 5- to 7-year-old children from both cultures associated brilliance with Asian women (vs. Asian men). The results suggest that the gender stereotype about brilliance has a racial component and may be culturally consistent. Overall, these findings add to our knowledge of children's acquisition of the gender stereotype about brilliance in non-Western cultural contexts and highlight the importance of considering multiple social identities to understand the acquisition of stereotypes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
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