Children's Appraisals of Gender Variance
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Children’s Appraisals of Gender Variance: Understanding the Emergence of Negative Attitudes by Aysha Natisha Nabbijohn A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of Psychology University of Toronto © Copyright by Aysha Natisha Nabbijohn 2018 Children’s Appraisals of Gender Variance: Understanding the Emergence of Negative Attitudes Aysha Natisha Nabbijohn Master of Arts Department of Psychology University of Toronto 2018 Abstract Among children ages 4-to-5- and 8-to-9-years-old (N = 142; 47.2% boys), multiple measures of social preference were employed to gauge appraisals of target boys and girls depicted as gender-typical or gender-variant. Children’s gender-typed behaviour and implicit attitudes as well as parental endorsement of gender stereotypes were also assessed. Social preferences did not precisely align across measures—although some consistent patterns were observed. Among boys, gender-typed preferences increased with age; older boys preferred the gender-typical boy and rated gender-typical peers more favourably. Girls showed a same-sex preference; but older girls also showed interest in being friends with the gender-variant boy. Older children rated the gender-variant boy as less preferred by others; and all children rated gender-variant children as less happy. Boys and girls expressed preferences for boy-typed and girl-typed activities, respectively. Parental endorsement of femininity was particularly associated with more positive appraisals of feminine peers. Implications for future research are discussed. ii AcKnowledgments There are no words to express the level of gratitude that I have for my supervisor, Dr. Douglas VanderLaan, for his unconditional support and profound belief in my work. His patience, kindness, and expertise have been critical to my success at completing such a complex project in only a year. I feel privileged to have a mentor who works so hard to challenge and encourage me, as well as one who goes to such great lengths to ensure that my contributions to the lab do not go unnoticed. As a team, we accomplished so much over the past 3.5 years of working together that has contributed greatly to my growth as a researcher and person. I will be forever grateful for those experiences, as they have given me the confidence to overcome any challenge that I may face in my career. I also would like to express my deepest appreciation to my committee for taking the time to read my thesis. I am thankful to my subsidiary advisor, Dr. Tina Malti, for her continued guidance, enthusiastic encouragement, and useful critiques throughout the year. I would like to thank Dr. Elizabeth Johnson for joining my thesis committee and for her critical questions and genuine interest in this research project. I believed that this research has greatly benefitted from the time and insightful suggestions that both committee members have offered. I would like to recognize my colleagues Alanna Santarossa, Karen Kwan, and Ivy Wong for their invaluable contributions to the design of this project. In addition, it is important to recognize the hard work and commitment of the many undergraduate research assistants who assisted with data collection and participant recruitment. In particular, I would like to offer special thank you to Joanna Matthews, Benji Lim, Simran Isani, and Nicole Preddie for the many hours they spent in running participants and carefully entering data. In terms of participant recruitment, I would like to thank Adrienne Kalicharan, Teebah Almuktar, Rachna Sutaria, Alexandra Kljuseva, Boting Gao, Keer Dong, Gianne Fajardo, and Zehra Fatima for all of their help. I would also like to thank Diana Peragine for all of her time and support with programming the stimuli as well as for offering her expertise in using relevant software to record and code the data. Finally, I would like to thank all of the other members of the BIG lab for their continued support and encouragement over the year. This includes a special thanks to Anna van der Miesen and Malvina Skorska for their friendship and belief in my abilities. iii The completion of my dissertation would not have been possible without the contribution of all of the admirable families who participated in this study. Their time and enthusiasm are instrumental to the continued scholarship and success that we have here at the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM). I would also like to thank UTM for providing me the space and resources to complete this research. It is important to acknowledge that this research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. My family and friends have also played an important role in my success through their unwavering support. In particular, I am so lucky have such loving, encouraging parents. My mom and dad have been so willing to help me in any way that they could so that I could focus on my research and their confidence in my abilities continues to inspire me. I also want to recognize my brother, Raymond, for being such an important role model in my life; much of my ambition has come from observing him. I want to thank my sister-in-law, Melissa, for being one of my biggest cheerleaders ever since we first met; her love and encouragement has meant so much to me over the last few years. The unconditional support of my good friends, Rebecca Crawford, Jennifer Dhawan, and Tanisha Shekdar, has also been so important for helping me get through the challenges I encountered over this past year. Lastly, I would like to recognize my grandparents, Judy and Sewnauth Singh, and my late grandmother, Muzipha Nabbijohn, for always being so loving and motivating. I owe much of my success to the values they have instilled in me. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................................ v List of Tables ................................................................................................................................. vii List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... viii List of Appendices .......................................................................................................................... ix Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Associations between Mental Health and Gender Variance ............................................... 1 1.2 Factors that Influence Children’s Appraisals of Gender Variance ...................................... 2 1.3 The Present Study ................................................................................................................ 6 Method ........................................................................................................................................ 8 2.1 Participants .......................................................................................................................... 8 2.2 Procedure and Materials ...................................................................................................... 8 2.3 Measures ............................................................................................................................ 10 2.3.1 Child-reported appraisals of gender norm violations ............................................ 10 2.3.2 Sticker distribution task ......................................................................................... 11 2.3.3 Rank order task ...................................................................................................... 11 2.3.4 Children’s gender-typed thinking .......................................................................... 12 2.3.5 Children’s gender-typed behaviour ....................................................................... 12 2.3.6 Parental attitudes towards gender stereotypes ....................................................... 13 2.3.7 Parental attitudes towards their children’s gender-typed behaviour ..................... 14 2.3.8 Biographic information ......................................................................................... 15 2.4 Statistical Analysis ............................................................................................................ 16 Results ....................................................................................................................................... 18 3.1 Correlational Analyses Among the Focal Measures ......................................................... 18 3.2 Personal Friendship Preferences ........................................................................................ 18 v 3.3 Perceptions of Other Children’s Friendship Preferences .................................................. 19 3.4 Perceptions of Peers’ Level of Happiness ......................................................................... 20 3.5 Imitation of Target Child Behaviour ................................................................................. 20 3.6 Sticker Distribution Task ................................................................................................... 21 3.7 Rank Order Task ...............................................................................................................