It’s no secret that there is a gender disparity in the STEM field, with men making up a wide majority of STEM employees; part of this disparity can be accounted for by the stereotype that women are not good at science. However, a recent study has found that girls may find motivation to study and partake in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields when they pretend to be a female scientist.
Researchers Reut Shachnai, Tamar Kushnir and Lin Bian studied 240 four to seven-year-olds to investigate if acting like successful role models is valuable for children. They used a between-groups design, randomly assigning the children to one of three conditions. Children put in the baseline group played a science game and hypothesized whether an object would float or sink in water. Children in the exposure group played the same game, but were told about an accomplished scientist of their gender before the game started. The researchers chose scientists Marie Curie for the girl participants and Isaac Newton for the boy participants, as they believed that the kids would be unfamiliar with them. Kids in the roleplay group were given the task to roleplay as the gender-matched scientists (Marie Curie or Isaac Newton), and were referred to as Dr. Curie or Dr. Isaac.
The children were prompted to play another round of the game after they finished, and it was found that boys in each condition were motivated to continue playing, with an overall average of 14 rounds. Average rounds played differed for girls in each of the experimental groups, with girls in the baseline group completing five rounds, girls in the exposure group completing nine rounds, and girls in the roleplay group completing twelve rounds. The results of this study show that when reminded of or prompted to act like successful female scientists, girls are able to mentally distance themselves from their stereotypes and therefore may be more motivated to partake in STEM activities.
Overall, enacting successful figures can help girls persist against the stereotype that they are not good at STEM activities. The researchers highlight that it’s important to have children roleplay as role models whose appearances and backgrounds they are unaware of, as knowingly role playing as someone different than them can produce very different results regarding motivation. This research may be extended to how representation is taught in schools, and suggests that representation may need to be taken further as children benefit more from performing role model actions instead of just learning about them.
Kylie Robinshaw
Research Assistant, UConn KIDS
Article Link: https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/news-release/2022-sept-girls-roleplay-science.html