How learning theories can be used to explain gender development
Gender development is how maleness and femaleness is developed through experiences and interactions with the environment. This is a main issue within the learning approach, and that any differences between male and females are due to learning experiences and not biological influences like genetics.
Gender development can be explained through the operant conditioning theory which suggests that gender development is shaped like other behaviours through reinforcement and punishment. Reinforcement is the main idea to operant conditioning, there are two reinforces: positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement. Positive reinforcement is when something desired is given in response to a particular behaviour, for example in relation to gender development, a boy plays really well in a football a game is then rewarded with a new football. Whereas in a girl’s case she helps clean the kitchen so is rewarded with additional pocket money. Negative reinforcement is when something undesired is taken away in response to a behaviour for example if a girl wears the “pretty” dress her grandma got her, she doesn’t have to do the washing up. These reinforcements reinforce gender-stereotyped behaviour, so that girls will grow up in an environment where they are rewarded for doing “lady-like” roles and boys rewarded for being active and into sports.
In addition to this there is another element to operant conditioning and that is punishment. Punishment discourages a behaviour by doing something unpleasant to stop the behaviour, for example in relation to gender development, a girl may be punished for play-fighting as this is seen as rough and boyish behaviour, she may be punished by being grounded for a week. Relating to punishment with boys, a boy may play with a doll and is punished by not being allowed to have the doll as it is seen as a girl’s toy. The idea of punishment is to stop a behaviour, so that the behaviour is not repeated.
Another theory which can explain gender development is the social learning theory which suggests that people imitate behaviour that they observe in models that are similar to themselves, such as gender it also suggests that behaviour that is rewarded is likely to be repeated. Bandura proposed that four main cognitive processes are required for social learning theory: attention, retention, reproduction, motivation (ARRM). Attention is when the learner identifies with the role model (e.g. a daughter identifying with her mother due to gender) and observes the role model doing the behaviour and is able to pay attention to the important bits. Retention is when the learner records the information in the memory; the behaviour is observed and noted. Reproduction involves being able to do the behaviour again. The behaviour is imitated and so is learned and repeated. Lastly, motivation involves a reason for the behaviour being repeated again.
A boy learning to play football seeing his father as his role model, using Bandura’s ARRM theory in relation to gender development. The boy will identify with his father as they are both male, he will observe his father kicking the football; the boy pays attention to the foot contacting to the ball (attention). The boy will then record the information (retention). The boy will then imitate the behaviour by attempting to kick the football (reproduction). The boy will receive praise off his dad for attempting and so will kick the football again (motivation).
There is much support for the social learning theory, for example Smith and Lloyd (1978) who asked mothers in a doctor’s surgery to “baby sit” a small child while their mother “saw the doctor”. The baby was dressed as the opposite sex (boys as girls and girls as boys). They found that the babysitting mothers were more likely to offer a hammer rattle to babies dressed as boys than girls. However Stern and Karraker (1989) found that adults did not always respond to labelling where as young children often did. Although more support comes from Davies (2000) who found that in children’s books aimed at first, third and fifth graders, equal numbers of males and females were represented, but the characters were still stereotyped. Bandura, Ross and Ross (1961) study of Transmission of aggression through imitation of aggressive role models showed that boys are more likely to imitate male models and girls, female models.
Social learning theory can explain the acquisition of sex-typed behaviours through observation. As mentioned above, Bandura showed how children are more likely to copy same-sex models which are likely to affect their gender development. Strength of this theory is that this type of learning can be observed and tested using scientific and objective research methods such as lab experiments which are well controlled and look at the cause and effects. However this theory does have its weaknesses as learning theories cannot account for similar behaviours in societies with different norms and customs. In addition there are differences between boys and girls at birth. Girls seem to be more sensitive to noise and maintain eye contact with adults than boys which are unlikely to be learned as they occur too early in life for learning to have taken place.