Which of the following theories emphasizes the role of parents teachers and peers in gender development?

Gender schema theories

Gender schema theories address the ways in which children represent and process gender-related knowledge. Schemas are viewed as dynamic knowledge structures that change in response to situations and age-related changes in person perception and that have content that varies with social experiences and other individual level and cultural level differences. As organizers of gender development, gender schemas are thought to provide an important link between gender cognitions and gender-related behaviors. According to this perspective, once children identify themselves as girls or boys, they selectively attend to, and remember, own-sex relevant information and are motivated to use this information to shape their own behaviors and make gender-related inferences and judgments.

3.5 Gender Schema Theory

Gender schema theory is a cognitively based theory that uses an information processing approach to explain how gender development occurs. The basis of this model is the cognitive representation called a schema. A schema is an organizing structure that helps simplify and categorize new information.

There are two types of gender-related schemas (Martin and Halverson 1981). The first is a general ‘superordinate’ schema that helps children categorize objects, characteristics, and traits into basic male and female categories. The second is a more narrow version of schema, called the ‘own-sex’ schema, that children use to identify and learn in-depth information consistent with their own sex. These two schema types allow children to process information about events, objects, attitudes, behaviors, and roles and, in turn, categorize these aspects in terms of masculine or feminine, or as similar or different from the child (Martin and Halverson 1981).

Gender schema theorists (Bem 1981, Martin and Halverson 1981) proposed that gender schemas are developed and applied by children at an early age. In addition, it was proposed that the presence and use of gender schemas can explain the ways in which children and adults attend to, acquire, and remember information; how they behave; and the kinds of attitudes they develop (Martin and Halverson 1981). Gender schemas affect which kinds of information are noticed, encoded, and remembered, with information inconsistent with the existing schema being overlooked and consistent information being processed (Signorella et al. 1997). Research also shows that gender schemas can guide children's preferences, toy choices, and play partner choices.

Because schemas are used to interpret and categorize information, however, they can result in the drawing of incorrect inferences. Distortion of information has also been found to be a consequence of gender schematic processing. Altering information that does not fit into a currently held schema or placing neutral information into a gender schema leads to remembering information in a gender-consistent manner, which may not match with how it exists in reality. These processes illustrate how gender schemas can be easily maintained and how resistant they are to change.

Gender schema theory emphasizes the child as an active processor of information and that the gender schemas that guide thinking also influence children's behavior. The major strength of gender schema theory is in the understanding it provides about the maintenance and power of gender beliefs.

Gender Schema Theories

Gender schema theories address the ways in which children represent and process gender-related knowledge (Liben and Bigler, 2002). Schemas are viewed as dynamic knowledge structures that change according to situations and age-related changes in person perception with content that varies with social experiences and other individual and cultural differences. According to this perspective, upon identifying themselves as girls or boys, children selectively attend to, and remember, own-gender relevant information and are motivated to use this information to shape their own behaviors and make gender-related inferences and judgments. As organizers of gender development, gender schemas are thought to link gender cognitions with gender-related behaviors. However, it is important to note that gender schemas may be prone to errors or exaggerations and may vary with the child's culture and her/his individual social experience or interest (e.g., 5-year-old girl: “Dads have belts. Moms don't have belts.”).

3 Bridging Self-Categorization Theory and Gender Schema Theory

Self-categorization theory and gender schema theory share an emphasis on the fundamental importance of ingroup identities in shaping people's perceptions and behavior. Self-categorization theory addresses the impact of group identities more generally, whereas gender schema theory is more narrowly focused on gender identities. According to both theories, people are more interested in information when it is relevant to one's ingroup than to the outgroup.

Both self-categorization theory and gender schema theory make an analogous distinction between personal and group identities. Self-categorization theory explicitly incorporates both personal and social identities into its model (Turner, 1985), and it postulates ways that contextual factors influence the relative salience of personal or social identities. Gender schema theory proposes some similar (although not identical) constructs. As explicated in gender schema theory (Liben & Bigler, 2002; Martin, 2000; Martin et al., 1995; Serbin, Powlishta, & Gulko, 1993), children have gender schemas regarding the self (gender-role self-concept or “own sex” schema) and gender schemas regarding others (gender attitudes or “superordinate” gender schema).

Self-categorization theory and gender schema theory appear good candidates for theory bridging. (Although gender schema theory is specifically focused on gender development, schema or information-processing approaches are more broadly applied in the study of children's social behavior and development.) Bridging could be aimed at integrating key constructs and processes related to children's identities and intergroup relationships. Relative to gender schema theory, self-categorization theory makes a more explicit distinction between personal and social identities. In addition, self-categorization theory addresses motivational factors that can affect the relative salience of personal and group identities as well as contextual factors that can affect the strength of intergroup biases. Thus, there are processes highlighted in self-categorization that could help to enrich gender schema theory.

Conversely, gender schema theory more fully explicates how people's knowledge and beliefs about their ingroup (i.e., gender schemas) influence information processing (attention, memory, and inferences). Further, gender schema theory (and cognitive-developmental theory) point to some possible developmental patterns that may underlie the development of children's social identities. Thus, there are processes addressed in gender schema theory that could be incorporated into self-categorization theory. Because each theory has its relative strengths, theory bridging could lead to a more complete picture of the ways that gender categorization shapes people's identities, information processing, and behavior.

Gender schema theory

Another cognitive explanation of gender development is gender schema theory, developed by Carol L. Martin, Charles F. Halverson, and Sandra L. Bem. Gender schemas refer to mental structures that organize incoming information according to gender categories and in turn lead people to perceive the world in terms of gender. They also help people to match their behavior with the behavior they believe is appropriate for their own gender.

Gender schemas are thought to develop in a two-step process. First, children develop in-group/out-group schemas, in which they learn how their society dichotomizes information according to gender. Once they have acquired gender identity, they are able to determine which information applies to their own group (i.e., their own gender) and then proceed to pay more attention to that information. Second, children acquire an own-sex schema as they continue to develop knowledge about their own gender and use that knowledge to guide their behavior and their thinking. Unlike cognitive development theory, gender schema theory contends that children begin to behave in consistently gendered ways as soon as they have established gender identity. Gendered thinking and behavior initially become more rigid but then becomes more flexible across late childhood and adolescence, perhaps due to cognitive development. Despite increases in gender flexibility, gender schemas are relatively constant throughout adolescence and into adulthood, although they can be experimentally manipulated to some extent. Across the life span, gender schemas indicate what information in the environment is most relevant to the self and therefore worthy of attention.

Research indicates that people do organize and remember information according to gender categories and are more likely to attend to and exhibit preferences for activities associated with their own gender. For instance, children are more likely to play with and learn more about gender-neutral toys if they are told that the toys are for their gender. This finding suggests that gender schemas may influence children's behavior. In other studies, children who viewed pictures of people engaged in gender-inconsistent behavior later recalled that the pictures had depicted gender-consistent behavior. For example, if children saw a picture of girls boxing, they later believed that the picture had shown boys boxing. This finding indicates that children had distorted memories in which they perceived or remembered pictures according to their gender schemas. As with cognitive development theory, however, research has not explicitly investigated whether and how gender schemas change during adolescence, nor the extent to which gender schemas influence adolescents' gendered identity, attitudes, and behaviors. This information would enhance understandings of how cognitive development impacts gender development in adolescence.

4.4 Developmental Trends

Occupational choices and aspirations typically change across development as youth gain an increasing sense of self- and gendered-expectations. Gender schema theory suggests that children form a schema for gender at a very early age and that the gender schema becomes increasingly complex as children develop (Bem, 1981).

Preschool children often have unrealistic expectation for their careers, yet those fantasy careers are typically based on gender stereotypes. For example, young boys often aspire to become professional athletes or take on careers that require bravery and strength such as firefighter or police officer. Young girls often aspire to careers that require grace such as ballerina or helping careers such as veterinarian or teacher. When children reach school age, gender becomes the most powerful predictor of occupational aspirations (Teig & Susskind, 2008).

When students reach early adolescence they often report that multiple values are important to them in their future career, even if those values are incongruent. For example, young teens reported that they wanted a job that helps others, pays well, provides power and responsibility, and allows them time with their family, even though very few careers might actually provide all of these goals (Weisgram et al., 2010). As teens grow older and become more realistic, they report fewer goals to be “very important.” They seem to recognize that sacrifices and compromises must be made in careers and therefore goals must be prioritized. For example, college students recognized that having a high salary or a job with a lot of power might not allow them to have as much time with their family (Weisgram et al., 2011).

The meta-analysis on gender differences in job attribute preferences found that gender differences among elementary school children were small (Konrad et al., 2000). Although elementary school boys were more likely to prefer a job that included power (d = 0.28), there were small gender differences in preferences for earnings (d = 0.14) and trivial differences in helping others (d = − 0.08). Junior high and high school students showed greater gender differences in job attribute preferences than did elementary school students. For example, high school boys were slightly more likely than girls to prefer higher earning (d = 0.20) and girls were more likely than boys to prefer jobs that included helping others (d = − 0.45). Undergraduate students reported even more gender-stereotyped job attribute preferences than high school students, but gender differences among college students decreased when students were matched by major.

Women's representation in STEM careers has often been called a “leaky pipeline” because girls’ interest and self-efficacy in STEM declines with age (Alper, 1993). Whereas young girls often enjoy math and science and earn high grades in these subjects, they become less interested in science courses in high school (Miller, Blessing, & Schwartz, 2007). Perhaps girls are more likely to perceive gender discrimination in advanced math and science courses (Hayes & Bigler, 2013), or years of gender stereotyping and stereotype threat wear on girls who were once interested in science and math. Perhaps women become more aware of their occupational goals and see STEM careers as incongruent with their goals for family life or altruism (Diekman et al., 2010).

2.1.2 Social Cognitions About Gender

One area that has received little attention until recently is the idea that children's expectations about peers, that is, the expected similarity that children believe they share with same-sex peers contributes to gender segregation (Barbu, Le-Maner-Idrissi, & Jouanjean, 2000; Powlishta, 1995). This idea begins with children recognizing and acting upon the knowledge that some peers belong to the same social category as they do (McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Cook, 2001). For instance, children may be biased in favor of in-group members as theories of social identity and intergroup relations suggest (Arthur, Bigler, Liben, Gelman, & Ruble, 2008; Bigler & Liben, 2006; Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987). Once children recognize who belongs to each gender category, according to gender schema theory, they are motivated to learn about the category of gender (especially their own gender), and they strive for consistency between their gender cognitions and behavior (Martin & Halverson, 1981). For instance, children want to be like their own gender group members, which leads them to choose to interact with same-sex peers (Martin, 1994). Empirical evidence supports this claim: a number of studies have demonstrated that children report that they would prefer to interact with even unfamiliar same-sex peers (Lobel, Gewirtz, Pras, Schoeshine-Rokach, & Ginton, 1999; Martin, 1989; Zucker, Wilson-Smith, Kurita, & Stern, 1995). Consistent with these approaches and with gender schema theory, we agree that the in-group versus out-group features associated with gender provide the initial and most basic form of expected similarity (Martin, 2000; Martin & Halverson, 1981), but we also believe that children abstract information about similarities and draw strong conclusions based on their beliefs about shared similarity within gender. That is, beyond simple category similarity, we argue that children develop global “gender theories” about same-sex peers—that they like the same activities and believe they are similar in other ways—and that is these theories that largely drive the appeal of same-sex playmates (Martin, 2000). These theories are also likely grounded in children's beliefs that there are “essences” that define social categories (Gelman & Taylor, 2000). The appeal of social cognitive gender theories is that they provide proximal explanations of gender segregation based on children's knowledge of peers’ sex and the expectancies they hold about members of each sex.

Factors Influencing the Salience of Gender During Adolescence

A combination of cultural, interpersonal, cognitive-motivational, and biological factors influence many of the gender-related issues that youth face during adolescence. Like many other topics in psychology, much of the research on gender-related issues that youth face during adolescence is based on ethnic majority youth in Western cultures including the United States, Canada, Northern Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. As a result, much of the research reported on in this article is based on these youth. Less research has been done with ethnic minority groups in Western cultures and with cultural groups in other parts of the world. It is important to note that cultural context is a crucial factor in understanding adolescents' experiences in general as well as in understanding gender-related issues.

5.1.2 Effects of gender identity on behavior

Gender roles also create sex differences in behavior when people adopt them as gender identities. Masculine and feminine identities guide behavior through self-regulatory processes. That is, people use their gender identity as a personal standard by against which to evaluate and guide their behavior (Moretti & Higgins, 1999; Wood, Christensen, Hebl, & Rothgerber, 1997).

Just as agency and communion are typical themes of social expectations, people commonly internalize aspects of gender roles involving agency and communion (Wood & Eagly, 2009). Men on average describe themselves as relatively agentic, and women on average describe themselves as relatively communal, as shown by Twenge's (1997b) meta-analysis of gender identity measures that assess self-reports in these traits (e.g., Bem, 1974; Spence & Helmreich, 1978). People also may adopt other aspects of gender roles. For example, women may think of themselves as bonded to others in close relationships, whereas men may think of themselves as independent yet linking to others through teams and organizations (Cross & Madson, 1997; Gardner & Gabriel, 2004). In addition, people define themselves by sex-typical vocations, activities, and interests (Lippa, 2005).

On average, men's and women's behavior corresponds to their gender identities. For example, Athenstaedt (2003) found that women more than men engaged in feminine behaviors (e.g., taking care of a friend, telling partner about troubles at work) and men more than women engaged in masculine behaviors (e.g., fixing the car, paying for dinner). In addition, for both sexes, having a communal identity was associated with feminine behaviors and having an agentic identity with masculine behaviors (see also meta-analysis by Taylor & Hall, 1982). Also, in experience-sampling diary research of everyday social interactions, more masculine individuals showed greater agency in their interactions and more feminine individuals showed greater communion (Witt & Wood, 2010). In other research, people with gender-stereotypical vocational and leisure interests preferred hobbies and activities typical of their own sex (Lippa, 2005).

Self-regulation of gender identities proceeds in stages, beginning with testing the extent to which current behavior is progressing toward gender standards (e.g., Carver & Scheier, 2008). Consistent with Bem's (1981) gender schema theory, people may be especially sensitive to information relevant to their own gender identities and may closely attend to, process, and recall gender-related behaviors and other information. When they perceive closer matches between their behavior and standards, people experience positive emotions and increased self-esteem. In contrast, acting so as to increase mismatches produces negative emotions and decreased esteem.

In evidence of the role of emotions in regulation, people with stronger gender identities experienced a boost in positive affect and self-esteem when they conformed more to their gender standards (Witt & Wood, 2010; Wood et al., 1997). Specifically, men with a stronger masculine identity felt better about themselves after recalling recent interactions in which they acted dominant and assertive, whereas women with a stronger feminine identity felt better after recalling interactions in which they acted nurturant (Wood et al., 1997, Study 1). A similar pattern emerged in this research when participants vicariously imagined themselves in a series of pictures depicting dominant and assertive interactions (e.g., directing others at a task) or nurturance (e.g., comforting a friend). The self-concept plays a central role in this process. When asked to describe themselves, participants with stronger gender identities endorsed self-attributes (e.g., being powerful, being sensitive) that were less discrepant from the attributes they ideally would like to possess or believed they ought to possess (Wood et al., 1997, Study 2). These discrepancy scores between individuals’ actual and ideal or ought selves appear in Fig. 2.3. Thus, acting in gender-typical ways reduced the discrepancy between actual self-concepts and self standards.

Emotion is important in self-regulation because it serves as a signal to guide future behavior. When behavior is discrepant from desired standards, the resulting bad feelings signal the need to shift behavior to bring it more in line with the standard. People thus use emotions as feedback about whether they need to change their behavior in the future. To illustrate this change in behavior, Josephs, Markus, and Tafarodi (1992) provided men and women with feedback that they had failed at an initial task. When the task was gender typical (compared with a gender-atypical task), high self-esteem men predicted greater success at future competitive achievement tasks, and high self-esteem women predicted greater success at future interpersonal tasks (Josephs et al., 1992). By channeling their subsequent behavior in this way, high self-esteem people could ensure that they more closely matched their favorable gender self-concept in the future.

Subsequent research indicated that people spontaneously make comparisons between their gender identities and their behavior in daily life (Witt & Wood, 2010). In a diary study conducted across 2 weeks, participants with a strong agentic identity increased self-esteem and positive feelings following social interactions in which they acted in agentic ways. Similarly, participants with a strong communal identity showed heightened self-esteem and positive feelings after interactions involving communal actions. Thus, for participants with strong gender identities, acting in line with that identity—communion for feminine identities and dominance for masculine ones—boosted positive emotions and aligned their actual selves more closely with their desired selves. In this way, positive feelings can signal regulatory success from acting in accord with a valued gender identity, and negative feelings can signal failure from acting inconsistently with the identity.

Gender standards do not, however, always enhance well-being. People may feel that gender role standards are imposed by others so that they are pressured to act in gender-typical ways (Sanchez & Crocker, 2005). Children also may feel pressured by peers and parents to conform to gender role expectations (Egan & Perry, 2001). These external pressures are linked to lowered self-esteem and well-being in adults and children (Egan & Perry, 2001; Good & Sanchez, 2010). In contrast with this potential for gender role standards to have a negative influence on individuals, stronger feminine identity typically is associated with greater well-being among women, and stronger masculine identity with greater well-being among men (DiDonato & Berenbaum, 2011). Nonetheless, masculine identity in the form of a greater personal sense of agency promotes well-being in both women and men (DiDonato & Berenbaum, 2011; Whitley, 1983). In Witt and Wood's (2010) research, the highest levels of self-esteem were reported when people with either a strong masculine or feminine identity acted consistently with this identity. Thus, gender identities function like other self-regulatory guides to behavior, and especially when the motivation to conform to them arises from personal, autonomous sources, they can promote well-being.

Consistent with the logic of self-regulation, the greater importance that women place on close relationships links their identity especially closely to the standards of valued others. Girls are likely to develop self-standards based on parents’ and close friends’ evaluations and self-regulate to these standards, whereas boys are more likely to develop self-standards that are independent of close others (Moretti & Higgins, 1999). As these researchers found, women experienced more negative affect than men when their personal behavior was discrepant from valued others’ standards. Women's reliance on others for self-definition is part of the larger phenomenon in which women's well-being is closely tied to the quality of their close relationships. Thus, being married is beneficial for both sexes, but women experience more emotional lows with poor relationships and emotional benefits from good ones than do men (Wood, Rhodes, & Whelan, 1989). Physical health outcomes yield the same pattern: Both sexes benefit from marriage, but women show especially negative outcomes from marital distress (Kiecolt-Glaser & Newton, 2001).

Even though gender identities, on average, foster sex-typical behavior, they also promote variability in sex differences because these identities differ across individuals and situations. The strength of gender identities can be affected by situational cues such as the sex of an interaction partner (e.g., Leszczynski & Strough, 2008) or being a solo representative of one's sex in a group (e.g., Sekaquaptewa & Thompson, 2002). Also, identities based on other group memberships intersect with gender identity. Therefore, some researchers now emphasize how identities pertaining to qualities such as race, ethnicity, social class, disability, and sexual orientation intersect gender identities and account for individual differences among women or men (Cole, 2009; Landrine & Russo, 2010; Shields, 2008). In general, research on gender identities has illuminated not only general trends for women to display communion and men agency but also contexts in which some women behave in masculine ways and some men behave in feminine ways. Gender identity thus contributes, along with social expectations, to variation in masculine and feminine behaviors.

Gender-related research

According to gender schema theory (see Martin & Ruble, 2004; Martin, Ruble, & Szkrybalo, 2002), children’s mental representations of gender-related concepts about themselves and others (i.e., their gender schema) influence their information processing and behavior. In particular, gender schema theory posits that the emergence of gender identity (i.e., recognition of being either a girl or a boy), leads to increased motivation to selectively attend to and recall information about the same-gender group and to behave in gender consistent ways (Martin et al., 2002). Experimental evidence has emerged indicating that, consistent with theory, children’s gender schemas do, indeed, influence children’s information processing and behavior (see Martin & Dinella, 2002, for a review). This research has employed the use of gender-labeling of novel non-gender-typed toys or activities to examine the direct link between gender stereotypes and children’s responses. In these studies, experimenters most often labeled the novel gender-neutral toys and activities by telling the children that most girls or most boys like a particular toy or do well at a particular task. This vein of research has demonstrated that children pay more attention to, have better memory for, have better performance with, and have greater expectations of success with toys and activities that were labeled by experimenters as appropriate for their sex. These studies, however, are few, and, as Martin and Dinella (2002) have noted, interpretation of findings can sometimes be difficult due to methodological limitations.

Priming offers researchers the opportunity to determine how children’s mental representations of gender influence their information processing and behavior in a manner that is more covert than those currently described in the literature. For instance, placing children in a waiting room with either dolls or trucks or having children watch a cartoon depicting gender stereotyped behavior or characters prior to entering the lab would activate children’s gender schemas in a more subtle manner than methods previously used and would provide information about the degree to which demand characteristics may account for previous findings. Researchers might, for example, subliminally expose children to gender stereotyped words or pictures of gender-typed objects and assess how children’s knowledge of gender stereotypes colors their interpretation of gender-neutral stimuli. In particular, researchers could examine how subliminally exposing children to gender cues influences how they categorize and further process and respond to novel non-gendered objects, people, and events. Furthermore, priming children’s mental representations of gender would address Martin et al.’s (2002) suggestion that the links between children’s gender schemas and behavior may be more apparent when stereotypes are salient. Priming would allow researchers to make children’s gender schemas salient and assess whether this activation leads to more gender consistent behavior. The potential for using priming to activate children’s gender schemas is further supported by related research using the IAT (Greenwald et al., 1998) to tap preschoolers’ implicit gender-related social cognitions (Cvencek, Greenwald, et al., 2011). Given that researchers found that preschoolers’ implicit gender attitudes (as assessed using an IAT) were correlated with explicit attitudes, sex, and gendered-play behavior, it is plausible to expect that priming can be used to activate children’s gender schemas. As such, it stands to reason that future research using priming to examine how representations of gender drive children’s information processing and behavior may prove particularly useful in ruling out alternative interpretations and addressing unanswered questions.