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This study examines adolescents' knowledge and endorsement of gender-stereotypes of competency in school subjects, and how these stereotypes relate to their educational choices (both actual school subjects, and hypothetical projects). It also examines the influence of gender majority biases and whether there are gender differences in who adolescents choose to copy. Prior research has identified that adolescents know and, albeit to a lesser extent, endorse gender stereotypes about competence in different school subjects (Wood et al., 2022). Additionally, adolescent girls were more likely to reject gender stereotypes than adolescent boys. Moreover, Wood et al. (2022) found that boys were more likely to make more own gender stereotyped subject choices than girls. The researchers suggest that this could be explained by gender differences in levels of peer influence. The current study predicts that 1) adolescents of all ages will demonstrate knowledge and endorsement of school subject gender stereotypes, with knowledge being higher than endorsement, 2) Stereotype rejection scores (i.e., difference between knowledge and endorsement scores) will be higher in girls than in boys, and 3) Boys will show higher levels of own-gender typical subject choice selection than girls. Social learning is key to building skills and knowledge, with individuals strategically selecting who to learn from (Molleman et al., 2019). Studies have revealed that children’s choices are often influenced by their peers and what the peer-majority are choosing to do (Haun & Tomasello, 2011). Despite a wealth of childhood social learning studies, adolescent studies are relatively scarce. Ruggeri and colleagues (2018) found that adolescents are influenced by their peers. To date, little research has examined the effect of own-gender or peer-majority influence has on adolescents’ school subject choices. Therefore, we aim to investigate adolescents’ level of interest in joining hypothetical gender-typical and gender-atypical community projects, where peer gender majority enrolment information either corresponds or does not correspond with the pupil’s own gender. The study predicts that 4) adolescents of all ages will score own-gender typical projects as being of higher interest than other-gender typical projects, 5) adolescents of all ages will score own-gender majority projects higher than other-gender majority projects, and 6) the main effect predicted in hypothesis 5 will be complicated by an interaction; such that scores for own-gender typical projects will be less affected by gender majority than scores for other-gender typical projects. Finally, the study aims to explore the relationships in males and females separately, between own-gender peer-majority influence, an adolescents’ endorsement of gender stereotypes and the real-world subject choices that adolescents are making. References Haun, D. B. M., & Tomasello, M. (2011). Conformity to Peer Pressure in Preschool Children. Child Development, 82(6), 1759-1767. https://10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01666.x Molleman, L., Kanngiesser, P., & van den Bos, W. (2019). Social information use in adolescents: The impact of adults, peers and household composition. PLoS One, 14(11), e0225498. https://10.1371/journal.pone.0225498 Ruggeri, A., Luan, S., Keller, M., & Gummerum, M. (2018). The Influence of Adult and Peer Role Models on Children’ and Adolescents’ Sharing Decisions. Child Development, 89(5), 1589-1598. https://10.1111/cdev.12916 Wood, L. A., Hutchison, J., Aitken, M., & Cunningham, S. J. (2022). Gender stereotypes in UK children and adolescents: Changing patterns of knowledge and endorsement. British Journal of Social Psychology, 61(3), 768-789. https://10.1111/bjso.12510 |
