Failure Feedback and The Transmission of Gendered Beliefs about Ability
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The Brilliance Stereotype associates raw, innate high intellectual ability to men, but not women (Leslie et al., 2015). Such gender stereotyped beliefs about intellectual abilities emerge early (by the age of 6, e.g., Bian et al., 2017), extend into adulthood (e.g., Storage et al., 2020) and can have pernicious effects on behaviour (e.g., Bian et al., 2018; Master et al., 2016). Yet, the sources of development of the brilliance stereotype are seldom investigated. The present research explores the feedback children receive from their parents in response to failure as a potential source of gendered information about intellectual ability. \nAcross two empirical studies, feedback provided by parents to their 5- and 6-year-old children (NStudy1 = 136; NStudy2 = 114) was recorded as they made their way through a challenging puzzle activity (Study One and Two) described as being for “really really smart kids” (Study Two). Parental feedback was recorded and categorized using a coding scheme I developed based on previous research (e.g., Haimovitz & Dweck, 2016). Feedback utterances were coded as either person-oriented (fixed messages, e.g., “this is too hard for you”), process- oriented (growth messages, e.g., “you need practice”), or other messages (e.g., instructions, statements, questions, product messages). Moreover, parents' mindsets and gender stereotyping attitudes were examined to assess their influence on the feedback provided and their relation to children’s mindsets. \nOverall, results from both studies suggest that, in the face of setbacks, parents provide more growth-related messages to boys compared to girls. Specifically, boys received more strategy- and help-focused messages (Study One), as well as more pedagogical questions, product \nfeedback, and instructions (Study Two). In contrast, girls received less growth-related encouragement in response to failure, which may imply that their efforts are perceived as futile, reinforcing the brilliance stereotype that boys are inherently smarter. Additionally, parents’ mindsets were related to their stereotypical beliefs, yet were not predictive of feedback provided nor did they correlate with children’s implicit beliefs about ability. The findings provide valuable insights about how messages about intellectual ability are communicated within parent-child dynamics, highlighting the potential role of failure feedback in the development of children’s gender stereotypes.
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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 | 0.005 | 0.036 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 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".