Jane Chung

Honors Thesis

January 24, 2017

Hypotheses

The first purpose of this research is to further understand the process of gender

categorization in children. As one study shows, children tend to interact with peers primarily due

to sex similarity and secondarily, only activity similarity (Martin et al, 2013). This also implies

that children tend to make biases primarily based on gender. Because children make biases based

on gender, it is important to analyze how children come to the conclusion that someone is male

or female. From the study Bigler et al. (1997), it was shown that own group biases most likely

formed when perceptually salient factors were present and functional. Note that they also found

that physical attributes were one of the most perceptually salient factors. Additionally, Wild et al.

(2000) explained that children tend to categorize gender based on cultural cues. To further these

findings, it is important to analyze which items are the most perceptually salient in a childs

world. Both Wild et al. (2000) and Bigler et al. (1997) found their results by manipulating

variables. These results may not generalize to how children categorize gender in the real world.

Therefore, this study will analyze whether there is a pattern of what children find perceptually

salient in their worlds.

Also, Bigler et al. (1997) did not look into whether these perceptual salient factors are

different between older children and younger children. Scerf & Picci (2016) showed that after

puberty, childrens visuoperceptual system refocuses their face-processing behavior towards their

peers who are experiencing similar pubertal stages. Therefore, this study will examine the

differences of categorizing gender between younger and older children. It is expected that older
children categorize males versus females primarily through pubertal differences between males

and females while younger children primarily categorize by using cultural cues.

This is an important study because understanding how children gender categorize other

peers will lead us to further solve problems associated with negative biases and ultimately

bullying.

The second purpose of this research is to further understand the developmental

differences between children and adults. Interestingly, Wild et al. (2000) found that children

primarily use cultural cues to categorize someone as a male or female. However, they were still

sensitive to structural differences between male and female adults in lieu of cultural cues. This

implies that perhaps children successfully use cultural cues to categorize gender earlier than they

can successfully use biologically based facial cues to categorize someone as a male or female.

Since adults have completely achieved gender constancy and have a more complete knowledge

of gender, it is expected that adults categorize others as male or female based on biologically

based facial cues first and cultural cues second. There is not a lot of data studying adults and

their ability to determine gender. As adults have the ability to determine gender based on facial

cues in lieu of cultural cues, it is important to analyze the opposite to see the developmental

process of how the brain changes from using cultural cues to facial cues.

We can test these hypotheses by qualitatively asking children and adults how they can tell

if someone is a girl or a guy. Also, we can test what happens when adults cannot use facial cues

to determine a guy and a girl by using the character ratings scale. Through these scales, we can

quantitatively determine the significance of their answers and categorize their answers based on

facial cues, cultural cues, and physical pubertal differences.