The Psychology of Gender 4th Edition

Achievement 211

time they spend with children, and the attributions they

make for performance.

■ Parents’ communications influence children’s ability

perceptions and, ultimately, children’s performance.

The Influence of Teachers

Teachers can influence children’s beliefs

about their abilities by the attention and in-

struction they provide to students and by the

nature of the feedback they provide about

performance. Some of these effects are due

to the stereotypes the teachers, themselves,

hold. For example, one study showed that

teachers believed a gymnast would perform

better after 10 weeks of training when told

the video that they had viewed was a male

rather than a female (Chalabaev et al., 2009).

Teachers’ stereotypes that males have more

athletic ability than females appear to extend

to a female sex-typed domain.

Attention. In 1994, Sadker and Sadker

published a book titledFailingatFairness:How

children’s perceptions and the children’s ac-

tual abilities when parents believe that ability is

fixed and not malleable. Pomerantz and Dong

(2006) refer to the fixed view of competence

asentity theory, which is much like Dweck’s

fixed mindset described in Sidebar 6.1. Self-

fulfilling prophecies are more likely to occur

when parents endorse the entity theory of

competence. In a longitudinal study of fourth

through sixth graders, mothers’ perceptions

of children’s competence predicted changes in

children’s perceptions of competence one year

later and changes in children’s grades one year

later—only among mothers who subscribed to

the entity theory of competence.

TAKE HOME POINTS

■ Parents have stereotypes that boys are better than girls

in math and girls are better than boys in verbal abilities,

regardless of actual school performance.

■ Parents communicate these stereotypes to children by

the activities they encourage, the toys they buy, the

FIGURE 6.12 A model describing how parents’ beliefs can influence children’s performance.

Child

Participation

in

Activity

Child

Perception

of Own

Competence

Child

Competence

Parents’

Stereotypes

(category-

based

expectations)

Parents’

Attributions for

Child

Performance

Parents’

Beliefs About

Child’s

Competence

(target-based

expectancies)

• Emotional
  Reactions


• Interest


• Time with
  Child


• Provision
  of Toys/
  Opportunities


• Praise


• Direct
  Advice
  About
  Pursuits

Parents’:

M06_HELG0185_04_SE_C06.indd 211 6/21/11 8:10 AM