Browsing by Author "Clark, Caitlin Marie"
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item The origins of heterosexist attitudes among young children(2015-05) Clark, Caitlin Marie; Bigler, Rebecca S.; Woolley, Jacqueline; Echols, CatherineStereotyping and prejudice on the basis of sexual orientation are common among adolescents and adults. Although empirical data on the topic are lacking, theoretical work indicates that such biases are likely to emerge in childhood. Children attend to gender and the distribution of genders into roles--including familial roles--by three years of age. Furthermore, young children's limited cognitive skills, and a reliance on the inherence heuristic, lead to especially strong endorsement of many forms of stereotypes and prejudices. The primary goal of this thesis was to test theoretically derived hypotheses concerning the emergence of, and age-related changes in, children's heterosexist views of relationships across early and middle childhood. As part of this goal, I created a reliable, valid, and practical measure of heterosexist attitudes for use with 5- to 10-year-old children. Children viewed 12 advertisements that portray diverse types of human relationships, including both same- and cross-sex couples and families, and answered questions concerning their interpretation and liking of each image. Children also completed measures of their gender stereotyping and the inherence heuristic. Participants included 72 racially diverse children from a large city in the southwest United States. Results indicated that children were much more accurate at interpreting cross-sex than same-sex romantic relationships, and girls were better at this interpretation than boys were. Children's attitudes varied as a function of whether they had accurately or inaccurately labeled the same-sex pairs; those who incorrectly interpreted the same-sex couples as heterosexual had no difference in attitudes, but the children who correctly identified the same-sex romantic pairs showed more positive attitudes towards the cross-sex than the same-sex romantic pairs. There was an interaction of participant gender and image gender for children’s attitudes; children preferred the images that matched their own gender. There were no effects of gender stereotyping on children's attitudes or interpretation. Children who interpreted the same-sex romantic pairs correctly had high levels of inherence heuristic adherence. The study was successful in creating an original measure for assessing heterosexist attitudes in young children, and this opens up many promising venues for research on the development of heterosexist attitudes in young children.Item Reducing heterosexist attitudes toward relationships in young children(2016-05) Clark, Caitlin Marie; Bigler, Rebecca S.; Church-Lang, Jessica; Echols, Catharine; Russell, Stephen; Woolley, JacquelineSchool climates in the U.S. are typically characterized by heterosexism, or bias against sexual minority students. Research suggests that elementary school children might benefit from lessons that acknowledge and support same-sex romantic relationships (Jetlova & Fish, 2005; Griffin & Oullet, 2010). The primary aim of this project is to design and test the effectiveness of an intervention aimed at teaching children about the existence of families with same-sex parents and improving their attitudes toward these families. A secondary aim is to explore whether several individual differences variables moderate attitudinal changes. The study took place at a local private school, and 106 children participated in the assessment. Children were assigned to the sexual minority inclusive or sexual minority non-inclusive condition. Inclusive lessons provided age-appropriate, active lessons about families that included the explicit modeling and valuing of same-sex parents. Non-inclusive lessons were identical, but did not include any explicit instruction about same-sex parents. Data collection occurred at a pretest before the lessons occurred and an immediate posttest following lesson completion. The efficacy of the lessons was assessed with three measures: the Heterosexist Attitudes Toward Relationships Scale (Clark & Bigler, 2014); a family creation task, in which children grouped photographs into possible families; and a behavioral task in which children were presented with five children’s books, each about a different kind of family, and asked to select their favorites. Additionally, I assessed four factors hypothesized to moderate children’s reactions to the lessons, including participants’ a) age, b) gender, c) gender stereotyping (COAT-AM; Liben & Bigler, 2002), and d) reliance on inherence heuristic (Sutherland & Cimpian, in press). Results indicate that children, regardless of condition, improved in their knowledge of and attitudes toward same-sex couples after intervention. For the measure of same-sex romance knowledge, there was interaction of time and condition. Children in the inclusive condition had higher levels of same-sex romance knowledge than those in the non-inclusive condition. Contrary to our hypothesis, none of our predicted individual difference factors moderated children’s reactions to the lessons. This study provides useful information for educators who wish to implement LGB inclusive curricula in their elementary classrooms.