Topic Summaries

Cognitive explanations of gender development

A-Level > Psychology > AQA > A-Level Psychology Topic Summaries > Gender > Cognitive explanations of gender development
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  • 👥 Kohlberg’s (1966) theory of gender constancy: all children go through the same three stages of gender development:
    • Gender identity: occurs between ages 2 and 3 when a child can identify themselves as male or female. This is based on superficial characteristics and external appearances like hairstyle and clothing, so they may believe that if a person changes these characteristics, then their gender also changes.
    • Gender stability: occurs between ages 3 and 7 when a child can understand their own gender, and the fact that boys grow up to become men and girls grow up to become women.
    • Gender constancy: occurs from 7+ when a child understands that their gender and other people’s genders are permanent concepts. This is typically when they want same-sex role models to imitate to confirm expectations of their behaviour.
    • 👥 Munroe et al. (1984) conducted research on children from Belize, Nepal, American Samoa, and Kenya and observed the same three stages, thus strengthening this theory.
  • Gender schema theory: 👥 Martin and Halverson (1981) agreed with Kohlberg that there is a positive correlation between rising age and an increasingly sophisticated understanding of gender identity. However, they also suggested that there should be a higher emphasis on schemas as they theorised this was an active process, not a passive one.
    • Schemas are mental frameworks of preconceived ideas and beliefs about certain things. Martin and Halverson suggested a child begins to identify with a certain gender around the age of 2 to 3, then actively seek out information to confirm these ideas. This contrasts to Kohlberg as he believes that active gender-based behaviour imitation only begins after achieving gender constancy in stage 3.
    • The child’s gender identity schema is likely to be based upon stereotypical male or female behaviours (e.g.girls doing dance and boys playing football). However, when the child’s schema becomes more advanced with experience, they have higher self-esteem because they have confirmed their gender identity and had it validated by others.
    • With the development of children’s gender identity schema comes the creation of in-groups and out-groups. Children will identify with their own in-group from the ages of 3 to 7 due to the higher self-esteem they gain from this, whereas after the age of 8 they will also gain an appreciation for the out-group.

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