Studying Sex Prejudice in Children

Summary

A methodology for studying sex prejudice in children was explored in this study. An eight-year-old child, dressed in a sexually neutral set of clothing, was filmed performing 12 common recreational activities—four of which had previously been identified as typical of boys, four as typical of girls, and four as common to both sexes. The film was shown to 352 children from the first, third and fifth grades of two public elementary schools. For half the children at each grade level the filmed model was identified as a girl (“Anne”), for the other half as a boy (“John”). The children were asked to rate the model's performance on each of the 12 activities, and ratings assigned by children viewing “Anne” and those viewing “John” were compared.

Both boys and girls were found to be biased in favor of their own sex, but this was especially true for girls. The tendency for girls watching “Anne” to assign higher ratings than those watching “John” was present among first graders, and became more pronounced with increasing age. Sex prejudice was unrelated to the sex-appropriateness of the activity being performed.