Gender Biases about Intelligence are Transmitted Across Generations
Post by Lani Cupo
The takeaway
Historically, many cultures have harbored a belief that boys are innately better at mathematics than girls. Being in a classroom with children whose parents subscribe to this belief was found to negatively impacts girls’ performance in mathematics and increase the likelihood that the children adopt this belief.
What's the science?
In many countries worldwide, there is still a strong belief among parents and children that boys are innately better at mathematics than girls, which can negatively impact girls’ enthusiasm and effort for the subject in school, ultimately contributing to a gender imbalance in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. Previous research has shown that middle-school-aged children represent an age group with increased flexibility for updating their beliefs, allowing them to dynamically adapt their belief systems in response to new information. It is still unknown what role parental beliefs hold in impacting the belief systems of children, and how these beliefs are passed on to children. This week in Nature Human Behavior, Eble and colleagues studied how beliefs about gendered math ability transmit from parents to children and peers in randomly-assigned middle-school classrooms in China.
How did they do it?
The researchers employed a quasi-experimental method in which students were randomly assigned to classrooms, as it would be unethical to sort students based on the beliefs of their parents, potentially negatively impacting their academic performance. Participants included 8,057 students in 215 classrooms across 86 middle schools sampled across the 31 provinces of China. Data on parental beliefs came from the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS), which collected data on whether parents of these students believe boys are innately better at math than girls. The belief was held by 41% of parents (despite the fact that girls tend to outperform boys at this level in schooling), with the remaining 59% disagreeing. This measure allows the authors to assign a number to each child (ranging from 0 to 0.833) representing the proportion of the peers’ parents who in each classroom who hold the belief. For each child, a higher value indicates that a greater proportion of the child’s peers’ parents believe boys have greater innate talent than girls for math. The authors examine two potential routes of belief transmission: (1) from peer’s parents to the child or (2) from the peers’ parents to the peer and from the peer to the child.
As outcome variables, the authors first examine whether peers’ parents’ beliefs affect the beliefs or math ability of a given child. Finally, they study alternative explanations for these two outcomes, investigating peers’ parents’ education level, income, and family background, as well as gender composition and cognitive ability in the classroom.
What did they find?
The authors found not only a correlation between a child and their parents’ belief that boys were innately better at math than girls, but also a positive correlation between a child and their peers’ parents belief in the same idea. Of interest, exposure to same-gender peers whose parents hold this belief has a greater likelihood of impacting that child’s belief than exposure to other-gendered peers, meaning if a girl spends more time with another girl whose parents believe boys are better at math than girls, the first girl will be more likely to hold this belief than if she spends time with a boy whose parents have the same opinion. Thus biases are transmitted not only parent-to-child but also from peer parent-to-peer and then peer-to-child.
Further, following exposure to peer parent beliefs from same-gender peers, the authors show a trending increase in boys' performance on mid-term math exams and a significant decrease in girls' performance on the exams. The authors demonstrate that the findings vary little when additional metrics were included, such as: peers’ parents’ education, income, family background, classroom gender composition, and cognitive ability. This suggests that the findings are a direct result of the children’s peer’s parents beliefs rather than potential confounding variables.
What's the impact?
This study found that parents' beliefs regarding math performance in boys versus girls affect not only their own children’s beliefs, but also the beliefs of their children’s peers. Increased belief in the gender bias is reflected in a similar belief in children in the classroom, as well as a trending effect of worse performance among girls than their male classmates. These findings provide evidence for how beliefs transmit through generations, parent-to-child and peer-to-peer. Ultimately, this article investigates how children form their biases and beliefs at a young age, and demonstrates how these beliefs may impact their academic performance and potentially even future career choices.
