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From Pink Frilly Dresses to ‘One of the Boys’: A Social‐Cognitive Analysis of Gender Identity Development and Gender Bias
Author(s) -
Halim May Ling,
Ruble Diane N.,
Amodio David M.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
social and personality psychology compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.699
H-Index - 53
ISSN - 1751-9004
DOI - 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2011.00399.x
Subject(s) - psychology , identity (music) , cognition , theory of mind , social identity theory , social cognition , set (abstract data type) , developmental psychology , cognitive development , social cognitive theory , gender identity , social psychology , social group , aesthetics , philosophy , neuroscience , computer science , programming language
In middle childhood, many girls go through a curious metamorphosis, in which their earlier embrace of all‐things‐feminine appears to transform into an identity as a tomboy. We believe this striking shift, observed in girls but not boys, signifies a critical development in children’s socio‐cognitive functioning, with implications for their understanding of gender as it relates to their identity and their social relationships. In this article, we review the evidence for this identity shift and present a theoretical account that integrates ideas from social cognition and social development. We argue that this identity shift involves the emergence of public regard and status awareness, with concurrent increases in the complexity with which knowledge associated with gender categories is represented in the mind. We then posit that these changes have important implications for the developmental trajectory of implicit and explicit gender attitudes and stereotypes, and we present a set of predictions generated by our theoretical analysis.