PONE-D-21-23166Exposure to Stereotype-Relevant Stories Shapes Children’s Implicit Gender StereotypesPLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: This manuscript described an intervention aimed to change children’s implicit associations of math/reading with girls/boys and their math self-concepts, or the extent to which children associated themselves with math (implicitly and explicitly). The authors find that although the gender stereotype relevant storybooks demonstrate differences by condition for the gender/math IAT outcome, there were no differences by condition for implicit or explicit math self-concept. The authors additionally explored age a potential indicator of when children are most susceptible to stereotype-relevant intervention. Overall, I found the manuscript to have strong theoretical justification and report valuable findings. However, I would encourage the authors to consider further explaining a couple methodological and analytical decisions and reconsider a few implications in the discussion.

Semi-random assignment of condition: The authors note that “Each participant was semi-randomly assigned to one of three conditions…” Presumably due to the fact that the baseline data was collected at a different time, the authors describe the design as semi-random. I would recommend elaborating on the implications of the lack of full random assignment as a limitation in the discussion.

Self-concept and math: The authors report no differences by condition for self-concept (implicit or explicit) with math. The results do indicate that both girls and boys implicitly and explicitly associated themselves with math at similar rates. It may be helpful to address the lack of gender difference in math identity within the discussion, especially given that this finding contrasts with the findings on gender/math stereotypes.

Median split for age: I was concerned by the analytical decision to perform a median split on age because median splits typically lose statistical power and can lead to spurious effects (MacCallum, Zhang, Preacher, & Rucker, 2002). It is not clear whether this decision was made to be consistent with the age groups in Gonzalez et al. (2021) or for some other theoretical reason. I would recommend incorporating additional analyses including age difference as a continuous variable (perhaps in the SOM if the median split is theoretically justified in the main text). This would allow readers a fuller picture of whether there are age-related changes in malleability.

Race and gender stereotype learning: In the discussion the authors state “Consistent with the second possibility, gender is seen as more self-relevant than race by some adolescents [47]…” Because the authors have previously argued that age is likely important for acquisition of stereotype relevant information about social groups, I would question whether citing this study of multiracial adolescents would support their claim. If the authors choose to keep this citation, it would be valuable to specify the ages of the participants and note the limits of generalizing between the cited study and the current study’s sample populations.

Minor comments:

1. On line 463 (p. 20) and line 513 (p. 22) and the same sentence is repeated: “However, given the repeated nature..”

2. Figure 4 would be stronger with error bars included.

3. There is a small redundancy on line 117 (p. 5) “…exposure to at least frequent exposure…”

4. “However, little systematic research has actually evaluated whether brief exposure to stereotype-related content in stories causally increases or decreases implicit gender stereotypes.” (line 118, p. 5) This should be qualified to be “...increased or decreases implicit gender stereotypes in children.” There is plenty of research on similar topics in adults (e.g., Dasgupta & Asgari, 2004).

Reviewer #2: Thank you for the opportunity to review research on a topic that continues to be of practical and research interest: gender and STEM, in particular, young children’s implicit gender-math stereotypes. I would summarize the paper as follows: a community sample of children (n = 336, 50% female, 50% male, mean age 9) were exposed to two stories with counterstereotypic (a girl who liked math, a boy who liked reading), stereotypic (vice versa), or control (a girl who liked tennis, a boy who liked swimming) information, and then completed two IATs (girl/boy and math/reading; self/other and math/reading) as well as a measure of explicit math self-concept. Results indicated that the counterstereotypic group had weaker male-math implicit stereotypes than the stereotypic group, and was the only group whose stereotype did not significantly differ from zero. Follow-up analyses suggested that this was true only in children younger than 8.8 years. No effects were found for explicit self-concept.

I thought that the nature of the sample (large in size, young children, community sample) was a strength of this paper, and that the measures were appropriate for this sample. Below I make recommendations for improvements.

Major issues

Introduction

1. I realized later in the paper htat the self-concept question was meant to be somewhat exploratory, but it fits awkwardly into the introduction section. For instance, on p. 3, it is presented as a third research question alongside what later appear to be the chief research questions (effects of counteresterotypic stories; moderation by age); this does not suggest that it is a lower-tier or more exploratory question. On the other hand, when I got to that part on page 3, I was surprised; I felt like an interest in “self-concept” came out of nowhere. I would recommend setting up why self-concept would be a reasonable thing to measure, even briefly, on that first page. Then, if the authors wish to “demote” that research question relative to the first two, that could be made clear in the listing of the questions.

2. On p. 4, paragraph 2, the literature review focuses heavily on examples of research with young girls. Perhaps this paragraph should not set up the idea of “across the lifespan”, unless the authors are making the case that the immediate relationships with identification & achievement have downstream consequences later in life. Otherwise, I would extend the literature covered in this section. E.g., a research example of implicit stereotypes predicting grades in college students: Ramsey & Sekaquaptewa (2011)

3. One of the central justifications for the work is never supported empirically: p. 4, line 114 “children’s books about girls and women who excel in STEM-related fields have become increasingly popular.” I’d like to see some examples (Rosie Revere, Engineer? Doc MacStuffins?), and I’d like some quantification of “increasingly popular.”

4. On p. 6, I’m not convinced that the first paragraph makes sense where it is. Work on novel stereotype acquisition does not seem to speak to what this paper is going to test, since it’s established that children of the age group you will be testing have already acquired these math-gender stereotypes. I think this work should be presented in a different framing and a different spot. In contrast, the support from citations 25 and 26 in the next paragraph is much more directly compelling evidence.

5. Nevertheless, as I continued through that paragraph on p. 6, I thought that it would make sense to add research comparing the ease of acquiring gender vs. race-based stereotypes, as my understanding was that gender-based ones might be more robust, and thus more resistant. This was addressed on p. 8, but the only citation is a review (I believe Ruble, Martin, & Berenbaum, 2006), and I think the argument would be strengthened with more primary sources, especially since the comparison between race and gender stereotypes becomes a heavy focus in the discussion later on.

6. Related to point 1,on p. 9, a lot is made of the fact that no one has experimentally tested the impact of changing stereotypes on math self-concepts. I thought, “what a huge gap, this should be emphasized more!”, but then this question is treated like an afterthought in the analysis and discussion. I recommend more coherence: perhaps this section could be tempered so that the vibe is less “we are the first to tackle this important question” and more “because this is understudied, it is not clear if we’d see those effects, maybe yes (CITE) and maybe no (CITE), and so we will examine this as well.”

Method

7. P. 11, line 254: clarify - parents reported education and income to the authors? If so, please use past tense. If this is general science center visitor data, it should be cited.

Results

8. P. 15, is citation 44 a source of recommendations for children in particular, or in general? Could add some context for how these error rates/rejection rates compare to adults.

9. My biggest question in the results is why a median split was employed. I understand that Gonzalez et al. (2020) split children into age groups, but from my reading, they did not do a median split. I’d be more convinced by some kind of developmental reason for why 8.8 is a meaningful cutoff. Otherwise, what about a regression analysis, looking at dummy coded condition interacting with age? Especially since gender didn’t matter in prior analysis, wouldn’t necessarily need to worry about three way interactions with gender. A stronger rationale for the median split is needed.

10. Another major concern I have with the paper is frequent mentions of “descriptive differences” – I don’t think these are necessary and they may imply significance where there is none. The authors might refer people to figures without adding this language.

11. I’m fascinated that girls showed implicit math self-identification, and I wonder if this is typical for girls?

Discussion

12. Several interesting arguments were made in the discussion (e.g., the need to reduce stereotypic exemplars, not just increase counterstereotypic; the two reasons offered for why gender and race stereotypes may operate differently).

13. On p. 22, I’d offer another possibility: the categories “math and reading” are more discrete than “good and bad,” perhaps also allowing for easier absorption of examples? This would be a distinction between stereotyping and prejudice more broadly, and might be worth looking into the literature for any developmental lit for that?

14. On p. 22, line 509, confusing sentence - the prior sentence seems like it is about persistence already; is there a missing word?

15. The discussion mostly focuses on the effects of single brief interventions, which makes sense because that is what was tested. But given the emphasis on the rise of counterstereotypic books, I’d like to see some discussion of what might happen if, say, a classroom read counterstereotypic books all year - can the authors draw from any field intervention work and make a prediction?

Minor issues

1. P. 4, line 98: Word choice: in your description of implicit stereotypes, “domain” doesn’t sound like an attribute to me. To me, attribute would = trait (e.g., “good at math”; something that describes the group in question); otherwise it’s just another concept I think.

2. P. 7, line 172: typo: “known”

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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PONE-D-21-23166R1Exposure to Stereotype-Relevant Stories Shapes Children’s Implicit Gender StereotypesPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Block,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. The reviewers and I greatly appreciate how thoroughly you addressed their concerns and suggestions. The manuscript is much improved and makes a nice contribution to the literature. The reviewers have a few minor suggestions to strengthen the paper. In particular, please report all of the results from the regression analysis with age as a continuous variable in the supporting materials (see Reviewer 1) and elaborate on issues related to the age median split (see Reviewer 2). Once these points are addressed, I am happy to accept the manuscript. 

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jun 30 2022 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Natalie J. Shook

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The authors have done a nice job in addressing the reviewer comments. They have successfully incorporated discussion of the limitation of non-random assignment and have nicely discussed implications of all results, including those related to math self-concept.

I noticed some incongruencies in how the participant age X condition analyses are reported across the main-text and supplement. That made it difficult to compare the continuous results against the categorical results. My only outstanding recommendation would be for the authors to synchronize the statistical reporting across the main-text and supplement. Specifically, I recommend reporting the following additional results to the supplemental analysis:

1. The main effect of age

2. Simple slope analyses to elaborate on the interaction effect (e.g., +/-1 SD on age)

Reviewer #2: Thank you for the opportunity to review this paper – I was an original reviewer on the manuscript. The original strengths of the paper are retained. The authors addressed my concerns about the introduction, discussion, and method by adding citations, using more careful language, changing the framing of the implicit stereotype change question, and clarifying the demographic data source. The counterarguments presented in explaining why some of my suggestions were not incorporated make perfect sense, and I appreciate the thorough and thoughtful response to each suggestion.

I looked carefully at how the median split results compared to the regression results. I think the addition to p. 9, setting up age as a categorical vs. continuous construct, is useful for setting up that analytic choice. I still think it is a bit unusual to use median split to distinguish between qualitative categories – if the group had been slightly older on average, the argument would be that a 9.5 year old is qualitatively different than a 9.6 year old, but in this case, the argument is that a 8.9 year old is qualitatively different than an 8.8 year old. In other words, median splits produce groups deemed qualitatively different based on the particular age range of that particular sample, rather than based on broader developmental trajectories. I might make that clearer in the document when comparing this median split to Gonzalez’ (p. 19 of the tracked changes edition). I think including the regression outcomes in the SI is also a good addition to the paper.

I note some small corrections below.

Minor issues (pages based on the tracked changes edition)

1. P. 8: the new sentence beginning with “Particularly” is a fragment.

2. P. 20, line 368, “important to examine” instead of “important examine”

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Exposure to Stereotype-Relevant Stories Shapes Children’s Implicit Gender Stereotypes

PONE-D-21-23166R2

Dear Dr. Block,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Natalie J. Shook

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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