Among the 5-year-olds, both boys and girls associated brilliance with their own gender. But, girls at the age of their 6 are less likely than boys to believe their own gender is ‘really, really smart’. The study suggests that how does gender stereotypes affect on younger minds.
Gender stereotypes are powerful. It influences to make inaccurate, overly simplistic generalizations of others based upon their gender.
The study says that the gender stereotypes affects girls as young as 6 years old. It impacts more on their choices. Through this study, scientists actually wanted to know if this broader stereotype affects girl’s choices.
Psychology professor Andrei Cimpian said, “Because these ideas are present at such an early age. They have so much time to affect the educational trajectories of boys and girls.”
“Not only do we see that girls just starting out in school are absorbing some of the society’s stereotyped notions of brilliance. But these young girls are also choosing activities based on these stereotypes. And This is heartbreaking.”
Scientists primarily analyzed child’s way of understanding the concept of brilliance. So they used the phrase really, really smart for this purpose. They involved almost 200 boys and 200 girls aged five to seven in a series of exercises and tested them.
During one of the experiment, children heard a story about a gender-neutral protagonist. After that scientists asked them to select the smart character from four pictures which involve two men and two women.
The results suggest that the five-year-old boys and girls both rate their own gender highly in terms of being smart. They picked their own gender as smart around 70 percent of the time. And the ages of six and seven, girls are significantly less likely to do so.
That means girls are linked to brilliance including women- 48 percent of the time. At the other hand, boys including men have 65 percent.
In another experiment, scientists asked children to choose their preferences for two games. The games- one for ‘really, really smart’ children whereas the other for children who try ‘really, really hard’.
Once more time, five years children didn’t show a significant level of difference in their interest for these games. The six and seven ages girls seemed as almost 40 percent less likely to be interested in the ‘smart’ game.
Scientists said, “the results showed the sobering conclusion. Many children think the idea that brilliance is a male quality at a young age.”
David Moore said, “This work offers insight into the intransigence of gender disparities in math and science. It highlights the importance of attacking the problem of gender disparities in society. It because it shows that we are influenced by the society we encounter starting when we are extremely young.”