AUTHOR=Koenig Anne M. TITLE=Comparing Prescriptive and Descriptive Gender Stereotypes About Children, Adults, and the Elderly JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology VOLUME=Volume 9 - 2018 YEAR=2018 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01086 DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01086 ISSN=1664-1078 ABSTRACT=
Gender stereotypes have descriptive components, or beliefs about how males and females typically act, as well as prescriptive components, or beliefs about how males and females should act. For example, women are supposed to be nurturing and avoid dominance, and men are supposed to be agentic and avoid weakness. However, it is not clear whether people hold prescriptive gender stereotypes about children of different age groups. In addition, research has not addressed prescriptive gender stereotypes for the elderly. The current research measured prescriptive gender stereotypes for children, adults, and elderly men and women in 3 studies to (a) compare how prescriptive gender stereotypes change across age groups and (b) address whether stereotypes of males are more restrictive than stereotypes of females. Students (Studies 1 and 2) and community members (Study 3), which were all U.S. and majority White samples, rated how desirable it was for different target groups to possess a list of characteristics from 1