Understanding the Developmental Roots of Gender Gaps in Politics

Heck, Isobel A.; Santhanagopalan, Radhika; Cimpian, Andrei; Kinzler, Katherine D.

doi:10.1080/1047840x.2021.1930741

Cited by 15 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 223 publications

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“…These efforts might include the use of experiential and observational tasks and scenarios, collection of qualitative data from youth themselves and relevant stakeholders, and expanding the scope of measurement to capture those venues where adolescent leadership is likely to emerge (e.g., youth sports, school clubs, and social justice initiatives). Another promising approach is to examine developmental theory and empirical findings in parallel content domains to draw inspiration and insights for understanding leadership development across the same time span (e.g., see a provocative example of this in the domain of politics in Heck, Santhanagopalan, Cimpian, & Kinzler, 2021). Progress along these pathways will ideally facilitate movement toward a lifespan developmental understanding of leadership that bridges related empirical work earlier in childhood as well as the large empirical literature pertaining to leadership in adults.…”

Section: Toward Empirical Investigations Of Adolescent Leadershipmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, certain early aspects of leadership development-such as developing a self-perception of oneself as a leader-likely occur differently in male and female adolescents (Eva et al, 2021;Heck et al, 2021), and the consequences of this gender difference may already have profound disadvantaging effects on girls by college entry (Wolniak et al, 2021). Gendered stereotypes and expectations about girls' potential skill and identification with STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) careers and political aspirations are encoded early in life, well before adulthood, and it is reasonable to expect broader leadership motivations to show similar patterns (Heck et al, 2021).…”

Section: Gender Race/ethnicity and Intersectionalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Understanding the Leaders of Tomorrow: The Need to Study Leadership in Adolescence

Tackett¹,

Reardon

Fast

et al. 2022

Perspect Psychol Sci

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Leadership traits and behaviors are observed early in human development, and although an improved understanding of youth leadership would usefully inform many real-world contexts (e.g., education, parenting, policy), most empirical work on leadership has been limited to adult populations. The purpose of the current article is to add a developmental perspective to leadership research that has so far been absent. Here, we (a) highlight adolescence as a critical developmental period for leadership emergence and development, (b) argue that leadership among youths is poorly understood and critically understudied, (c) provide exemplars of synergy between research on leadership and adolescent development that are ripe for focused inquiry, and (d) underscore some of the positive consequences of accelerating empirical research on leadership in adolescence, including implications for a deeper understanding of leadership in adult working populations.

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Section: Toward Empirical Investigations Of Adolescent Leadershipmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Gender Race/ethnicity and Intersectionalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the Leaders of Tomorrow: The Need to Study Leadership in Adolescence

Tackett¹,

Reardon

Fast

et al. 2022

Perspect Psychol Sci

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“…Some first steps have already been made. For example, recent work has highlighted the importance of developmental work for understanding how racism manifests in today's society (Perry et al, 2021;Roberts & Rizzo, 2021), how economic inequalities are perpetuated (Elenbaas et al, 2020;Killen et al, 2016), and why gender gaps in political leadership are so slow to change (Bos et al, 2022;Heck et al, 2021aHeck et al, , 2021b. Research with young children has also begun to make contributions to traditional topics of inquiry in political psychology such as national identity and nationalism (e.g., Brown, 2011;Hussak & Cimpian, 2019;Santhanagopalan et al, 2021;Siddiqui et al, 2020), intergroup emotions (e.g., Ran et al, 2022), and dehumanization (for review, see McLoughlin & Over, 2018).…”

Section: The Value Of Research With Children For Political Psychologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Political Ideology in Early Childhood: Making the Case for Studying Young Children in Political Psychology

Reifen‐Tagar

Cimpian

2022

Political Psychology

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Research in political psychology largely ignores early childhood. This is likely due to the assumption that young children lack the cognitive capacity and social understanding needed for political thought. Challenging this assumption, we argue that research with young children is both possible and important for political psychologists. We focus on the topic of political ideology to demonstrate our argument. We review recent evidence revealing that social cognition in early childhood—and even infancy—is already oriented toward group living in ways that set the foundation of political thought. Young children notice key dimensions of group living (e.g., group boundaries, hierarchies, norms) and use them to guide their reasoning and behavior. Beyond these basic proto‐political sensitivities, young children also display proto‐political attitudes: valenced and/or prescriptive cognitions about dimensions of group living that have political significance (e.g., disliking nonconforming group members, believing that hierarchy between groups is wrong). Even more reminiscent of mainstream political psychology, young children's proto‐political sensitivities and attitudes exhibit systematic individual differences that can roughly be mapped onto three ideological orientations common among adults: authoritarianism, social dominance, and hawkish ideology. We discuss ways in which research with young children is critical for a complete understanding of adult political psychology.

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“…Research on people's attitudes about leadership prior to adulthood is limited (see Heck et al., 2021; Patterson et al., 2019). Yet decades of research in developmental psychology suggests children absorb societal attitudes about social groups early in life.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Extant research has found that children in the United States are knowledgeable about the race and gender of past presidents (Bigler et al., 2008; Patterson et al., 2013, 2019) and that ideas about gender and power emerge early in life (Charafeddine et al., 2020; Mandalaywala et al., 2020). But little research has examined how considerations of gender, race, and their intersection inform children's broader leadership cognition (as noted by Heck et al., 2021; Patterson et al., 2019), especially in non‐Western populations (Amir & McAuliffe, 2020; Henrich et al., 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Leadership, gender, and colorism: Children in India use social category information to guide leadership cognition

Santhanagopalan

Heck

Kinzler

2022

Developmental Science

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Across the globe, women and racial minorities are underrepresented in leadership. We examined the development of 5-10-year-old children's leadership cognition in India, the world's largest democracy. This cultural context offered the opportunity to study the development of attitudes about gender and to extend examinations of children's conceptions of race to include colorism (the privileging of lighter skin). In Experiment 1, children completed a novel Election Task in which they saw a fictional class with 20 students varying in gender (boys, girls) and race/skin tone (darker-skinned South Asian [Dark-SA], lighter-skinned South Asian [Light-SA], Black, White). Children predicted who would be elected as President, Treasurer, Welcomer, and Notetaker.Children most often chose Light-SA and White students as President. When choosing Presidents, younger children showed an own-gender bias, but by age 9, both boys and girls primarily chose boy Presidents. Importantly, children's choices differed for the other class positions. Next, we asked children to draw a "leader." No boys drew a girl, and girls' drawings were mixed (52% drew girls). In Experiment 2, we replicated the drawing task findings and compared children's drawings of a leader to their drawings of a helper and a scientist. Children most often drew boys and men as leaders and scientists, but not as helpers, suggesting specificity of children's pro-male bias to male-stereotyped positions. Children's conceptions of leadership reflected a male bias and an association between lighter skin and status.

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Understanding the Developmental Roots of Gender Gaps in Politics

Cited by 15 publications

References 223 publications

Understanding the Leaders of Tomorrow: The Need to Study Leadership in Adolescence

Understanding the Leaders of Tomorrow: The Need to Study Leadership in Adolescence

Political Ideology in Early Childhood: Making the Case for Studying Young Children in Political Psychology

Leadership, gender, and colorism: Children in India use social category information to guide leadership cognition

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