Study finds that young girls believe being 'really, really smart' is a male trait

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published 26 January 2017

A recent study on gender stereotypes found that American girls believe being "really, really smart" is a trait associated with boys and men, The Guardian reports.

Researchers at New York University conducted tests with 200 boys and 200 girls between the ages of 5 and 7. In one study, the children were read a story about an extremely smart person, then asked to guess the person's gender. In another study, the children were shown pictures of adults of different sexes and asked to pick who they thought was intelligent. A third study asked children to match traits, including "being smart," to photos of men and women.

Taken together, the results reveal that girls of 5 years old are just as likely as boys to associate brilliance with their own gender. However, for those aged 6 and 7, girls were less likely than boys to make the association: among 6-year-olds, boys chose people of their own gender as "really, really smart" 65 percent of the time while girls only selected their gender as brilliant 48 percent of the time.The study then explored which gender was expected by children to do better academically at school. The team found that while girls aged 5 to 7 were more likely than boys to associate their own gender with good grades, they did not link such achievements to brilliance. [The Guardian]

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.