Mary Driver Leinbach’s research while affiliated with University of Oregon and other places

Dimensions underlying the definition of items as feminine and masculine were examined in a set of three studies. Items chosen by children as belonging to males or females were used as the initial stimuli. These included traditionally stereotyped items such as a hammer and an iron, as well as more metaphorically related items such as bears and flowers. The raters in all three studies were undergraduates (70% White, 30% minorities). In Study 1, the items were rated using a set of 40 common adjectives. Three factors resulted: two related to masculine items and one to feminine items. In Study 2, a subset of the adjectives were used to rate abstract paintings that had been designated feminine or masculine by another group of adults. In Study 3, a set of stimuli were developed using the adjectives from the previous two studies. The items were rated as feminine or masculine and matched the initial coding of the adjective. The new items were also rated on the same adjectives by another set of adults. Again, the masculine adjectives were assigned to masculine items and feminine to feminine items. There was excellent agreement across three different sets of stimuli on the underlying dimensions of gender definition, even using items that were not traditionally stereotyped.

Objects may be gender typed by virtue of their use by or association with one sex or the other or because they embody qualities that show a nonliteral or metaphorical correspondence to characteristics of or beliefs about males and females. For Study 1, we developed the Gender Stereotyping Test, a sorting task with which we determined that 4-, 5-, and 7-year-olds make use of both types of information in assigning objects or qualities to each sex. Study 2 replicated results with a new group 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, children at age 3 made minimal use of either type of information. Gender stereotypes are considered in terms of recent theories of metaphor as a conceptual mechanism by which what is known in or about one domain is projected to another domain for the purpose of understanding.

In the present paper, a small sample of 27 two-parent families who were self-identified as sharing parenting equally are compared with a more traditional set of 42 two-parent families. Both samples were primarily Caucasian. Children from the egalitarian families adopted gender labels later during the second year of life and showed less sex role knowledge at age 4 than the children in the more traditional families. Fathers in the egalitarian sample were more liberal on the Attitudes Toward Women Scale than fathers in the F-L study. Fathers in the egalitarian sample interacted with their child 50% of the time (on an equal basis with the mothers), while fathers in the F-L sample contributed only 25% of the parent—child interaction. Boys in the F-L sample received more negative reactions, but this was not true in the egalitarian families. The point is made that it is fathers who are behaving differently in the egalitarian sample; the mothers in both samples were very similar in both attitudes and behaviors.

Experiment 1 used an infant-controlled habituation procedure to assess 5-, 7-, 9-, and 12-month-old infants' ability to discriminate pictures of adult male and female faces categorically. The 9-and 12-month-old groups habituated to a series of male or female faces, generalized habituation to a new face of the same sex, and dishabituated when shown an opposite-sex face, showing discrimination of male and female faces as separate categories. Use of an individual criterion to determine which infants in each group showed this effect indicated that a proportion of infants at each age were capable of making the discrimination categorically. In Experiment 2, the stimuli were altered so that different groups of 12-month-olds saw men and women pictured with unisex clothing, the women pictured with short hair, or the women pictured with short hair and both sexes pictured with unisex clothing. Decrements in categorical responding were significant only when both hair and clothing were altered. Individually, a proportion of infants in each group demonstrated categorical recognition of male and female faces despite the changes in the stimuli. These findings indicate that by 1 year of age, infants have incipient categories for men and women, and that these categories may include information about sex-typical hair length and clothing styles.

Examines research concerning the infant's earliest gender-related categorical discriminations, the tacit knowledge displayed by the barely verbal child, and the acceleration of sex-typing as gender labels for boys and girls are acquired. The authors contend that infants at the end of their 1st yr have clearly begun the process of categorizing people according to sex, but that the step from recognizing or perceiving the sexes categorically to conscious awareness of this distinction is a large one. The child's cognitive construction of gender schema is believed to be important, as are the attitudes, values, and affective valence attached to gender knowledge. It is argued that the child's construction of gender must be studied in a social context, emphasizing cognition without losing sight of the whole child. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Are gender labeling and gender stereotyping in 24-, 30-, and 36-mo-old children related to each other and to mothers' sex-role attitudes and responses to sex-typed behavior in a free-play situation with their children? The gender stereotyping measure indicated that gender schemata include information that is metaphorically rather than literally associated with each sex. Children who understood labels for boys and girls displayed more knowledge of gender stereotypes than children who did not. Mothers whose children had mastered labels for boys and girls endorsed more traditional attitudes toward women and toward sex roles within the family. The same mothers also initiated and reinforced more sex-typed toy play with their children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

This study examined the relationships among five measures that assess various cognitive components of the child's acquisition of gender. At around 2 years of age, children were given a task assessing their ability to accurately label as a boy or a girl some head-and-shoulders pictures of boys and girls. At 4 years of age, these children were given tasks measuring (1) the degree to which they found gender a salient parameter of categorization, (2) the amount of gender-related knowledge they could display (SERLI-SRD), (3) the degree to which their preferences were gender-typed (SERLI-SRP) and (4) the accuracy of their memory for gender-typed information. There was no consistent pattern of relationship among the children's scores on these five tools for measuring gender acquisition. Our findings suggest that gender is a multidimensional construct in children's development, and thus these results challenge the undimensional manner in which gender is repeatedly addressed in developmental theory and research.

Attractiveness ratings of 50 children aged 12–38 months were investigated in relation to adult socializing agents' behavior toward the children in their homes and play groups and their attitudes toward the children. Attractiveness scores were derived from 43 judges' ratings of facial photographs of the children. The same children were observed in play groups with female care givers; 40 of them were also observed in their homes with their parents. Play-group care givers rated the children for likability, tractability, and peer relations. Parents rated their attitudes toward giving routine care to their child. Attractiveness scores were not correlated with any adult attitude measures. Girls' attractiveness scores were positively correlated with their attempts to communicate in home and play group, and with mothers', fathers', and care givers' instructional responses, but negatively correlated with passive behavior in the home and with mothers' positive reactions. Boys' attractiveness scores were negatively correlated with passive behavior in the play group; no other significant correlations were found in the data for boys.

In the present research, 400 undergraduates were asked to describe their various construals of the male and female stereotypes using a modified form of the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ; Spence, Helmreich, & Stapp, 1974). Half of these subjects described their construals in terms of personality trait-adjectives and half described their construals in terms of appearance trait-adjectives. One-fourth of each subject pool were females describing males, one-fourth were females describing females, one-fourth were males describing females, and one-fourth were males describing males. All construals were scored such that each was depicted by a single score of stereotypicality ranging from nonstereotypic to extremely stereotypic. The scores from the various construals of the male and female stereotypes were averaged within subject and target groups, and the group means were compared for significant patterns of difference. Regardless of whether the subjects described the stereotypes in terms of personality trait-adjectives or in terms of appearence trait-adjectives, construals of maleness were framed more stereotypically than were construals of femaleness. In addition, construals of maleness were framed in particularly more stereotypic terms by females when the descriptions were phrased in terms of appearance trait-adjectives. Finally, the social construal of the male stereotype (How does society view males?) was more stereotypically framed by females using both personality and appearance adjectives, while the ideal construal male stereotype (Describe your ideal male) was more stereotypically framed by males using both personality and appearance adjectives.

The relation among children's ability to apply gender labels, their tendency to emit sex-typed behavior, and their parents' attitudes and reactions toward sex-typed behaviors was studied. The children were observed at home with their parents when the children were 18 months old, before any of them had passed the gender-labeling task, and at 27 months, when half had passed (early labelers) and half had not (late labelers). At 18 months, there were no differences in the children's sex-typed behavior, but parents of future early labelers gave more positive and negative responses to sex-typed toy play. By 27 months, early labelers showed more traditional sex-typed behavior than late labelers; parents of early and late labelers no longer differed in their responses. At age 4, when given an inventory of sex stereotyping, early labelers scored higher on Sex Role Discrimination; there were no differeces on Sex Role Preference scores.