TEXT10

Lesson 10
THEORIES OF GENDER DEVELOPMENT (2)

The Behavioral Approach

Recap
The Biological approach
Strong and weak points
The Behaviorist or Learning Approach
Background
According to this approach all behavior and personality is a result of learning. Where the
biological approach emphasizes “nature”, the behavioral approach stresses upon “nurture”.
Early behaviorists, like Skinner, emphasized the importance of reinforcement
Later on, in addition to reward and punishment, the significance of other variables like the social
context, observation, modeling, and imitation were also included in behaviorism, that led to the
social learning approach
According to the behavioral approach, learning of gender roles can be explained in terms of a
result of:

 Classical conditioning
 Operant Conditioning or the use of reinforcement: positive, negative, punishment, or no
reinforcement
 Learning by observation
The behaviorists maintain that gender –role associated behaviors are learnt and not innate, just
like any other cultural patterns. They are shaped by reinforcement (Guerin, 1992).
Children’s upbringing is designed in such a way that they are steered toward learning specific,
socially desired gender roles.
Children, right from birth, receive different treatment (Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974; Pomerlau et al,
1990).
This difference may increase in later years in childhood and can be seen in childcare settings, as
well as in home (Chick et al, 2002; Huston, 1986).
The very fact that we can find variations in gender roles across cultures indicates the existence of
different treatments (Gibbons, 2000).
But if different treatments are the cause of gender differences then how did this difference start in
first place? Can it be that there were small innate differences that were amplified after different
treatment?
Classical Conditioning
Every time a child sees the parent of the same sex as his/her own, he/she is seen as wearing a
particular type of clothes, using fixed type of gestures, and using a particular style of
communication. This forms a type of association which leads to adoption of gender roles. But a
stronger and more plausible explanation is the one based upon operant conditioning.

Operant Conditioning
The type of learning in which a voluntary response becomes stronger or weaker depending on its
positive or negative consequences. The organism plays an active role and ‘operates’ on
environment to produce the desired outcome. Now why would an organism operate on the
environment? To meet, as well as avoid, certain consequences--------reinforcement in other
words.

Consequences of Behavior
Positive
consequence
Behavior
Negative
consequence

No
consequence

The various consequences of behavior have different impacts on the behavior under question.
Consequences of Behavior and their impact
Figure: 1

Figure:2
Figure: 3

Figure: 4
 Consequences of behavior and learning gender roles:

Figure: 1
Figure: 2

Figure: 3
Figure: 4