The Development of Gender Stereotypes About Service

ABSTRACT

At work and at home, women perform more service than men, often at a personal cost. We investigated a psychological factor that may contribute to this disparity: an early‐emerging descriptive gender stereotype that associates service with girls. We compared 5‐ to 8‐year‐old children's ( N = 192) and adults’ ( N = 192) expectations about whether girls or boys would help across three types of scenarios: (a) interpersonal helping (which benefited a specific individual), (b) non‐costly service (which benefited a collective at no cost to the helper), and (c) costly service (which benefited a collective at a cost to the helper). Participants associated girls more than boys with costly service specifically . This association was especially noticeable among boys and men, who showed neutral expectations about interpersonal helping and non‐costly service but expected girls (vs. boys) to perform costly service. Girls and women showed a broader tendency to expect girls (vs. boys) to help across contexts. Separately, we also measured more general communality stereotypes (i.e., beliefs that girls are more other‐oriented than boys). These stereotypes predicted expectations about costly service but did not fully account for them: The association between girls and costly service persisted even after adjusting for individual differences in these stereotypes. These findings suggest that gendered expectations are strongest when helping demands personal sacrifice for a group or institution. These intensified expectations are already in place by ages 5 to 8, potentially representing one pathway through which gender disparities in service behavior develop over time.