The study protocol and participants
The research assistants conducted interviews at the respondents’ school, where they sat at a table and told that they were to listen to some stories and view pictures from the laptop. The study was carried out using the gold star stickers and the Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2013 and the responses from the participants recorded on a paper protocol (Rizzo et al., 2018; 510). The session took around 20 minutes to complete. The numbers of conditions completed by the participants were two with each having a vignette and the gender stereotypic activity conformed with the meritorious character’s gender where one boy and one girl accomplished the gender-stereotyped work.
The research objectives and variables
The research was experimental, investigating the resource allocations, gender stereotypes and the Theory of Mind in the context of gender-stereotype and their relationship to children aged four to six (Rizzo et al., 2018; 512). Based on the research, gender stereotypes were the important independent variable, playing a major role in children’s organization socially. Gender is an independent variable since it cannot be changed by other variables but can be used to manipulate the measure of the other variables for example gender determines the resource allocation and the mental state knowledge of a child.
The dependent variable: Resource allocation
The most important dependent variable in this research is resource allocation. Children are gender sensitive when it comes to decisions involving resource allocation (Rizzo et al., 2018; 510). They prefer allocating more resources to the in-group members of their gender than to the out-group members. There are limitations associated with this research including the fact that the participants only responded based on the outcome of the characters’ performance and ignored the mental state of the characters. There were no systematic assessments of the responses hence among all the participants only 29% talked of the mental state of the characters. I recommend that the next study systematically assess the children’s reasoning for a better conclusion. Otherwise I feel all the variables were effectively controlled.
Work Cited
Rizzo, Michael T., and Melanie Killen. "Theory of mind is related to children’s resource allocations in gender stereotypic contexts." Developmental psychology 54.3 (2018): 510.
Work Cited
Rizzo, Michael T., and Melanie Killen. "Theory of mind is related to children’s resource allocations in gender stereotypic contexts." Developmental psychology 54.3 (2018): 510.
