Preschoolers' Beliefs About Gender Differences Of Aggressive And Prosocial Behaviors

Gender is a central theme in early childhood. Children's understanding of gender-relevant information has long been thought to be a major component of early sex-role development. There is a wealth of evidence that children's toys, games and clothing, as well as their patterns of social interaction, are differentiated along gender lines from an early age. Aggressive and prosocial behaviors which are two common behaviors in the childhood, also have gender differences. If children perceive and believe the gender differences of aggressive and prosocial behaviors, they will have beliefs about gender differences of those. Indeed, beliefs about gender differences are gender schemas. They are not passive copies of the environment, but instead they are actively constructed by children in their interaction with the environment.In the present thesis, a comprehensive literature review was made with regard to beliefs about gender differences. Further analyses were focused on the limitations in the prior researches, and then the issue of this thesis was put forward. This research on 191 children aged 3–5, using different methods, explored preschoolers'beliefs about gender differences of aggressive and prosocial behaviors and their developmental changes as well as the relationship of the two beliefs. Study 1 presented preschoolers with a series of open-ended questions in which they were told about the gender of story characters and were asked to infer the aggressive and prosocial behaviors in which those characters might perform. If the aggressive and prosocial behaviors are significantly associated with one gender, preschoolers have the beliefs about gender differences. Study 2 presented preschoolers with a series of stories in which they were told about aggressive and prosocial behaviors of story characters and were asked to infer the gender of those characters. There were three measures called implicit measure, comparative explicit measure and independent explicit measure in study 2 exploring children's beliefs about gender differences of aggressive and prosocial behaviors and the relationship of these two beliefs. Study 3 investigated the recall of story characters'gender and behaviors using a memory test strategy to explore children's beliefs about gender differences of aggressive and prosocial behaviors.The main findings in the above three studies are as follows:1. Preschoolers had beliefs about gender difference of physical aggression, and they associated physical aggression with boys whenever inferring behaviors from the information of gender, or inferring gender from the information of behaviors, or recalling the information of gender and behavior. These beliefs became stronger and stronger with age, that is to say, older children associated physical aggression with boys more than younger children.2. Preschoolers didn't have beliefs about gender difference of relational aggression. Although some boys or girls of some ages associated relational aggression with boys in study 2, there weren't beliefs about gender difference of relational aggression for all children in three studies.3. When inferring gender from the information of behaviors, preschoolers associated girls with helping or caring on implicit measure, comparative explicit measure and independent explicit measure. Also, Making friends was associated with girls on implicit and comparative explicit measures. Children's beliefs about gender difference of these two behaviors became stronger and stronger with age. But there weren't beliefs about gender difference of prosocial behavior when inferring behaviors from gender and recalling the information of gender or behaviors.4. Preschoolers associated positive characteristics with girls and negative characteristics with boys. Children who associated one positive characteristic with girls associated another one with girls, and children who associated one negative characteristic with boys associated another one with boys. Children who associated positive characteristics with girls associated negative characteristics with boys.