Gender Intensification and Gender Generalization Biases in Pre-adolescents, Adolescents, and Emerging Adults

摘要

The gender intensification hypothesis claims that the socialization pressures of early adolescence lead to the adoption of traditional sex-typed roles. We tested this proposal by examining how extensively children (M-age = 9.39 years; N = 69, 31 female), early adolescents (M-age = 12.06 years; N = 70, 36 female), middle adolescents (M-age = 14.81 years; N = 65, 37 female), and emerging adults (M-age = 18.51 years; N = 70, 37 female) made generalizations from vignettes about male and female characters who had stereotypically feminine or masculine qualities and who had stereotypically neutral qualities. Results showed, first, age-related increases in gender-based generalization biases (the difference between stereotype-consistent and stereotype-neutral generalizations) to mid-adolescence and an age-related decrease in generalization biases from mid-adolescence to adulthood. Second, we found gender intensification in self-conceptualizations as masculine and feminine: More so than children and emerging adults, middle adolescents adopted stereotypically masculine and feminine traits. Third, age-related declines in gender stereotypes of occupations and traits were mediated by faith in intuition. Finally, faith in intuition and gender self-concepts moderated age-related increases in generalization biases such that the slope of the age-related increase in biases was steepest for participants who placed the most faith in intuition and whose gender self-concepts were traditional. Findings are discussed in terms of gender identification, dual-process theories of judgements, and the interference stereotypes create when adolescents construct problem representations.