From early in development, race biases how children think about gender—often in a manner that treats Black women as less typical and representative of
This content will become publicly available on May 1, 2025
Recent work suggests that the stereotype associating brilliance with men may underpin women's underrepresentation in prestigious careers, yet little is known about its development and consequences in non‐Western contexts. The present research examined the onset of this stereotype and its relation to children's motivation in 5‐ to 7‐year‐old Korean children (
- Award ID(s):
- 2145809
- PAR ID:
- 10537820
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley Online Library
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Child Development
- Volume:
- 95
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 0009-3920
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 913 to 928
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract women in general than White or Asian women. The present study (N = 89, ages 7–11; predominately Hispanic, White, and multi‐racial children) examined the generalizability of this phenomenon across middle childhood and the mechanisms underlying variability in its development. Replicating prior work, children were slower and less accurate to categorize the gender of Black women compared to Asian or White women, as well as compared to Black men, suggesting that children perceived Black women as less representative of their gender. These effects were robust across age within a racially and ethnically diverse sample of children. Children's tendencies to view their own racial identities as expansive and flexible, however, attenuated these effects: Children with more flexible racial identities also had gender concepts that were more inclusive of Black women. In contrast, the tendency for race to bias children's gender representations was unrelated to children's multiple classification skill and racial essentialism. These findings shed light on the mechanisms underlying variation in how race biases gender across development, with critical implications for how children's own identities shape the development of intergroup cognition and behavior. -
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Abstract Success in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields is often believed to require intellectual talent (“brilliance”). Given that many cultures associate men more than women with brilliance, this belief poses an obstacle to women's STEM pursuits. Here, we investigated the developmental roots of this phenomenon, focusing specifically on young children's beliefs about math (
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Among adults, brilliance‐oriented FABs are an obstacle to diversity in science and technology, but the childhood antecedents of these beliefs are not well understood.
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N = 174) found that FABs that associate success in math (vs. reading/writing) with brilliance were already present in Grades 1−4.Brilliance‐oriented FABs about math were negatively associated with elementary school students’ (and particularly girls’) math motivation—specifically, their math self‐efficacy and interest.
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