Gender stereotypes and gender identity as interacting influences on children's self-concepts: A self-socialization model of gender development.

摘要

The goal of this study was to test the gender self-socialization model (GSSM). This model suggests that gender identity motivates children to strive for cognitive consistency between their gender stereotypes and their self-efficacy for those stereotypes. This study presents a novel approach to stereotype assessment by focusing on children's idiosyncratic stereotypes (as opposed to number of commonly shared stereotypes, which do not provide detailed information about the types of stereotypes individual children hold). Participants were 305 children in grades three through eight (M age = 10.8 years). Independent variables included children's stereotypes of 62 contextually tagged behaviors and gender identity (comprising five dimensions). Interactive influences of children's stereotypes and gender identity on self-efficacy were investigated. As expected, stereotypes and gender identity worked together to predict children's self-efficacy perception for the 62 behaviors. These findings suggest that the role of gender identity is important in the adoption of personally held gender stereotypes.