Measuring Implicit Gender Stereotypes Using the Preschool Auditory Stroop

ABSTRACT Numerous studies suggest that by elementary school, children have implicit and explicit gender stereotypes about the toys, activities, roles, and abilities associated with boys vs. girls. Furthermore, these stereotypes have been shown to affect children’s goals and behaviors, leading them to pursue activities that are associated with their own gender and avoid those that are not. The majority of previous research examining the development of children’s implicit gender stereotypes has used the Implicit Association Test, which measures two associations simultaneously. Thus, it is often unclear which association is driving children’s gender stereotypes, which hampers the ability to effectively target harmful associations for bias change. The current research uses the Preschool Auditory Stroop, an adaptation of the Auditory Stroop, to measure distinct implicit gender stereotypes in three to seven-year-old children. Across two studies, the first using human voices and the second using computer-generated voices, children were faster to respond when female-stereotypical words were paired with female voices and male-stereotypical words were paired with male voices. These results indicate that children have implicit gender stereotypes as early as age three. Furthermore, results suggested that the magnitude of these implicit gender stereotypes was comparable across our age range. This study indicates that implicit gender stereotypes are present in children as young as three, and results suggest that this methodology can be used in future research to chart the trajectory of distinct implicit gender stereotypes across development.