gender schema theory

Meaning: Gender schema theory (associated with Sandra Bem, and building on cognitive-developmental ideas) holds that children actively build schemas, organized sets of beliefs about what is masculine and feminine. They learn these from culture, family, peers, and media. Once formed, the schema works as a filter: children attend to, remember, and imitate information that fits their gender schema, and tend to ignore or forget information that does not. In this way, stereotypes are maintained and gender-typed behavior is reinforced.

On the MCAT: Passages may describe children who recall gender-consistent stories better than inconsistent ones, or who avoid toys labeled for the other gender. You identify the cause as schema-driven processing (assimilation of new information into an existing schema). Questions may ask you to contrast it with other accounts of gender development: social learning theory (observation, imitation, and reinforcement or punishment), and psychoanalytic accounts (identification with a parent). Expect questions linking it to schemas, stereotypes, and cognitive development generally.

Common confusion: Students mix it up with social learning theory. Social learning stresses external models and rewards shaping behavior. Gender schema theory stresses the child's internal organization of information, so the same environment can produce different outcomes depending on how strongly the child uses gender as a category. It is also not the same as gender identity itself, which is the child's sense of being male, female, or another gender. The schema is one proposed mechanism that helps explain how it develops.