PSY/WST 315: Gender Development, Stereotypes, Power, and Cognitive Abilities

Comprehensive practice flashcards covering all major concepts, empirical statistics, theoretical models, and experimental studies from PSY/WST 315 (Gender Development, Stereotypes, Power, Sexism, and Cognitive Abilities).

Gender Socialization

The lifelong process through which individuals learn and internalize gendered beliefs, roles, values, and behaviors from socializing agents such as parents, peers, teachers, and media.

Parental Perception Bias of Newborns

The phenomenon where parents perceive and rate newborn boys as stronger, more alert, and more coordinated than newborn girls, despite no objective physical or physiological differences.

Infant Sex Discrimination Milestone

The developmental benchmark reached by 3 months of age, at which human infants begin to visually distinguish and categorize the sex of individual faces.

Gender Labeling Milestone (Campbell et al., 2004)

The developmental milestone where approximately 67% of infants can accurately use verbal gender labels to categorize people by 24 months (2 years) of age.

Social Learning Theory of Gender Development

A theoretical model proposing that children acquire gendered beliefs, behaviors, and preferences primarily through observing and imitating social models and receiving external reinforcement or punishment.

Sex-Typing (Gender Typing)

The process by which children become aware of their assigned biological sex and adopt the values, attributes, and behaviors culturally designated for members of that sex.

Reinforcement in Gender Development

Social feedback or rewards (such as smiles, praise, or encouragement) that increase the likelihood a child will repeat culturally prescribed gender-congruent behaviors.

Punishment in Gender Development

Overt consequences or subtle negative social feedback (such as scowling or withdrawing attention) aimed at decreasing a child's gender-incongruent behaviors.

Traditional Feminine Stereotypes

A culturally prescribed cluster of traits traditionally assigned to women, including being dependent, passive, submissive, gentle, emotional, tactful, talkative, indecisive, and nurturing.

Traditional Masculine Stereotypes

A culturally prescribed cluster of traits traditionally assigned to men, including being aggressive, independent, dominant, active, tough, logical, decisive, cruel, blunt, and non-nurturing.

Lytton and Romney (1991) Meta-Analysis

A major review of 172 studies evaluating parental gender socialization which concluded that parents generally treat sons and daughters similarly overall, with the major exception of sex-typed toys.

Sex-Typed Toy Socialization Effect ($d = 0.34$)

The specific domain in Lytton and Romney's (1991) meta-analysis showing a significant effect ($d = 0.34$), reflecting parents' deliberate encouragement of sex-differentiated toys.

Parental Gender Differentiation by Parent Sex

The finding in socialization research that fathers treat their sons and daughters more differently and enforce traditional gender roles more strictly than mothers do.

Methodological Variance in Socialization Studies

Lytton and Romney's (1991) finding that sex differences in parental treatment were significantly larger in observational and experimental designs than in subjective interview-based methods.

Same-Sex Parenting and Stereotype Endorsement

The empirical finding that children raised by same-sex parents are significantly less likely to endorse traditional gender stereotypes than children raised by different-sex parents.

Parental Stereotype Bias in Infant Locomotion

The experimental finding that mothers systematically overestimate the crawling and physical coordination abilities of infant sons relative to infant daughters of identical physical capacity.

Cross-Sex Behavior

Play preferences, activities, clothing styles, or behavioral patterns that are culturally and strongly associated with a sex group other than one's own.

Freeman (2007) Toy Socialization Discrepancy

A study revealing that parents reported promoting cross-sex toys equally, yet 90% of their children believed parents would approve sex-typed toys and only 26% believed parents would approve cross-sex toys.

Asymmetry in Cross-Sex Behavior Acceptance

The cultural reality that girls are granted significantly more social latitude to engage in cross-sex behaviors and masculine play than boys are to engage in feminine-typed play.

Parental Tolerance Disparity for Boys' Cross-Sex Play

The consistent finding that mothers display greater tolerance and acceptance than fathers toward boys participating in female-typed activities or playing with cross-sex toys.

Parental Promotion of Communal vs. Agentic Behavior

The socialization pattern wherein parents actively foster communal (relational, cooperative) behaviors in daughters and agentic (competitive, autonomous) behaviors in sons.

Rust, Golombok, Hines, and Johnston (2000)

A preschooler study demonstrating that the biological sex and birth order of older siblings significantly predict a younger child's degree of sex-typical play behavior.

Same-Sex Older Sibling Effect

The finding that boys with older brothers and girls with older sisters display the most traditional sex-typical behaviors of any children.

Cross-Sex Older Sibling Effect

The finding that children who grow up with cross-sex older siblings display the least traditional sex-typical behavior.

Gender Binary Reinforcement by Teachers

Classroom structural practices (such as separating boys and girls for seating, lines, or competitions) that heighten the salience of gender as a fundamental social divide.

Peer Gender Segregation Milestone

The developmental shift beginning in early childhood such that by age 5, approximately 70% of children's unstructured playtime is spent exclusively with same-sex peers.

Peer Group Emotional Reinforcement in Girls

The developmental observation that young girls who spend high amounts of time exclusively with female peers demonstrate increased expressions of sadness over time.

Peer Group Emotional Reinforcement in Boys

The developmental observation that young boys who spend high amounts of time exclusively with male peers demonstrate increased expressions of anger over time.

Children's Daily Media Exposure Baseline

The sociological finding that children spend an average of 3 hours watching television and another 3 hours using other media (e.g., video games, books) each day.

Quantitative Media Gender Underrepresentation

The persistent numerical disparity across children's books, television, and film, where male characters substantially outnumber female characters.

Qualitative Media Gender Stereotypes

The representational trope in children's programming where male characters are portrayed as autonomous leaders, while female characters are portrayed as nurturing, sexualized, or thin.

Götz et al. (2008) Children's Television Study

A global content analysis across 6,375 fictional children's programs in 24 countries establishing that male lead characters drastically outnumber female leads across human and nonhuman categories.

Nonhuman Lead Character Gender Disparity

The specific finding in Götz et al. (2008) showing that sex imbalances favoring male leads are even larger for nonhuman characters (monsters, robots, objects, animals) than for humans.

Infant Visual Preference for Sex-Typed Toys

The perceptual milestone between 3 and 8 months of age where infants begin demonstrating selective visual attention toward sex-typed toys over cross-sex toys.

Toddler Toy Play Distribution

Research documenting that toddlers typically spend 75% of their play time with gender-neutral toys, 20% with sex-typical toys, and 5% with cross-sex toys.

Cognitive Theories of Gender Development

Theoretical perspectives emphasizing that children learn gender by advancing through cognitive stages, with internal sex-typed cognitions driving sex-typed behaviors and preferences.

Kohlberg’s Gender Constancy Theory (1966)

A cognitive developmental framework proposing that children gradually achieve an understanding of gender permanence through three successive stages: identity, stability, and constancy.

Gender Identity (Gender Labeling Stage)

Kohlberg's first stage (ages 2–3), in which children can identify themselves and others as boys or girls, but do not view gender as permanent across superficial physical changes.

Gender Stability Stage

Kohlberg's second stage (ages 4–5), where children recognize that gender remains stable over time, yet still believe superficial modifications in appearance or toys can alter sex.

Gender Constancy Stage

Kohlberg's third stage (ages 6–7), marked by the full cognitive understanding that biological sex is permanent and invariant over time and across superficial situational transformations.

Ken Doll Skirt Transformation Task

An experimental demonstration of gender constancy where children observe a male Ken doll dressed in a skirt and wig to test whether they perceive the doll's underlying sex as having changed.

Gender Schema Theory

A cognitive model proposing that children develop organized associative networks (schemas) of beliefs and expectations about males and females, actively using them to interpret their social world.

Gender-Labeled Box Experiment

An experiment showing that when gender-neutral toys are placed into boxes labeled 'girls' or 'boys', children systematically prefer toys from their own sex's box and project that preference onto peers.

Gender Schematic

An individual who habitually processes social information through a gendered lens, using gender schemas to make decisions regarding behavior, dress, traits, and career goals.

Gender Aschematic

An individual who lacks the cognitive tendency to use gender as a salient, defining framework for interpreting the world, categorizing others, or guiding their own behavior.

Passive Recipient Critique of Social Learning

The major conceptual limitation of social learning theory, which is criticized for treating children as passive targets of environmental socialization rather than active agents.

External Factor Critique of Cognitive Theories

The primary limitation of cognitive theories of gender development, which focus heavily on internal cognitive stages while neglecting the powerful impact of culture, peers, and structural forces.

Forms of Childhood Gender Nonconformity

Developmental expressions involving either engagement in cross-sex behavior (e.g., rough-and-tumble play in girls) or possessing a gender identity that diverges from assigned biological sex.

Heritability of Gender Identity and Cross-Sex Play

Behavioral genetic evidence indicating that both cross-sex play preferences and gender identity show moderate levels of genetic heritability.

Childhood Cross-Sex Play in Sexual Minorities

The robust empirical finding that gay and lesbian adults are significantly more likely than heterosexual adults to have displayed cross-sex play preferences during childhood (large effect sizes).

Parental Intolerance of Childhood Gender Nonconformity

Survey data documenting that 56% of MtF (transgender women) and 20% of FtM (transgender men) adults reported their parents were intolerant of their cross-gender expressions in childhood.

Biased-Interaction Theory (Milton Diamond, 2006)

A biosocial theory positing that children form their gender identity by evaluating their innate temperamental predispositions and preferences against culturally constructed gender categories.

Internal Sense of Self (Diamond, 2006)

The internal constellation of personal likes, dislikes, attitudes, and biological predispositions that a child compares to social groups of 'boys' and 'girls' to determine gender alignment.

Authenticity of Transgender Children's Identity

Empirical consensus confirming that transgender children are not confused or pretending, but genuinely identify as members of the gender group that aligns with their internal identity.

Implicit Association Test (IAT) with Transgender Youth

Research demonstrating that transgender children show implicit, automatic identification with concepts that match their affirmed gender identity rather than their assigned biological sex.

Peer Harassment Risk in Nonconforming Youth

The heightened vulnerability of gender-nonconforming children and adolescents to targeted social rejection, threats, verbal harassment, and physical victimization from peers.

Milestone Model of Transgender Identity Development

Beemyn and Rankin's (2011) empirical framework derived from thousands of interviews, describing the non-linear developmental milestones experienced by transgender individuals.

FtM Identity Trajectory Milestone

A common developmental milestone where female-to-male (FtM) individuals identify initially as lesbian before realizing over time that a lesbian identity does not fit their internal sense of self as male.

MtF Identity Realization Milestone

A key developmental milestone wherein male-to-female (MtF) individuals recognize that their internal identity is transgender rather than simply that of a 'cross-dresser'.

Adolescent Peer Re-Integration

The normative developmental shift occurring around age 12, characterized by a decrease in strict same-sex peer segregation and an increase in cross-sex friendships.

Dating Discrepancy in Sexual Minority Adolescents

The empirical observation that many lesbian and gay teenagers date other-sex partners more frequently than same-sex partners during adolescence due to social stigma and limited dating pools.

Sex-Based Division of Labor

The widespread societal structural arrangement where men are primarily assigned to paid public labor and women are primarily assigned to unpaid domestic housework and childcare.

Motherhood Mandate

The pervasive cultural expectation prescribing that all adult women must have children and devote extensive energy, emotion, and time to intensive child rearing.

Agentic Traits

A cluster of instrumental personality attributes centered on goal achievement, assertiveness, decisiveness, independence, and competence, traditionally associated with men.

Communal Traits

A cluster of expressive personality attributes centered on social cohesion, warmth, benevolence, trustworthiness, and emotional sensitivity, traditionally associated with women.

Motherhood Attenuation of Leadership Penalties

The finding that agentic female leaders receive lower evaluations than agentic male leaders, but this negative evaluative penalty disappears when observers learn the woman has children.

'Childfree by Choice' Stereotype

The cultural stigmatization of women and men who deliberately choose not to have children, stereotyping them as cold, deficient in warmth, and lacking benevolence.

Hegemonic Masculinity

A culturally idealized, exaggerated standard of manhood defined by competitiveness, aggression, economic dominance, physical toughness, stoicism, and the total repudiation of femininity.

Precarious Manhood Hypothesis

The theoretical premise that manhood is an elusive, tenuous social status that is difficult to achieve, easily lost, and requires continuous public validation and active defense.

Biological Permanence View of Womanhood

The cultural conceptualization of womanhood as a stable, biologically anchored status achieved passively through puberty and not subject to continual social loss or precariousness.

Psychological Consequences of Male Unemployment

The severe psychological distress (anxiety, depression, loss of masculine identity) experienced by men following job loss due to hegemonic mandates defining men as financial providers.

Bosson and Vandello (2011) Braiding Experiment

A laboratory study where men assigned to braid hair (a feminine task) experienced a threat to their manhood and subsequently chose to punch a punching bag over doing a puzzle.

Restorative Physical Aggression (Bosson & Vandello, 2011)

The finding that men whose masculinity was threatened by hair braiding punched a heavy bag significantly harder than men who had braided rope, using aggression to restore status.

Social Network Advantage of Aging Women

The social resource advantage held by older women, who generally maintain wider, deeper, and more supportive interpersonal networks than aging men.

Spousal Emotional Dependence in Older Men

The dynamic wherein older heterosexual men rely predominantly on their wives for emotional intimacy and well-being, while older women maintain diverse social supports outside marriage.

Cultural Perceptions of Aging in Nairobi, Kenya

Cross-cultural evidence from Nairobi revealing that community members view older men as idle and weak, while perceiving older women as resourceful, cooperative, and stronger.

Double Standard of Aging

The cultural inequality wherein women's perceived social value and attractiveness decline sharply as their youthful appearance fades, while men's social status often increases with age.

Social Invisibility of Older Women

The lived psychological reality reported by aging women who feel marginalized, ignored, and culturally unseen once they are no longer viewed as objects of sexual appeal.

Gender Stereotypes Definition

Overgeneralized, socially shared, and often inaccurate cognitive beliefs and expectations about the traits, roles, behaviors, and physical features of males and females.

Four Components of Gender Stereotypes

The structural model identified by Haines et al. (2016) dividing gender stereotypes into four discrete domains: personality traits, role behaviors, physical characteristics, and occupations.

Stereotypical Male Personality Traits (Table 5.1)

Agentic qualities socially associated with men, including being active, competitive, independent, self-confident, decisive, persistent, and standing up under pressure.

Stereotypical Female Personality Traits (Table 5.1)

Communal qualities socially associated with women, including being emotional, gentle, helpful, kind, understanding, warm, devoted to others, and aware of others' feelings.

Stereotypical Male Role Behaviors (Table 5.1)

Prescribed behavioral patterns for men, such as being the financial provider, head of household, household repairer, sports player, leader, and romantic initiator.

Stereotypical Female Role Behaviors (Table 5.1)

Prescribed behavioral patterns for women, such as cooking meals, performing household chores, doing laundry, raising children, and providing emotional support.

Stereotypical Male Physical Characteristics (Table 5.1)

Physical attributes culturally associated with men, including broad shoulders, deep voice, muscular physique, large hands, tall stature, solidness, and sturdiness.

Stereotypical Female Physical Characteristics (Table 5.1)

Physical attributes culturally associated with women, including being dainty, delicate, graceful, physically attractive, short, having a soft voice, and wearing jewelry.

Stereotypical Male Occupations (Table 5.1)

Vocations traditionally perceived as masculine, including cable installer, chemist, construction worker, engineer, firefighter, insurance agent, politician, and truck driver.

Stereotypical Female Occupations (Table 5.1)

Vocations traditionally perceived as feminine, including administrative assistant, bank teller, elementary school teacher, hairdresser, librarian, nurse, and speech pathologist.

Cognitive Purpose of Stereotyping

The mental economy function through which human minds organize, simplify, filter, and store information about a complex social world using cognitive categories.

Generalization in Stereotyping

The cognitive assumption that attributes believed to characterize a social group as a whole apply uniformly to every individual member within that category.

Stereotype Content Model (Fiske et al., 2002)

A theoretical model showing that stereotypes of diverse social groups map onto two orthogonal dimensions: communion (warmth) and agency (competence).

Paternalistic Stereotypes (High Warmth, Low Competence)

The quadrant in the Stereotype Content Model containing groups such as the elderly, disabled, and developmentally delayed, who elicit pity and patronizing affection.

Envious Stereotypes (Low Warmth, High Competence)

The quadrant in the Stereotype Content Model containing groups such as the rich, professionals, Asians, and Jews, who elicit respect combined with envy and resentment.

In-Group Stereotypes (High Warmth, High Competence)

The quadrant in the Stereotype Content Model containing socially dominant reference groups such as middle class, Whites, Christians, students, and women.

Contemptuous Stereotypes (Low Warmth, Low Competence)

The quadrant in the Stereotype Content Model containing highly marginalized groups such as the homeless, welfare recipients, and poor individuals, who elicit disgust.

Historical Shifts in Gender Stereotypes

Longitudinal findings indicating that gender stereotypes have largely persisted since the 1980s, despite minor declines in men-career/women-family ($-19\%$) and men-science/women-arts ($-14\%$).

Women Are Wonderful Effect

The psychological tendency for evaluators to view the broad cultural stereotype of women significantly more positively and favorably than the stereotype of men.

Evaluative Boundaries of the 'Women Are Wonderful' Effect

The finding that favorable evaluations of women are reserved exclusively for White, middle-class women who conform to traditional, communal gender expectations.

Backlash Against Nontraditional Women

The social and evaluative penalty levied against agentic, non-traditional women, who are derogated as bossy, cold, untrustworthy, and manipulative.

Gender Subgroups

Specific, differentiated categories of men and women (e.g., housewife, working mother, mama's boy, eternal bachelor) that diverge from overarching binary stereotypes.