The Developmental Characteristic Of Children And Adolescents' Spontaneous Trait Inference And The Gender Stereotypes Effect

Social cognition of children and adolescents was from juvenility to maturity, they know the important role of internal psychological characteristics for others'behavior gradually during communicating with others, and then knew personality traits implying the cross-situational consistency or temporal stability, When the inference process became habitual, it could happen unconsciously, and occurred spontaneously.Gender stereotypes are an important pattern of stereotypes. They had an impact on children'socialization, made children act with their own gender and assimilate the behavior norms expected by society. They had a penetrative impact on children'Social cognition process. Particular in the automatic Social cognition process processes. Stereotypes may have an important influence one the individual's cognition and judgment, this influence is a unintentional and need little influence resources.The development of children and adolescents'spontaneous trait inference and gender stereotypes were two relatively separate, yet closely related research topics. A large body of research, both empirical and theoretical, had been conducted by psychologists outside China.In the present thesis, comprehensive literature review was made with regard to gender stereotypes and spontaneous trait inference .Further analyses were focused on the limitations of the prior research. On the basis of those, two related studies were presented following the purposes set forth in this research.In study 1, the developmental trend and characteristics of 8-,11-and 19-year-old children and adolescents'spontaneous trait inference were explored systematically by recognition probe method, The gender stereotypes effect existed in children and adolescents'spontaneous trait inference were further examined. In study 2, the influence factor of the gender stereotypes effect existed in spontaneous trait inference were explored systematically by recognition probe method.The findings in the above three studies are as follows:1.With age, children and adolescents could make different spontaneous trait inference. Spontaneous trait inference occurred with 11-year-old children and college students, but not with 8-year-old children.2.11-year-old children make spontaneous trait inference don't effected by the gender stereotypes, they make spontaneous trait inference for all trait sentence; 19-year-old children make spontaneous trait inference effected by the gender stereotypes, they make spontaneous trait inference for neutral and stereotype-consistent trait sentence, but don't make spontaneous trait inference for all stereotype-inconsistent sentence.3. With cognitive load, adolescents could make different spontaneous trait inference. For neutral sentence, no differences in spontaneous trait inference as a function of stereotypes were found. Under high- cognitive load, spontaneous trait inferences were more likely for stereotype-consistent trait sentence than others.4. With different subliminal prime, adolescents could make different spontaneous trait inference. When prime with words, the conclusions are similar with no prime. but when prime with pictures, responses on stereotype-consistent trait sentence were significantly slower than responses on neutral trait sentence, that is the spontaneous trait inference were enhances when category label was stereotype-consistent informants prior to the behavior.These findings were discussed respectively in the above two studies. On the basis of these, general discussion was made, and the questions that need to be inquired in future were analyzed.