Culture and children's reasoning about preferences and gender norms

Clare Conry-Murray; Jung Min Kim; Elliot Turiel

doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2020.104861

Culture and children's reasoning about preferences and gender norms

J Exp Child Psychol. 2020 Aug:196:104861. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2020.104861. Epub 2020 Apr 25.

Authors

Clare Conry-Murray¹, Jung Min Kim², Elliot Turiel³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, Saint Joseph's University, Philadelphia, PA 19131, USA.
² Department of Child Development and Education, Myongji University, Seoul 03674, Republic of Korea. Electronic address: jmkim122@mju.ac.kr.
³ Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.

PMID: 32344116
DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2020.104861

Abstract

To examine how children and young adults in two cultures think about gender norms, participants evaluated preferences that were inconsistent with gender norms. Participants (N = 200) included 53 children aged 5 years, 49 children aged 7 years, and 49 children aged 9 years, and 49 young adults from Korea and the United States. Both Koreans and Americans reasoned about violations of gender norms primarily as matters of personal choice in both public and private, with some conventional concerns in public settings. In both cultures, participants rejected the idea that an authority could have jurisdiction over gender-norm-related choices, and both groups suggested that being unable to express those preferences in public has a negative impact on individuals.

Keywords: Childhood; Culture; Gender; Gender development; Moral development; Reasoning.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Child
Child, Preschool
Cross-Cultural Comparison
Culture*
Female
Gender Identity*
Humans
Male
Republic of Korea
Social Norms*
United States
Young Adult