By observing what others are doing children learn appropriate behaviour for their sex (Bandura 1977). Boys shouldn’t cry if they get hurt and can play rough games but girls are encouraged to show their emotional side (Block 1979). SLT says this doesn’t just come from the home but also comes from watching television.
Observational learning
Observational learning shows boys and girls what they should be doing. Boys are allowed to be more aggressive towards others, but this is seen as inappropriate for a girl and intervention happens earlier (Huston 1983). Children often imitate behaviour for which neither they, nor their role models have been rewarded.
Gender schematic theory
Gender schematic processing theory, differs from SLT. It assumes that gender identity alone can provide children with motivation to assume sex typed behaviour. At about aged three children become aware of what sex they are (Ruble, 1984). Children can then learn the appropriate behaviour by observation as with SLT, but how they interpret that information causes the differences. Boys realise that showing physical strength is looked upon as being good for them and so they behave in a way to show this off. Girls realise that gentleness and neatness are what others see as being important. Therefore they behave in this way to show delicateness about them (Rathus,1990).
This leads into the aim of the practical, which is to investigate the theory of gender-stereotyped toys.
Experimental Hypotheses
Children will choose a gender-stereotyped toy appropriate to their own gender, when asked to select from two toys.
Null
There will be no gender stereotyped shown in choice of toy selected. Any bias will be based entirely on chance.
Method
The design of this experiment was to use independent groups. They were not matched.
The advantages of using this design are that there would be no order effect, no demand characteristics and it was quick and easy. However it has a disadvantage of not being able to control for inter participant variable.
To collect the data, a tally chart was used, as this was appropriate for the nominal data.
Using a 2x2 cell chart for boys/girls, car/doll. A mark was placed in the appropriate cell for each child’s choice.
See Appendix3
Participants
A group of children was taken from each of the nurseries. Both contained children with different ages ranging from three to five years. The sex of the children also varied. From group one there was twenty-nine children. There were sixteen boys and thirteen girls. In-group two there were seventeen boys and thirteen girls. These factors could not be controlled, as it was reliant on the particular children who attended the nurseries on the day of the experiment.
Apparatus/Materials
The following apparatus was used in the experiment.
Pen
Paper
Doll
Car
Tally chart
Standardised instructions
(See appendix 1+ 2)
The instructions were given to the nursery teacher in the letter given to the nurseries when asking for permission to do the experiment. In group one, on the day that the experiment took place, the children were taken into the garden and sat down on the grass. The children were then told that they would come over to the experimenter and would be asked to choose a toy that they would like to play with.
In group two, the children were sitting down inside the nursery and were told that they would have to go to the experimenter and choose a toy that they would like to play with and then return to their seats where they would continue to listen to a story.
When the children came up to the experimenter, they were asked to choose a toy that they liked best to play with. The child had a choice of choosing a doll and a car. After the child chose their favourite toy, the experimenter marked their choice down on a tally chart and asked the child to return to their place.
When all the children had taken their toy the experimenter packed away, and then thanked the children and the nursery groups for their help in taking part in this experiment.
All children would have been unaware of the purpose of the experiment.
The experiments were conducted on different days at different times of the day. Group one was taken in a garden in the summer sun of a Monday afternoon. These children were full of energy and ready to play. Whereas in group two the children were settled and in a quiet environment, ready to listen to a story on a Friday morning.
Treatment of results
With the data being nominal in the two samples, it was the best option to use Chi squared. Chi squared compares the frequencies (tally), with the frequencies that would be expected if the Null Hypothesis were true.
The significance level chosen with was 0.01.
Presentation of results
A tally chart of groups one and two of boys and girls choosing stereotyped toys can be found in Appendix 1, together with a bar graph and a pie chart representing the data and percentage.
See Appendix 3
The results show quite clearly that boys choose their gender specific toy when given a choice. This was also true for girls. Boys chose a car and girls chose a doll when given the choice.
From observing the data in that format it looks as though the difference between the groups support the experimental Hypothesis.
A statistical test was then applied to determine whether the difference was sufficient to be considered statistically significant.
RTXCT
GT
TOTAL = 20.58
P< 0.01
N = 59
1 Tailed
OV =20.58
CV =5.44
The application of the Chi squared test produced the value of x=20.58.
Therefore H1 is retained
And H0 is rejected
Discussion
As predicted the children who participated in the experiment chose the toy most relevant to their gender. Previous studies have shown that children, at about aged three become aware of what sex they are (Ruble, 1984). They then learn the appropriate behaviour for their sex. The children used in this study, were aged three to five and so were likely to know what sex they were. Cars are seen in this society as being a male orientated toy and dolls are seen to be more appropriate for females. This was reflected in the results.
Social learning theory explains that the children’s parents treat boys and girls differently (Maccoby,1990). Stereotypical behaviour is reinforced so boys are encouraged to play with cars and actively discouraged to play with dolls. The reverse is true for the girls but to a lesser extent as the feminist movement has influenced today’s society. These findings tell us that most of us are unaware that we are gender stereotyped.
In the results for this experiment the boys showed typical behaviour in choosing cars and very few actually chose the doll to play with as you can clearly see on the pie charts. A higher percentage of girls chose the opposite toy to that expected showing the possible influence of feminism in the change of society, but the majority still chose their gender specific toy. As stated earlier children discover what sex they are at about age three. It would be interesting to see if the children who chose the opposite toy were the youngest in the sample as the age range varied.
Unfortunately there were not equal amounts of boys and girls taking part in the experiment. The children were also of varying ages and of different social backgrounds.
To improve the experiment it would have been better if equal numbers of boys and girls could have been used. The less variables the better the comparisons could have been. Variables that could have been controlled were, gender, the age of the child, the social background and time of day and location of the experiment. If the experiment were repeated both groups could be tested at the same time of day, morning or afternoon. It would also be improved if the children were in the same environment. For instance the children could have all been brought into a room one at a time so that others around them could not see what was happening. The children who chose the toy could have been influenced with the others being able to see what was going on (observational learning).
Further investigations could be carried out. Both ‘SLT and Gender schematic theory’ say that children learn the appropriate behaviour by observation. It would therefore be interesting, to see if children with siblings of the opposite sex were more likely to choose the gender specific toy relating to their sibling.
In investigating this experiment, my findings were that most people do not realise that we live in a society that is stereotyped. People are unaware of this happening and therefore it would be hard for us to accept this, or change it. These gender stereotypes have been ingrained within our society for years and even if you try to change some aspects. It is likely that the stereotypical behaviour will continue as learning is coming from our society and culture as well as direct parenting.
Conclusion
The findings of this experiment reflect those of previous experiments. Boys and girls aged three to five years chose a gender specific toy when given a choice.
The results were statistically significant at the 0.01 level of confidence, meaning that there was only a 1% probability of their choices being made by chance.
These findings can be explained in terms of ‘Observational Learning’ through parenting and the society and culture, in which the children are raised.
It would be interesting to do further research to investigate cross-cultural influences on gender stereotyping.
