Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Young children preferentially include same-gender peers in their play, restricting learning opportunities and reinforcingstereotypical gender roles (Ruble et al., 2006). Two studies aimed to reduce 4-6-year-old childrens gender-based exclu-sion through a perspective-taking intervention. Study 1 (N=98, M=5.38 years) evaluated whether inviting participantsto consider peers exclusion-related emotions would lead participants to subsequently include (new) other-gender peers.Participants in the intervention condition were more socially inclusive from pre- to post-test than were participants in acontrol condition (p¡0.05). Study 2 (N=101, M=5.37 years) replicated the results from Study 1 (p¡0.05) and demonstratedthat changes in childrens inclusive behaviors from pre- to post-test were not driven by social desirability concerns; childrenbecame more inclusive whether or not an experimenter watched them make their choices (p ¿ 0.75). Ongoing research istesting whether the effectiveness of the present intervention is amplified when children can see (rather than infer) excludedchildrens emotional reactions.