BEARS ARE FOR BOYS - METAPHORICAL ASSOCIATIONS IN YOUNG CHILDRENS GENDER STEREOTYPES

Objects may be gender typed by virtue of their use by or association w ith one sex or the other or because they embody qualities that show a nonliteral or metaphorical correspondence to characteristics of or bel iefs about males and females. For Study 1, we developed the Gender Ste reotyping Test, a sorting task with which we determined that 4, 5-, an d 7-year-olds make use of both types of information in assigning objec ts or qualities to each sex. Study 2 replicated results with a new gro up of 4-year-olds and found that children whose test scores indicated at least some knowledge of gender identity were more likely to gender type metaphorical, but not conventional, items than those whose scores failed to indicate stable and constant knowledge of gender identity. In Study 3, which used a truncated version of the sorting task, childr en at age 3 made minimal use of either type of information. Gender ste reotypes are considered in terms of recent theories of metaphor as a c onceptual mechanism by which what is known in or about one domain is p rojected to another domain for the purpose of understanding.