Experimenter influences and children's cross-gender behavior

We measured 120 third and fourth grade children's willingness to participat e in several behavioral tasks after assessing their verbal preferences for gender-typed and cross-gender activities (children were primarily Caucasian ). Before beginning each task children were either encouraged to or discour aged from engaging in cross-gender activities, or they were encouraged to c hoose whatever activities they preferred. Relative to the control condition , experimenters were able to reduce but not increase the proportion of cros s-gender activities children engaged in. Children who gave high ratings to cross-gender items during the preference test were more willing than other children to take cross-gender selections home.