Gender Differences in Children’s Reasoning About and Motivation to Pursue Leadership Roles
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Investigating how children think about leadership may inform theories of the gender gaps in leadership among adults. In three studies (N = 492 U.S. children ages 5–10 years), we investigated (1) whether children expect those who claim leadership roles within a peer group to elicit social support and cooperation from the group, (2) children’s own interest and self-efficacy in such roles, and (3) the influence of contextual cues (e.g., how leader roles are described) on children’s reasoning about and interest in leadership. We also explored differences based on children’s race/ethnicity. In Study 1, girls expected lower social support for child leaders than boys did. However, in Study 2, we found no evidence that girls are less interested in leadership. In addition, interest in leadership increased with age among White girls but decreased among White boys and girls and boys of color. In Study 3, we tested whether interest in a leader role is boosted (particularly among girls) by describing the role as helpful for the group and by providing gender-balanced peer role models. Regardless of gender, children in the helpful or “communal” (vs. “agentic”) leader condition were more interested in the leader role, anticipated stronger social support and cooperation from others, and reported higher self-efficacy as leaders. The gender composition of role models had little impact. This research underscores the early development of children’s attitudes toward leadership and highlights the potential value in early interventions to nurture children’s leadership ambitions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".