Gender differences in egalitarian behavior and attitudes in early childhood

Egalitarian preferences in young children depend on the genders of the interacting partners

In decisions between equal and unequal resource distributions, women are often believed to be more prosocial than men. Previous research showed that fairness attitudes develop in childhood, but their-possibly gendered, developmental trajectory remains unclear. We hypothesised that gender-related fairness attitudes might depend not only on the gender of the Allocator, but also on that of the Recipient. To examine this, we tested 332 three to 8-year-old children in a paired resource allocation task, with both boys and girls acting as Allocators and Recipients. We indeed found gender-related effects: girls more than boys aimed to reduce advantageous inequity, and Allocators of both genders were more averse against male Recipients being better off. Notably, older girls exhibited an envy bias, i.e., they tolerated disadvantageous inequity more when the resource allocation was in favour of other girls than when it favoured boys. We also observed a gender-related spite gap in boys aged 7-8: unlike girls, boys treated other boys with spite, i.e., they valued unfair distributions in their own favour over equal outcomes, especially if rejecting advantageous inequity was costly. This pattern hints at contextualised gender-related fairness preferences that evolve with age that could depend on same- and cross-gender past interaction experiences.

The development of ambivalent sexism: Proposals for an expanded model

The United Nations' Goals for Sustainable Development highlight gender inequality as a pervasive problem around the world. Developmental psychologists can help us understand the development and consequences of sexism in people's lives. I highlight ambivalent sexism theory as a promising framework for this work; and I offer recommendations for expanding the theory. Ambivalent sexism theory distinguishes between hostile sexism and benevolent sexism as complementary processes perpetuating and maintaining men's dominance and heteronormativity in society. I summarize how these two forms of sexism emerge during childhood and adolescence; and I review the negative manifestations of hostile and benevolent sexism during adolescence and adulthood. Next, I chart several directions for expanding the ambivalent sexism model. These include addressing sexism directed towards gender-nonconforming, sexual-minoritized, and gender-minoritized youth (in addition to sexism towards girls and women); taking into account the gender and sexual identities of both perpetrators and targets of sexism; considering a broader array of hostile and benevolent sexist practices than captured in existing measures; taking into account cultural variations and intersectionality in how ambivalent sexism is enacted; conducting more research on ambivalent sexism in childhood and adolescence and designing effective programs to reduce and to prevent ambivalent sexism beginning in childhood.

Approach-avoidance orientations can predict young children's decision-making

When facing situations that involve risk and reward, some may focus on the opportunity for reward, whereas others may focus on potential risks. Here, we used an original set of pictorial scenarios to try and predict 3- to 8-year-olds' reward-seeking and risk-avoiding behavior in three decision-making scenarios (N = 99; Mage = 5.6; 47% girls). We found that children's reward-risk tendencies did not predict sharing behavior in a dictator-game 'sharing' task. However, they predicted children's monopolizing behavior in a dictator-game 'taking' task and their preferences between taking home a 'risky' or a 'safe' reward in a novel prize-preference task. Overall, using a set of original pictorial scenarios to assess individual differences early on in development now provides initial evidence that bridges individual differences and decision-making domains and exposes behavioral patterns that were thus far hidden.

No strong evidence for universal gender differences in the development of cooperative behaviour across societies

Human cooperation varies both across and within societies, and developmental studies can inform our understanding of the sources of both kinds of variation. One key candidate for explaining within-society variation in cooperative behaviour is gender, but we know little about whether gender differences in cooperation take root early in ontogeny or emerge similarly across diverse societies. Here, we explore two existing cross-cultural datasets of 4- to 15-year-old children's preferences for equality in experimental tasks measuring prosociality (14 societies) and fairness (seven societies), and we look for evidence of (i) widespread gender differences in the development of cooperation, and (ii) substantial societal variation in gender differences. This cross-cultural approach is crucial for revealing universal human gender differences in the development of cooperation, and it helps answer recent calls for greater cultural diversity in the study of human development. We find that gender has little impact on the development of prosociality and fairness within these datasets, and we do not find much evidence for substantial societal variation in gender differences. We discuss the implications of these findings for our knowledge about the nature and origin of gender differences in cooperation, and for future research attempting to study human development using diverse cultural samples. This article is part of the theme issue 'Cooperation among women: evolutionary and cross-cultural perspectives'.