We also learn gender appropriate behaviour by just seeing other being rewarded and punished for their feminine or masculine activity. This is known as indirect reinforcement. Media is an example of indirect reinforcement. Media shows the two different gender role (male and female) in a different way. And it has influence on children who are acquiring their gender concepts. Media shows girl behaving in a famine behaviour and boy in a masculine behaviour. It shows a girl wearing skirts and woman washing up in the kitchen while the man presented as an independent going to the work or office.
Leary found that children who watched TV frequently were more like to hold stereotypical ideas about gender role preferences of culturally appropriate nature. He found the correlations between the two, means that we can’t be sure whether the TV programmes made children more gender stereotyped or that gender stereotyped children watch more TV. We can’t be sure which thing causes the other thing. There might be some other reason for this correlation.
This theory’s main idea is that children learn their gender appropriate and behaviour through the media and parents. This theory can be used to help reduce gender role stereotypes. ‘Counter conditioning refers to attempts to present children with non-traditional stereotypes, such as female going to office and man doing household jobs. But the effectiveness may be low as it is an indirect reinforcement; they will be most affected by their direct reinforcement. Children would prefer to behave in a way their parents wants them rather than what TV shows them.
Leary’s experiment is an artificial research, so largely removed from natural situations and overlooks the fact that children may actually pay little attention to adult models of gender behaviour, especially when they are too young, they may not answer properly to the researcher as they don’t have a knowledge of what researcher is on about. So this have a lack of ecological validity, we are not sure that the findings could be generalise to our real life. Everything is controlled in the experimental study. This cannot take place in our real life.
Social learning theory does not explain why children’s behaviour changes, as they get older. This can be demonstrated by Cognitive-developmental theories.
This theory focuses on how children’s thinking changes, as they get older. This is a consequence of maturation. It leads young children to be able to think about gender in different ways. This means children can acquire gender concepts when they reached certain age.
Kohlberg proposed a stage theory of gender identity and gender role development. He suggests that children go through each stage in order to develop an understanding of gender. He suggested that children identify their gender around age 3. Children are not able to acquire gender consistency until they are able to understand the principle of ‘that things do not change even they look different’. This gender consistency happens around the age of 7. Once a child can think consistently of their gender, this leads them to identify with the members of the same gender and actively seek information about gender-appropriate behaviour and they further their gender development.
Slaby and fred conducted a research with children. They found that children were able to recognise their gender that were around age 3, and the pre-school children were gender consistent. The preschool children focused on same gender model that will provide them with information about gender-appropriate behaviour.
These two theories do explain the development of gender role. However it does give any idea of that there could be biological reason for their gender role behaviour. The sequence of gender development, which appears to be universal. Munroe observed the same sequence of identity, stability and constancy in children of many different cultures. This suggests the importance of biological factors in gender role development, which means social learning theory is not a sufficient explanation of gender-role development on its own.
Evidence from Martin and Little suggests that Kohlberg was wrong in suggests that children do not begin collecting information about appropriate gender role behaviour before they achieve constancy. Martin and Little found that pre-school children had only very rudimentary gender understanding, yet they had strong gender stereotypes about gender what boys and girls were permitted to d, they had already collected information about gender appropriate behaviour. Thus, only rudimentary gender understanding is needed before children learn about sex stereotypes and show strong sex-typed preferences for peers or toys.
