A CNN REPORT: GIRLS FEEL LESS SMART THAN BOYS BY AGE 6: RESEARCHERS SAY- Do You Agree?

By the age of 6, girls already consider boys more likely to show brilliance and more suited to “really, really smart” activities than their own gender, according to a new study.

The US-based researchers found that at the age of 5, girls viewed themselves as being just as capable as their male counterparts in terms of brilliance. But by age 6, they were already perceiving their own gender differently.

 The report, published Thursday in the journal Science, is based on results from a range of experiments on 400 children.

In one test, researchers told the children a story about a person who was “really, really smart.”

“We were very careful to leave out any clues as to the person’s gender,” said researcher Lin Bian, a psychologist at the University of Illinois.

The children were then asked to guess who the protagonist of the story was. At age 5, both boys and girls picked out characters of their own gender.

But within a year, that had changed.

Boys still picked boys, she said — but girls were picking boys, too.

“Suddenly, at age 6, girls became less likely than boys to do this,” Bian said.

In another scenario, the children were tasked with an activity that was labeled as being for “really, really smart kids.” At age 5, both boys and girls were enjoying these activities equally, said Bian. But by 6 and 7, the girls had lost interest.


coco's note
Do You Think This Is Same In Africa?