Girls start believing they’re not as good as boys at just six years old, says new research

Girls as young as six start believing they can’t be as ‘brilliant’ as boys and this sense of inferiority influences them as adults, a new study found

This gender stereotype means they are more likely to shy away from activities aimed at children who are deemed “really really smart” and instead opt for tasks for those who “try hard.” US psychologists said the results show a worrying trend of how early gender stereotypes develop in children and how they could have a life long impact including on career aspirations of young women.

Professor Andrei Cimpian at New York University said: “Even though the stereotype equating brilliance with men doesn’t match reality, it might nonetheless take a toll on girls’ aspirations and on their eventual careers.”

Doctoral student Lin Bian, from the University of Illinois said: “Our society tends to associate brilliance with men more than with women, and this notion pushes women away from jobs that are perceived to require brilliance. We wanted to know whether young children also endorse these stereotypes.”

She added most studies looking at why women were underrepresented in fields such as Mathematics, Physics or Philosophy looked at adult graduates and their perceptions. She said: “Cultural messages about the presumed cognitive abilities of males and females are likely to be influential throughout development.

“If children absorb and act on these ideas, then many capable girls are likely to have already veered away from certain fields by the time they reach college. Thus, it is important to investigate the acquisition of the “brilliance = males” stereotype in early childhood, as children enter school and begin to make choices that shape their future career paths.”

The researchers set up a series of experiments with children aged five to seven which is the stage when youngsters become aware of gender stereotypes. In one test the kids were told a brief story about a person who was “really, really smart,” but no hints as to the main character’s gender were provided. At age five both boys and girls were equally likely to choose their own gender as “really, really smart”.

However by six and seven, girls were significantly less likely than boys to associate brilliance with their own gender. In another test they had to guess which of four children, two boys and two girls, gets the best results in school. There was no significant difference between younger and older girls in the likelihood of selecting other girls as having top grades, showing girls’ perception of school achievement were separate from their perception of brilliance.

In the final test the group of children were give on two games, one children who are “really, really smart” and the other for “children who try really, really hard”. The results showed no difference between game choice of boys and girls at age five. However by age six and seven girls were less interested than boys in the game for smart children, but not in the game for hard-working children.

Professor of philosophy at Princeton University, Sarah-Jane Leslie said: “In earlier work, we found that adult women were less likely to receive higher degrees in fields thought to require ‘brilliance,’ and these new findings show that these stereotypes begin to impact girls’ choices at a heartbreakingly young age.”

Ms Bian added: “It will be important to test whether these findings extend beyond a middle-class, majority-white US cultural context and to comprehensively investigate the sources of the “brilliance = males” stereotype in children’s environments.

“Nevertheless, the present results suggest a sobering conclusion. Many children assimilate the idea that brilliance is a male quality at a young age. This stereotype begins to shape children’s interests as soon as it is acquired and is thus likely to narrow the range of careers they will one day contemplate.”

The study was published in the journal Science.