Children's and adults' stereotypes about the typical characteristics of males and females were expected to affect their inferences about specific actors. To examine these effects, kindergarten children, third graders, sixth graders, and college students were told that a boy or a girl had chosen activities consistent with gender stereotypes or inconsistent with the stereotypes. Then the subjects predicted the actor's future behavior, rated the actor on several traits, and estimated the actor's popularity with peers. College students predicted that the actor's future behavior would be approximately as consistent (or inconsistent) with gender stereotypes as their past behavior. College students' ratings of the actor's trails and their judgments about the popularity of boys were also influenced by the actor's past behavior. Sixth graders showed a similar pattern of social inferences, but the effects of the actor's past behavior were weaker than at college age. By contrast, third graders predicted that the actor's future behavior would be stereotypical, even if his or her past behavior was not. Past behavior had some effect on third-graders' trait ratings, but not on their popularity judgments. At kindergarten, only predictions for a girl's future behavior were affected by past-behavior information. The age differences were discussed in the context of current models of the development and functioning of gender stereotypes.Gender stereotypes describe commonly accepted beliefs about the activities, roles, physical attributes, and personality traits that distinguish girls and women from boys and men. 1 For example, boys are expected to fix bikes more often than girls; girls are expected to be more neat than boys (Kob)insky, Cruse, & Sugawara, 1978). Many researchers have investigated the beliefs about gender differences that are accepted by children and adults, or the changes with age in acceptance of these beliefs (see Deaux, 1984;Huston, 1983). More recently, several writers have proposed that the nature and significance of gender stereotypes can be understood most fully if their effects on the processing of social information are examined (Bern, 1981;Deaux & Lewis, 1984;Martin & Halverson, 1981). These writers have argued that stereotypes affect perceptions of other people's behavior, memory for their behavior, and the inferences drawn from observations of behavior. The primary support for these proposals comes from research on memory. In several studies (e.g., Bern 1981;Martin & Halverson, 1983;Signorella & Liben, 1984), gender stereotypes have been shown to affect children's and adults' recall of word lists, pictures, and stories.There is less empirical evidence regarding the effect of gender stereotypes on social inferences. These effects are important because they are likely to influence expectations about other people and behavior toward them. The purpose of this study was to investigate the inferences drawn by children and adults after they This research was supported in part by funds from the Bush Center for C...
