Gender Stereotypes and the Dynamics of Social Interaction

Children acquire basic gender categories with remarkable facility and, soon after, learn to apply gender to an extraordinary range of stimuli. Gender is, typically, the first of the top three social categories (including gender, race, and age) to be acquired (Mackie, Hamilton, Susskind, & Rosselli, 1996). At just 7 months, children who have been habituated to one female face subsequently habituate to new female faces, suggesting that they have formed an abstract category describing females (Cohen & Strauss, 1979).