Kohlberg's Theory - Cognitive Explanation

• Believed that children's mind develops in stages related to age, and the way we think changes as we get older because of physical changes in the brain.
• Identity - 2-3yrs - can label themselves correctly - don't understand that gender is stable across time for everyone

  Stability - 3-4yrs - gender is stable across time for them - don't understand gender is consistent for other people and that looks affect gender

  Constancy - 4-7yrs - gender is constant across time + situation and not fooled by looks. Begin to seek out gender appropriate role models to identify with

  These were universal but the difference was the cultural differences between m/f
• The stages are universal but the difference is that they may learn different things about what it is to be masculine/feminine depending on their culture's norms
• Evaluation of Kohlberg

  + evidence to support - slaby + frey presented children with split screen images of male + females carrying out gender stereotyped activities, their eye movement was tracked. They found that younger children spent same amount of time watching both sexes whereas older children (constancy) spent longer watching the same sex. This suggests Kohlberg was correct in his assumption that children who have constancy will seek out gender appropriate models
• Evaluation of Kohlberg


  X constancy not supported - the theory is undermined by the observation that many children begin to demonstrate gender appropriate behaviour before constancy is achieved. Research has found that children as young as 4 'feel good' about playing with gender appropriate toys. This contradicts what Kohlberg predicts, but could support gender schema theory.

  X methodological problems - children have limited understanding of language. This leads to invalid results as all of his data was collected from questionnaires