Gender Stereotypes: A Literature Review

This article looks at how gender stereotypes are challenged by children and adolescence by addressing the conditions in which individuals found it acceptable to reject gender-stereotypic expectations and examining how children conceptualized the costs (Mulvey & Killen, 2015, pg. 683). Past studies show that children’s knowledge of gender stereotypes emerges during preschool and that interaction with teachers and peers can influence segregation of gender in playtime activities (Mulvey & Killen, 2015, pg. 681). These stereotypes have show to help guide children’s preferences for activities, occupations, and overall career goals (Mulvey & Killen, 2015, pg. 681). It also have been noted that challenging gender stereotypes have some costs. These …show more content…
683). The study had several hypotheses. The researchers hypothesized that participants would expect their peers would be more likely to support resistance that conforms to stereotypes than challenge stereotypes, that participants would view challenging the peer group as easier for girls compared to boys, and that adolescents may differentiate between their own and a peer’s likelihood of resistance compared to younger children making the assumption that participants will expect peers to conform to group norms and not challenge the norms (Mulvey & Killen, 2015, pg. 684). In addition to these hypotheses, it was expected that participants would be a consequence when challenging a norm, participants would consider the group as a whole when making exclusion decisions, and that participants would be willing to include someone who did not share gender group membership as long as they wanted to partake in the same activity (Mulvey & Killen, 2015, pg. …show more content…
Ninety of them were 9- to 1- year olds, while the remaining 202 were 13- to 14- year olds from public elementary and middle schools in the Mid-Atlantic region (Mulvey & Killen, 2015, pg. 684). Participants were evenly divided by gender and were from low to low-middle-income schools. Half of the participants formed a boys’ group and a girls’ group with conformity group norms, where the groups sticks to the stereotypes about social activities whereas the other half of the participants formed a boys’ group and a girls’ group with resistance group norms (Mulvey & Killen, 2015, pg. 685). For the procedure, participants were given a warm up task where a survey was read aloud to the younger group and just administer to the older group (Mulvey & Killen, 2015, pg. 685). The study consisted of four hypothetical scenarios, where each participant received two scenarios with either conformity or resistance group norms. The groups all received surveys to provide their answers to. There were six assessments: likelihood of resistance, individual likelihood of resistance, intragroup exclusion likelihood & dissenting member, reasoning, intergroup inclusion preference, and gender activity association (Mulvey & Killen, 2015, pg. 685). The results showed that a majority of the children and adolescents associated boys with football and girls with ballet. It was also revealed that participants expected their peers to challenge group norms; however,