THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDRENS BELIEFS ABOUT SOCIAL AND BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF GENDER DIFFERENCES

2 studies examined children's beliefs about the origins of gender diff erences and addressed 2 main questions: (a) What age-related changes a re there in children's beliefs about the contributions of nature and n urture to the development of gender roles? and (b) Do children differe ntiate between aspects of gender roles that adults believe to be more biologically determined and those they believe to be more socially inf luenced? 160 4- to 10-year-olds and 32 adults participated in Study 1. Participants were told about a child raised with only opposite-sex in dividuals and were asked whether the child would grow up to possess a series of gender-stereotyped, biological, and control properties. Unti l age 9 or 10, children believed that gender-stereotyped properties wo uld develop in an infant regardless of the social context of upbringin g. Study 2 provides evidence that children were not merely reporting s tereotypical category associations. These studies suggest that young c hildren may have an early bias to view gender categories as predictive of essential, underlying similarities between members, but later come to acknowledge the role of other causal mechanisms (e.g., the social environment) in shaping how category members develop.