Biological Influences on Gender Typing (Hormonal Influences)

1. Biological Influences on Gender Typing (Hormonal Influences) • Experimental animal studies indicate that exposure to androgens (male sex hormones): • Increases active play in male and female mammals • Promotes male-typical sexual behavior and aggression and suppresses maternal caregiving behavior in a wide variety of species

2. Humans: • Cannot do experimental research for ethical reasons • Correlational research

3. In boys, naturally occurring variations in androgen levels are positively correlated with • Amount of rough-and-tumble play • Levels of physical aggression

4. Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH) • Disorder in which child is exposed to high levels of androgens from the prenatal period onward • Compared to girls without CAH, girls with CAH show • Higher activity levels • Greater interest in “male-typical” toys, activities, and occupations • Better spatial/mathematical abilities

5. Environmental Influences on Gender Typing • Social Learning Theory • Gender typing results from • imitation of same-sex models and reinforcement for this behavior

6. Parental Beliefs • Describe achievement, competition, and control of emotion as important for sons • Describe warmth, “ladylike” behavior, and closely supervised activities as important for daughters

7. Parental Behavior • On average, differences in parental treatment of boys and girls are not large • Does not mean that parental behavior is unimportant because: • Younger children receive more direct training in gender roles than older children • Some parents probably practice differential treatment more intensely than others

8. Parents create different environments for boys and girls beginning in infancy (e.g., bedrooms, toys)

9. Parents give toys that stress action and competition to boys (e.g., guns, cars, tools, footballs) • Give toys that emphasize nurturance, cooperation, and physical attractiveness to girls (e.g., dolls, tea sets, jewelry, jump ropes)

10. Parents reinforce independence in boys • React more positively when boys demand attention, run and climb, or try to take toys from others • Parents reinforce closeness/dependency in girls • More likely to direct play activities, provide help, encourage participation in household tasks, and refer to emotions

11. Fathers tend to treat boys and girls more differently than do mothers • Engage in more physically stimulating play with infant sons than daughters • Less likely to give “girl toys” (e.g., dolls) to sons

12. Pasterski et al. (2005) • Comparison of toy choices in girls and boys with CAH and their siblings (without CAH) • Girls with CAH played with “boys’ toys” more and “girls’ toys” less than their unaffected sisters • No differences between boys with CAH and their unaffected brothers

13. Parental Behavior • Parents gave more negative responses to their unaffected sons than to their unaffected daughters for play with “girls’ toys” • Parents gave more positive responses to daughters with CAH than to unaffected daughters for play with “girls’ toys”

14. Parental Behavior and Children’s Toy Choices • For unaffected children, parents’ positive and negative responses to children’s toy choices were related to children’s play behavior • Positive responses to children’s play with certain toys related to more play with those toys (and vice versa for negative responses) • For children with CAH, parental behavior was not related to children’s toy choices