Children’s Evaluations of Gender Non-Conforming Peers

Although prior studies demonstrate that children view gender non-conforming peers less positively than gender conforming peers, little is known about how or whether children use gender non-conformity as the basis for other types of social evaluations. The current study presented 4- and 5-year-olds (n = 91) and 6–8-year-olds (n = 99) with gender conforming (GC) and gender non-conforming (GNC) dolls and asked them to make several evaluations including liking, similarity, affiliation, perceived popularity, academic competence, rule knowledge, and resource allocation. We also investigated whether evaluations varied by the type of gender non-conformity, age and gender of participants, gender of targets, participants were gender-typed, exposure to GNC people. On almost every measure, children were more negative towards GNC than GC targets (i.e., a “horn effect”), especially toward GNC boy targets. Younger children and older boys were more negative towards GNC than GC targets of their own gender, whereas older girls were generally more equitable in their evaluations. Children who were less gender-typed were more flexible regarding gender norm violations, but neither exposure to GNC people nor manifestation of the targets’ non-conformity affected evaluations. Together our results provide a broader understanding of how children evaluate their GNC peers, which is a useful step towards developing more positive and inclusive social environments for these children.