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Effects of real gender and labeled gender on adults' perceptions of infants
1School of Psychology, University of New South Wales.
Insights
Adults perceive infants based on gendered cues. Boys are seen as stronger and more playful, while girls appear more sensitive, influencing gender perceptions and development.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Developmental Psychology
- Social Psychology
Background:
- Adults form perceptions of infants based on various cues.
- Gender stereotypes can influence these perceptions from an early age.
- Understanding these perceptions is crucial for studying gender development.
Purpose of the Study:
- To identify factors influencing adults' perceptions of male and female infants.
- To investigate how gender labels and actual gender affect infant perception.
- To explore the cues adults use to infer infant characteristics.
Main Methods:
- Three experiments involving college students and mothers of infants.
- Presentation of infant videotapes with randomly assigned gender labels.
- Analysis of infant ratings on traits like masculinity, sensitivity, and playfulness.
Main Results:
- Infants labeled as male were perceived as more masculine and stronger.
- Actual male infants were rated as less sensitive and more problem-prone than females.
- Sensitivity ratings predicted judgments of infant sex, suggesting a cue complex.
Conclusions:
- Adults use a complex set of cues to judge infant gender and characteristics.
- Boys are perceived as stronger and more playful; girls as more sensitive.
- Findings have implications for gender labeling and sex-typing studies.
Abstract:
Three experiments were conducted to discover factors mediating adults' perceptions of male and female infants. In the first experiment, college students were shown 30-s videotapes of four male and four female babies, each of whom was randomly labeled with a male or a female name. Infants labeled as male were perceived as significantly more masculine and stronger than those labeled as female. Discriminant analyses revealed that both rated masculinity and the combination of ratings on male stereotyped traits differentiated infants labeled as male or female. Analyses of real gender revealed that boys were rated as less sensitive and stronger than girls. Discriminant analyses suggested that the combination of less sensitive, more of a problem, more mature, and more playful best differentiated real males from real females. In Experiment 2, the findings of Experiment 1 were confirmed with a sample of mothers of young infants. In Experiment 3 college students' judgments of the sex of the eight babies were correctly predicted from the sensitivity ratings of these babies in Experiment 1. It appears that there is a complex of cues from which adults make judgments of infants' gender and inferences about their characteristics: Boys may appear stronger, more playful, and more of a problem, and girls seem to look more sensitive. Implications for further studies of gender labeling and for sex typing are discussed.