Social context and sex-typing in young children: Friendship status and peer affect influences

Social context effects on young children's sex-typing were examined in two studies. In Study 1 sex-typed toy choices of 139 children aged 4 to 8 were assessed first for a solitary-play context, and then for three social contexts distinguished as to friendship status of a specified play partner (represented by a photo): best friend, acquaintance, and an unfamiliar peer. For each context, children selected preferred toys from photographs of a neutral toy paired with either a same- or opposite-sex toy. Results indicated social context effects for girls but not boys, in that girls tended to display more sex-typed toy choices in the solitary and best-friend than in the acquaintance or unfamiliar peer contexts. In general, however, girls approached same-sex toys less than boys, while both sexes avoided opposite-sex toys to a similar extent. In Study 2 subjects were 68 children aged 4 to 7. They were asked to imitate videotaped masculine, feminine, and neutral actions of a hand puppet. For different children, the puppet was designated (by name and photo display) as either a best friend or acquaintance, and it engaged in the sex-typed activities with either gender-congruent or incongruent affect (happy for same-sex actions and sad for opposite-sex actions, or the reverse). Friendship status and gender-affect congruency effects which varied with age level were evident for several memory measures. Incongruency promoted accurate imitative matching for the acquaintance context in younger children, and for the best-friend context in older children. In addition, best-friends' feminine actions were imitated more accurately than their masculine or neutral actions. Subject age and sex also interacted with activity gender type and gender-affect congruency to influence peer affect recall, with poorer recall of feminine-activity affect by boys in the incongruent condition. While social context had little impact upon boys' reported affect, girls' enjoyment was lower for masculine activity imitation in the best-friend congruent-affect condition. Overall, the two studies demonstrate that young children's gendered behaviors show considerable sensitivity to social context factors, and indicate the important influence of affective factors in early sex-typing.