Order effects in children's gender-constancy responses.

Abstract

According to the cognitive-developmental approach to sex role development, sex-typed behavior is influenced by the establishment of a stable concept of gender identity that emerges after the age of 4-5 years. Young children, however, have been shown to have a considerable understanding of sex roles and stereotypes. In this study, we examined the Slaby and Frey (1975) gender-constancy interview, which has been widely used in tests of the cognitive-developmental account. Sixty children aged between 42 and 54 months were given the interview either in the traditional order or a reversed-order condition. They were also asked to make causal attributions for the presence or absence of gender consistency in the responses of 4-year-old characters described in stories. The majority (76.7%) of children who received the interviews in the reversed order gave gender-constant (i.e., gender-consistent) responses, compared with a third of the children who received the interview in the traditional order. As predicted, the children also gave significantly more external attributions, involving a desire to please an adult interviewer, for the responses of story characters who were not gender-constant than for the responses of characters who were gender-constant. Methodological issues in the assessment of gender concepts are discussed with regard to the results and scope of this study.