According to a new study from scholars at Rutgers University in New Jersey, gender stereotypes that associate men as better at math than women can influence not only children’s attitudes on intelligence, but their learning outcomes as well.
For their study, the authors sought to determine if gender bias impacts children’s numerical estimation, a foundational math skill that predicts long-term academic achievement. While children are born with an intuitive sense of quantity, they generally do not learn to connect visual representations with symbolic numbers until age 5.
With a sample of 198 children aged 5 to 7, the research team conducted an online experiment testing the participants’ numerical estimation skills. The children played a series of online guessing games during which they were asked to estimate the number of dots appearing onscreen. They initially played the game alone, and then played it a second time with either a male or female avatar. Sometimes these avatars overestimated the number of onscreen dots, and other times provided accurate information.
When analyzing their results, the authors found that answers were consistently pulled toward the male avatar’s estimates more than the female avatar’s responses, even when the male avatar was clearly wrong, such as estimating “24” when there were only 12 dots. Furthermore, when children were repeatedly exposed to incorrect answers by the male avatar, their later estimates stayed biased even after the avatars were gone.
“We found that children are not only biased to think that men are more competent but also trust or value math information provided by men more so than information provided by women,” said senior author Jenny Wang, assistant professor of psychology and cognitive science at Rutgers University.
She continued, “These findings have important implications for combating gender stereotypes and learning challenges in the real world, given that caregivers and teachers are often women.”
In addition to those from Rutgers University, the research team included scholars from the University of Maryland and the University of Chicago.