Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Research suggests children readily treat robots as social actorsand sources of information for learning. Here we ask if childrenuse depictions of gender-counterstereotypic robots (e.g., afemale construction worker robot) and gender-stereotypicrobots (e.g., a female secretary robot) as sources of informationabout cultural gender stereotypes. Forty-five 6- to 8-year-oldchildren participated in a short counterstereotyping task.Children in the counterstereotypical condition viewed videosof cartoon female gendered robots with culturally stereotypedmasculine occupations, interests in activities, and traits.Children in the stereotypical condition viewed videos ofcartoon female gendered robots with culturally stereotypedfeminine attributes. Children completed a measure of genderstereotyping before and after viewing the intervention videos.From pretest to posttest, children’s gender stereotypingdecreased in the counterstereotypical condition and increasedin the stereotypical condition. These finding suggest childrenmay learn from robots as models of cultural gender stereotypes.