Math and language gender stereotypes: Age and gender differences in implicit biases and explicit beliefs

In a cross-sectional study of youth ages 8–15, we examined implicit and explicit gender stereotypes regarding math and language abilities. We investigated how implicit and explicit stereotypes differ across age and gender groups and whether they are consistent with cultural stereotypes. Participants (N = 270) completed the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP) and a survey of explicit beliefs. Across all ages, boys showed neither math nor language implicit gender biases, whereas girls implicitly favored girls in both domains. These findings are counter to cultural stereotypes, which favor boys in math. On the explicit measure, both boys’ and girls’ primary tendency was to favor girls in math and language ability, with the exception of elementary school boys, who rated genders equally. We conclude that objective gender differences in academic success guide differences in children’s explicit reports and implicit biases.


Supplemental Analyses
Implicit Sports Biases. An alternative interpretation of our results regarding math and language implicit biases among youth ages 8-15 is that the AMP was measuring generalized gender biases (e.g., girls = good) rather than domain-specific biases (e.g., girls = good at math).
To test this possibility, we examined girls' and boys' implicit biases regarding sports ability (one of the domains included in the study, but not the focus of our main report). To assess implicit biases regarding sports ability in boys and girls, we conducted a 2(Participant Gender) x 3(Age Group) x 2(Prime Gender) ANOVA, with Participant Gender and Age Group as between-subject factors, Prime Gender as a within-subjects factor, and implicit scores as the dependent variable.
Our results yielded a significant main effect of Prime Gender, F(1, 255) = 5.44, p = .021, η 2 = .02, which was qualified by a significant Participant Gender x Prime Gender interaction, F(1, 255) = 15.02, p < .001, η 2 = .06. As displayed in S1 Fig. below, the mean comparisons of the proportion of girls and boys associated with "good at sports" suggests that boys of all ages showed an implicit bias in favor of boys (M (target girlstarget boys) = -.07, p < .001, 95% CIs = [-.10, - .04]), whereas girls of all ages did not show a gender bias (M (target girlstarget boys ) = .02, p = .282, 95% CIs = [-.02, .05]). These results are in contrast to our findings regarding math and language implicit biases, which show girls as having an implicit in-group bias and boys showing no bias. These divergent results in two different areas of achievement (sports and academics) suggest that the AMP was sensitive to domain category.
In addition, we conducted implicit/explicit correlations between sports implicit biases and explicit beliefs and found a small, but significant positive correlation (r(260) = .15, p = .014), perhaps due to the less sensitive nature of stereotypes about sports abilities. Though the four-way interaction that we hypothesized was not significant, perhaps due to low power, we conducted pairwise comparisons with Bonferroni correction to directly test our hypothesis that the youngest children would favor their own group in math (see S1Table

Correlations between explicit and implicit measures. Correlations between pairs of
implicit scores and pairs of gender group competence scores, split by participant gender, are presented in S3 Table. Implicit scores for these correlations were the proportion of items in which [girls; boys] were associated with the "good in" prompt; for explicit group competence, we used the average of the two explicit items for each gender. Our results mirror the pattern of correlations when scores are collapsed across gender (analysis reported in the main manuscript). All explicit gender group competence ratings were positively associated. For example, youth who rated boys as highly competent in math also tended to rate boys as highly competent in language, and youth who rated boys as competent in language tended to also rate girls as capable in language. In contrast, implicit scores were positively correlated within gender, with the exception of a significant positive correlation between "good at" associations of girls in language and boys in math among girl participants. was randomized across participants. The photos were selected based on a pilot study to ensure that photos of the two genders did not differ on perceived attractiveness, age, or mood.

S3
Instructions for language arts. The instructions for math were exactly the same, except that "math" substituted "language arts."

Photographs of boys and girls.
Due to copyright restrictions, these photos are only available upon request and will be shared for personal use only.

Chinese symbols.
\ Explicit Stereotypes. Youth used a visual analog scale (VAS), consisting of a 100 mm horizontal line, to indicate with a vertical mark how well they thought boys or girls performed on a specific academic subject and how difficult they thought boys or girls found the subject. They could place a mark anywhere on the line, which allowed them to give very low or high ratings without having to choose the extreme option, as is the case with Likert scales. This attribute of VAS lines is important when measuring beliefs or attitudes that are sensitive to social desirability effects, such as stereotypes. Other items included in this measure, but not the focus of this report, were group competence regarding sports, science, grades, smartness, making friends, and music.
In addition to measuring explicit beliefs about group competence by gender, there were also measures assessing group competence by race. The explicit survey also included other measures not the focus of this report.