The N-effect
More competitors, less competition
An innovative study finds evidence for the N-effect, a non-gender-related factor that affects motivation. In small groups of competitors, individuals are able to compare their performance to others leading to higher individual motivation and higher performance. In contrast, as the number of competitors increases, social comparison processes are less likely to operate, leading to lower motivation and performance. The results applied equally to male and female students.
Female teachers' math anxiety affects girls' math achievement
The math achievement of first and second graders is linked to their teachers' level of math anxiety, for girls but not boys. For girls only, by the end of the school year, the more anxious their teachers were about math, the more likely they girls were to endorse the commonly held stereotype that "boys are good at math, and girls are good at reading." Indeed, by the end of the school year, girls who endorsed this stereotype had significantly worse math achievement than girls who did not and than boys overall. In early elementary school, where the teachers are almost all female, teachers' math anxiety carries consequences for girls' math achievement by influencing girls' beliefs about who is good at math.
Body size stereotyping and internalization of the thin ideal in preschool girls
Jennifer Harriger, Rachel Calogereo, David Witherington, & Jane Smith (2010)
This study examined body-size stereotyping and thin-ideal internalization in preschool girls, ages 3-5. Across several tasks, the researchers found evidence that 3-5 year-old preschool girls "display both body-size stereotyping and thin-ideal internalization as early as the age of three. They exhibited a clear preference for thin body types but not fat body types.”
Rethinking sex differences in aggression
Aggressive behavior in the absence of social roles
Jenifer Lightdale & Deborah Prentice (1994)
College students were asked to play a video game in which they dropped bombs on an opponent and were bombed in turn. Students were told that they had been matched with someone at another terminal in the room but would never know who that person was. Researchers knew the gender of only half of the study participants. Among those whose identities were known, males dropped significantly more bombs than females. When their identities were not known, females dropped more bombs than males. However, when debriefed after the game-playing session, girls whose gender was now known to the interviewer, claimed to have dropped far fewer bombs than they actually had dropped.