Measuring Gender Essentialism in Children and Examining the Influence of Indirect Contact with Transgender People on Essentialist Beliefs

Abstract

Recently, gender diversity has become more visible in the U.S. Yet many still struggle to understand gender identities outside of the binary of man and woman (Buck, 2016). One lay theory children and adults may use to think about gender and specific gender identities is essentialism. Essentialism is a set of beliefs that center around the idea that certain categories have an unknown or ill-defined essence. As a result of this presumed essence, the categories are thought to be biologically based, discrete from one another, informative about category members’ behaviors and preferences, and immutable. Although prior research has established the use of essentialist beliefs about gender from an early age, several questions remain, especially at a time when gender diversity is becoming more visible. In this dissertation, I: (1) developed a new scale of gender essentialism for children five to ten years of age, the Gender Essentialism Scale for Children (GES-C); and (2) examined the effect of stories about trans-identity characters on children’s understanding of transgender identities and gender essentialism. The GES-C is a 16-item measure of gender essentialism with four four-item subscales measuring the components of essentialism described above. I found the GES-C to be a reliable and valid scale with 316 participants aged five to ten years old. I also performed a confirmatory factory analysis (CFA) using structural equation modeling (SEM) and found my scale to have fit indices outside of commonly used cutoffs for good model fit but in line with the other scales for children specifically developed for use in developmental research psychology. Next, I conducted a study with 173 five- to six-year-old and nine- to ten-year-old children to test what children can learn about transgender identities from stories and whether this can lead to a reduction in gender essentialist beliefs. Participants in this study were assigned to one of three conditions, varying in the story that they heard: the Realistic story about a transgender girl socially transitioning from a boy to a girl; the Metaphorical/Fantastical story about an anthropomorphized, red-labeled marker who discovers their identity as blue (this story could be interpreted as a metaphor for being transgender); or No story (control). Hearing the realistic story about the transgender girl significantly improved understanding of transgender identities. And although I found no overall reduction in gender essentialism, essentialist beliefs about the immutability of gender were reduced after hearing the realistic story. These findings underscore the importance of examining gender essentialism, wholly and by component, in children. Being able to efficiently and effectively measure multiple components of gender essentialism at one time allows researchers to better measure when and how essentialist beliefs change in children. It will be especially important to understand how children’s gender essentialist beliefs may or may not change as a result of the increased visibility of gender diverse identities.