Day 9

Development Psychology Tutorial
(Spoiler alert. Stop reading if you might be taking it in future)

We were asked to watch a video of a lecture taken in the 1980s.

2 infants and their parents were in front of the lecture hall playing with toys as the lecturer talked about them.

Brandon was in a baby baseball cap and a blue jumper.

Rachel was in a pink dress.

So the lecturer talked about each baby and we watched how they responded to things like rattles and mirrors.

Later on, the students were asked to vote as to which words from a list of 18 would best describe which baby.

Dominant. Warm. Independent. Affectionate...

One by one, the words were assigned to each baby based on the judgements made from the short time they were observed.

We in class also voted on our own and the results were compared.

But I realised my own votes were always against the majority, so I wrote my own votes down instead of following the general trend.

Then the lecturer tabulated the results by converting the words into 2 categories.

Masculine words, and feminine words.

For example, warm and affectionate is more feminine.

Dominant and independent is more masculine.

And true enough, the students on the video had assigned more masculine traits to Brandon and more feminine traits to Rachel. As for us in class, the same result was achieved, but just not as extreme as theirs.

But when I looked at my own votes, I had for some reason put all but 2 of the masculine traits on Rachel, and all but 2 of the feminine traits on Brandon. Why was I so weird?


Then the lecturer asked why they tended to put masculine traits on the boy and feminine traits on the girl. Was it because they were dressed in a certain way?

They next thing they did was swap the clothes. Brandon was now in a dress and Rachel in a blue jumper. The students laughed and said they looked weird.

But as I looked at it, I thought wow. Rachel in the jumper really looks like a boy and Brandon really does look like a girl.

Then the lecturer told us that she had lied. Rachel was Brandon and Brandon was Rachel. Before the lecture they had changed the children's clothes to see how we would classify their personality traits. And the students were all fooled. When given so little information, people resort to stereotypes to help them judge. And the most pervasive stereotype, is gender.


So guess what, I didn't know the kids were swapped, but I was not fooled.


That's why I'm so weird.

Coz I don't just study Psychology. I study Gender!