Abstract
In a cross-sectional study of youth ages 8-15, we examined implicit and explicit gender stereotypes regarding math and language abilities. We investigated how implicit and explicit stereotypes differ across age and gender groups and whether they are consistent with cultural stereotypes. Participants (N = 270) completed the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP) and a survey of explicit beliefs. Across all ages, boys showed neither math nor language implicit gender biases, whereas girls implicitly favored girls in both domains. These findings are counter to cultural stereotypes, which favor boys in math. On the explicit measure, both boys' and girls' primary tendency was to favor girls in math and language ability, with the exception of elementary school boys, who rated genders equally. We conclude that objective gender differences in academic success guide differences in children's explicit reports and implicit biases.
Highlights
Children’s perceptions of gender differences in cognitive abilities are important because they may lead boys and girls to develop different interests and different areas of achievement [1,2,3]
Explicit beliefs may differ in systematic ways from implicit gender biases, which are automatically activated associations to gender categories
For implicit scores we used the proportion of items in which [girls; boys] were associated with the “good in” prompt; for explicit group competence, we used the average of the two explicit items for each gender
Summary
Children’s perceptions of gender differences in cognitive abilities are important because they may lead boys and girls to develop different interests and different areas of achievement [1,2,3]. We examined children’s implicit biases and their explicit beliefs regarding gender differences in math and language abilities. Based on the results of these IAT studies alone, one conclusion is that children (girls in particular) assimilate societal stereotypes about gender differences in math ability favoring boys from an early age [45]. This interpretation implies that research efforts and interventions ought to be focused on children’s math associations and beliefs. Whereas younger youth may be more transparent and explicitly report their automatic associations, older youth might control their responses so that their implicit biases are more dissociated from their explicit reports
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