# Children's implicit attitudes toward male and female power in dyadic inter-gender interactions

Rawan Charafeddine, Jean-Luc Kop, Audrey Breton, Jean-Baptiste Van der Henst, Hélène Maire

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Rawan Charafeddine, Jean-Luc Kop, Audrey Breton, Jean-Baptiste Van der Henst, Hélène Maire. Children's implicit attitudes toward male and female power in dyadic inter-gender interactions. Psicologia Sociale, 2025, pp.311-334. 10.1482/118879. hal-05426180

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# Children's implicit attitudes toward male and female power in dyadic inter-gender interactions

Rawan Charafeddine<fnref n="1" />,* Jean-Luc Kop<fnref n="1" /> Audrey Breton<fnref n="2" />, Jean-Baptiste Van der Henst<fnref n="3" /> & Hélène Maire<fnref n="1" />,*

## Acknowledgments

The present work was part of two student projects in cognitive science (conception, design and programming) and speech therapy (data collection) in Lorraine University. Many thanks to the students Armelle Bonnabaud, Léa Lefevre, Clara Nogues, Emmanuela Plaisival, Elena Ramonell and Elif Tepe for their essential contributions to this project.

Charafeddine, R., Kop, J.-L., Breton, A., van der Henst, J.-B., & Maire, H. (2025). Children's implicit attitudes toward male and female power in dyadic inter-gender interactions. *Psicologia Sociale – Social Psychology Theory & Research*, 311-334.

*Abstract:* In many societies, children are raised in environments where gender is structured hierarchically, with males holding more power than females. While the extent of this gender hierarchy varies across cultures, studies have found that children from diverse backgrounds frequently expect males to hold more power than females. However, in some situations, girls are less likely than boys to attribute power to the male character, likely due to positive attitudes towards their own gender in power positions. This study examines how the stereotype of male power interacts with children's positive attitudes about own-gender power. Since own-gender favoritism and power-related gender stereotypes are aligned for boys but not for girls, we examined whether this asymmetry would lead to a gender difference in the way these two processes interact. Sixty-two French children aged 8 to 10 participated in an Implicit Association Test (IAT) that assessed their attitudes toward gendered power. The test featured scenarios depicting power dynamics through physical postures, where either a woman dominated a man or a man dominated a woman, along with attributes of positive and negative valence. The findings revealed a strong own-gender bias: both boys and girls showed more favorable attitudes toward the power of their own gender compared to the opposite gender. The magnitude of the own-gender bias was identical for boys and girls, suggesting that the stereotype of male power had no impact on children's attitudes for the power of their gender group. An additional experiment confirmed that children of the same age and from the same geographical area do hold expectations linking power with the male gender, and that these expectations do not translate into explicit positive attitudes toward male power.

*Keywords:* gendered power; own-gender favoritism; implicit attitude; Implicit Association Test

<footnote n="1">¹ Université de Lorraine, Laboratoire Lorrain de Psychologie et Neurosciences de la dynamique des comportements (2LPN, UR 7489), 91 avenue de la Libération, 54021 Nancy Cedex, France.
rawi.charkan@gmail.com; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0275-0628
helene.maire@univ-lorraine.fr; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2431-3840</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² TranceScience Research Institute, 64 rue de Montceau, F-75008, Paris, France.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CNRS, INSERM, Centre de Recherche en Neurosciences de Lyon, U1028, UMR 5292, Trajectoires, F-69500, Bron, France.</footnote>

<footnote>* Corresponding authors</footnote>
One important question in political psychology is whether and how people come to endorse the low-power position of their social groups (Jost et al., 2004). In the case of the gender system, this amounts to exploring how women internalize and justify the hierarchical structure of gender relations, often supporting norms, roles, and beliefs that perpetuate the lower power status of their gender. The present study examines whether these system-justifying mechanisms have roots in development by looking at implicit, deeply ingrained attitudes towards gendered power among 8-10-year old children. Two conflicting forces may shape these attitudes. On the one hand, by the age of four, children are already aware of *descriptive* stereotypes associating power with the masculine gender (Charafeddine et al., 2020; Mandalaywala & Rhodes, 2020; Reyes-Jaquez & Koenig, 2022; Santhanagopalan et al., 2022). This pattern has been observed in countries with differing levels of gender equality (i.e., Lebanon vs. Norway; Charafeddine et al., 2020). The awareness of male power may lead children to develop *prescriptive* attitudes that legitimize these stereotypes (Bigler & Liben, 2007). On the other hand, children tend to hold their own gender group in high regard, often seeking to attribute positive qualities to members of their group rather than to those of the other gender (Halim et al., 2017; Ruble et al., 2006). Consequently, they may be more inclined to endorse the dominance of an individual of their own gender over someone of a different gender, rather than accepting the reverse.

However, own-gender bias may be shaped by children's evaluative attitudes toward traits associated with their gender—in this case, high power. This study tests the possibility that boys' attitudes toward their gender's power may be reinforced by stereotypes that link power with masculinity. In contrast, girls may hold less favorable attitudes toward their gender's power due to prescriptive stereotypes that discourage displays of power in females (Rudman & Glick, 2001). To test this hypothesis, the study employs a child-friendly version of the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Cvencek et al., 2011; Greenwald et al., 1998) to compare boys' and girls' implicit evaluative attitudes toward own-gender versus other-gender power in mixed-gender contexts.

# 1. The male power stereotype and own-gender favoritism in development

Children hold representations that associate the masculine gender with power and higher social status (Bos et al., 2022; Charafeddine et al., 2020; Mandalaywala et al., 2020; Reyes-Jacquez & Koenig, 2022; Santhanagopalan et al., 2022). For example, when asked about the gender of silhouettes shown in a power interaction, both boys and girls, from their 4th year of age, inferred the masculine gender from a position of power (Charafeddine et al., 2020, Study 1). In parallel, children seem to attach positive value to being in high-power positions, as exemplified by their tendency to perceive themselves as such (Charafeddine et al., 2019; 2020, Study 2; 2024; Mandalaywala et al., 2020; Vial & Cimpian, 2024). Attributing power to one's own-gender group may therefore constitute a case of ingroup favoritism. Such ingroup biases, however, are not blind to the social structure in which the children evolve. For instance, children's ingroup attitude, as measured by implicit association tests (IAT) already evidence their awareness of the unequal value attached to ethnic origin by the broader society. While white children show a robust bias for associating positive
characteristics with their ingroup, Black children showed no bias (Newheiser & Olson, 2012), suggesting a conflict between attributing positive value to one's own-group and attributing positive value to the dominant group. Regarding gender, these positive attitudes towards power on the one hand and own gender on the other may act as a counteracting force to expectations of the power of gender ingroup. For instance, when children are asked to infer the gender of a powerful character in mixed-gender interaction, girls like boys associate power with the masculine gender (i.e., inference from power to gender; Charafeddine et al., 2020; Study 1). In studies that asked children to infer the power position of male and female characters (i.e., inference from gender to power), boys attribute power to the members of their gender, whereas girls are at chance (e.g., Charafeddine et al., 2020, Study 3; 2023; Reyes-Jacquez & Koenig, 2022; Santhanagopalan et al., 2022). For instance, when children were asked to “draw a leader,” the majority of boys depicted leaders as men, while girls did not significantly associate leaders with a specific gender (Bos et al., 2022; Santhanagopalan et al., 2022). Similarly, in a study by Mandalaywala et al. (2020), children used a vertical rope to symbolize the power and wealth status of fictitious characters and boys were more likely to assign a higher social position to a boy than to a girl. In all three studies, girls were at chance, suggesting a conflict between positive bias towards their ingroup and a tendency to expect power to be an attribute of the outgroup (see Heck et al., 2022).

## 2. From descriptive stereotypes to evaluative attitudes toward male power

Among adults, the expectations of male power are not only descriptive, they are also prescriptive. On the descriptive side, there is an overlap between the femininity-masculinity dichotomy and the warmth-competence distinction (Cuddy et al., 2008). From this perspective, the gender binary can be viewed along a continuum ranging from low-power traits—communal qualities that are positively associated with likability but misaligned with high-power roles—to high-power traits—agentic and assertive characteristics, often linked negatively with likability but positively with success in positions of power (Bailey et al., 2020; Eagly & Karau, 2002; Haines et al., 2016; Prentice & Carranza, 2002; Rudman et al., 2012; Wojciszke et al., 1998). Not much is known about the developmental roots of this phenomenon: do expectations of male power result in more favorable attitudes towards males in power compared to females in power among children? Given that children's own-gender favoritism may lead them to biased attribution of power to members of their own-gender groups, this question can be reformulated as follows: do girls and boys differ in how strongly they are biased toward viewing the power of their own gender group in a positive light?

Three recent studies provide some insights to this question. Galusca et al. (2025) implemented power as winning a coveted resource and asked preschoolers about their social preference for the winner or the loser ("who do you prefer to play with?"). When the characters involved a dyad of a male and a female adult, preschoolers showed a significant preference for the winner from their gender, but showed chance-level preferences for same-gender losers and other-gender winners. Hence, this study showed that preschoolers' positive attitudes towards dominants and their positive attitudes towards their gender were conflicting in this context.
Second, Helmlinger et al. (2024) presented a power scenario where a child imposed their choice on another. Participants were then asked to distribute resources unequally to the dominant and subordinate characters. The study showed a developmental effect: younger children (3-4 years-old) allocated more resources to dominant characters, whereas older children (7-8 years-old) allocated more resources to subordinate characters (see also, Charafeddine et al., 2016; Cheng et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2021). Moreover, the experiment also evidenced ingroup biases. Specifically, across all age groups, children preferred to distribute more resources to the character of their gender. However, this did not depend on the power of the same-gender character, suggesting that own-gender favoritism is relatively blind to power dynamics between genders.

Third, examining children’s attitudes toward gendered leadership, Vial and Cimpian (2024, Study 1) found that children aged 5 to 10 did not expect a boy leader to receive more social support from peers than a girl leader. Again, expectations about how leaders would receive social support reflected participants’ attitudes toward power itself: girls, who may hold less favorable views of power than boys, expected powerful individuals—regardless of their gender—to receive less social support than boys did. In sum, across all three studies, children’s attitudes toward gendered power appeared to reflect distinct attitudes toward both power and gender. Notably, findings from children over the age of 8—the target age of the current experiment—suggest that negative evaluations of power apply equally to male and female expressions of power.

In the context of social asymmetries, implicit attitudes are particularly revealing, as they reflect the affective mechanisms underlying evaluations of high- versus low-status individuals. In contrast, norms of justice and equality—especially strong in French children of the age group under study (Forsé et al., 2016)—may lead them to explicitly reject inequalities as well as those who benefit from them. For example, in a study with preschoolers by Li et al. (2014), children reliably addressed social inequalities by allocating more resources to the previously disadvantaged character. However, when later asked which individual they preferred, they no longer recalled who had been advantaged, yet consistently favored the previously advantaged character—suggesting that this individual had been affectively tagged as more positive. Similar mechanisms may operate in power-related contexts: while children’s explicit attitudes may reject dominant individuals of either gender, they might still implicitly prefer dominant figures who belong to their own gender group. Implicit responses may thus more easily reflect greater approval of one power over the other. Moreover, descriptive stereotypes of male power may lead boys to reject their own gender’s subordination more strongly than girls do, according to prescriptive stereotypes of male power, and this would show in their level of endorsement of their gender’s power vs. subordination, relative to girls.

**3. The current study**

This study consisted of one main experiment and one additional experiment. In the main experiment, we employ the IAT, a method well-suited for assessing children's automatic evaluations, due to its established psychometric validity (e.g., reliability, predictive power)
across a wide range of concepts (Gawronski et al., 2022; Greenwald et al., 2009) and its
successful use with young populations (Gawronski et al., 2020; Lemmer et al., 2015). As an
implicit measure, the IAT captures automatic associations, in contrast to explicit measures,
which reflect deliberate, verbalizable judgments shaped by context and social norms (Nosek
& Smyth, 2007; Gawronski et al., 2020). In adults, IATs have been found to uncover
associations with gendered traits that may not emerge through explicit self-reports, likely due
to impression management or concerns about social judgment (Greenwald & Farnham, 2000;
Haines & Kray, 2005). For these reasons, we considered the IAT a suitable method for
probing children's gender-related attitudes in power-related contexts.

In this study, children were shown images of gendered power dynamics—either a man holding a dominant position over a woman or vice versa—and asked to associate these with positive or negative attributes. We hypothesize that children would exhibit positive attitudes toward their own gender in positions of power, associating more easily their gender's power with positive attributes and the other gender's power with negative attributes than the reverse. Crucially, we expected this own-gender bias to be stronger in boys than in girls, as stereotypes of male power may interfere with girls' positive evaluations of their gender in positions of power. In response to the feedback of an anonymous reviewer, we also conducted an additional experiment using explicit measures to test whether children in this age group and social context indeed expect situations where males hold power over females to be more frequent than the reverse (descriptive stereotypes), as well as their explicit evaluative attitude towards them.

# 4. Main experiment: Implicit attitudes towards power in mixed-gender interactions

## 4. 1. Method

### 4. 1. 1. Participants.

The study included 29 girls ($M_{age} = 9.18$; [8.45, 10.37]) and 33 boys ($M_{age} = 9.22$; [8.44, 10.41]) aged 8 to 10 years. No predetermined sample size was established for this study. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM, IRB00003888). Following the requirements of this committee, we used the rule of non-opposition as a parental consent procedure: parents were informed about the goals of the study prior to data collection through an official informative letter indicating that their children would be included in the study unless they expressed their disapproval. Participants provided their oral consent before proceeding with the experiment and were informed that they could stop at any time if they wished. The written consent from school teachers, school directors, and the local Board of Education were also obtained. All pupils who provided consent in the participating classes and were available during the data collection period in June 2024 were recruited. The collection period was limited due to the constraints of conducting this research as part of a student project. The experiment was conducted in two public schools from mixed socioeconomic backgrounds in a medium-size, urban area of north-eastern France. Participants had typical development, with normal verbal skills and no cognitive disabilities. In accordance with French Law n°78-17 from January 6,
1978, on Information Technology, Data Files, and Civil Liberties, we did not collect the race/ethnicity information of the participants.

### 4.1.2. Materials.

Unlike previous gender IAT studies in children, which used isolated images of boys or girls (Cvencek et al., 2011, 2016; Dunham et al., 2016), this study employs a novel approach with relational stimuli. Specifically, it features characters in dominant (e.g., head up, finger pointing) and subordinate (e.g., head down, contrite) postures to represent inter-gender power dynamics (e.g., Charafeddine et al., 2020; 2023), depicting power relationships that are either aligned with or in contradiction to the norm of male power (M>F vs. F>M, respectively).

To design the experimental task, we adapted the open-source IAT script (GPLv3+ Licence: Ian Hussey 2016; version 1.2.1). This script is a 5-block version of the Implicit Association Test (IAT), a length that is adapted for use with children (see Cvencek et al., 2011). The task was programmed and presented using PsychoPy Builder v2022.2.0. The stimuli used were of two types: target images and attribute images. The target images consisted of photographs depicting a man and a woman engaged in a dyadic power interaction within a workplace setting (see Figure 1). A total of five photos featured a man in a position of power over a woman, while five other images showed a woman in a position of power over a man. Each image was displayed in two different spatial orientations (the powerful and the powerless respectively on the left and the right, or vice versa). The attribute images included 10 yellow emoticons representing happy faces (positive valence) and 10 representing sad faces (negative valence; See Figure 1). Images were displayed against a black background. For the category labels, we utilized pictograms: a silhouette drawing of a man in a contractive posture, standing slightly behind a woman in an expansive posture, represented the category “the girl commands the boy” (F>M) while the reverse posture image depicted the category “the boy commands the girl” (M>F). We ensured that the labels and instructions were framed in relational terms (“the girl commands the boy” or “the boy commands the girl”) rather than attributional to avoid simple matching between the gender category and the valence. A thumbs-up symbol indicating “positive” and a thumbs-down symbol representing “negative” were used for the attributed labels. All pictograms were black. These pictorial labels were displayed in colored banners on each side of the screen, corresponding to the side and color of the respective response button. Feedback was given through the French words “Top!” (“great”) for correct matchings and “Zut...” (“Oops”) for incorrect responses, displayed in white font in the center of the screen.
<table><caption>Figure 1: Block organization</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th>Block 1</th><th>Block 2</th><th>Block 3</th><th>Block 4</th><th>Block 5</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><th>Task description</th><td>Initial attribute discrimination</td><td>Initial target discrimination</td><td>Initial combined task</td><td>Reversed target discrimination</td><td>Reversed combined task</td></tr><tr><th>Example trials</th><td><img src="placeholder_image_1.png" alt="A purple smiley face with a black thumb and an orange thumb icon"></td><td><img src="placeholder_image_2.png" alt="A purple smiley face with an orange thumb icon"></td><td><img src="placeholder_image_3.png" alt="A purple smiley face with a black thumb and an orange thumb icon"></td><td><img src="placeholder_image_4.png" alt="A purple smiley face with an orange thumb icon"></td><td><img src="placeholder_image_5.png" alt="A purple smiley face with a black thumb and an orange thumb icon"></td></tr></tbody></table>

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<figure><img src="image_5.png" /></figure>

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<figure><img src="image_7.png" /></figure>

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Example trials are from Condition Order 1. Credit to Oram S. Dannreuther.

### 4. 1. 3. Procedure.

Children were taken from their classroom to a quiet room in the school, where they completed the IAT sorting task on laptops. Children were instructed to respond as quickly and accurately as possible by pressing the Q or L keys on an AZERTY keyboard, corresponding to the target category ("the girl commands the boy" or "the boy commands the girl") and/or the attribute category ("positive" or "negative"). Children practiced pressing both the Q and L keys once and were told that these would be the two important keys throughout the experiment. A purple stripe and an orange stripe remained on the screen, positioned on the left and right respectively to serve as reminders for correct sorting. The experiment consisted of five blocks, each preceded by an instruction phase and a practice phase. During the instruction phase, the experimenter explained the sorting rule using printed cards. Before starting each block, two practice questions were asked: "If you see this [picture], where would you sort it?" and "Can you remind me what goes on the [purple/orange] side?":

- Block 1 included 20 trials. Children were instructed to sort happy and sad smiley faces with the following prompt: "If the smiley face is positive, you have to put it on the purple side. If the smiley face is negative, you have to put it on the orange side". The experimenter clarified the meanings of the labels "thumbs-up" for positive and "thumbs-down" for negative while displaying them in their respective positions on the screen.

- Block 2 presented the target trials in the initial pairing depending on the order condition. It contained 20 trials. Children were asked to sort dyadic mixed-gender interactions with the following prompt: "If it is the boy who commands the girl, you should place it on the [purple/orange] side. If it is the girl who commands the boy, it will be on the [orange/purple] side". The experimenter clarified the meanings of the respective pictogram labels, while displaying them in their respective positions on the screen.

- Block 3 was a test block consisting of 40 trials. One response button and side of the screen were assigned to a target category paired with positive attributes, while the other button and side were assigned to the other target category paired with negative attributes. The experimenter explained to the participants how to sort the stimuli: e.g. "Now, you
have to put the positive smiley faces and when the girls command the boys on this side.
And you have to put the negative smiley faces and when the boys command the girls on
that side".

- Block 4 consisted of 20 trials in which the response buttons for the target categories were reversed. The experimenter told the child: "Now, it is the opposite: if the girl commands the boy, the picture goes on this side. And if it is the girl who commands the boy, it goes on that side".

- Block 5 consisted of 40 trials that tested the new pairings, reversed from Block 3. The experimenter explained to the participants how to sort the stimuli: e.g. "Now, you have to put the positive smiley faces and when the boys command the girls on this side. And you have to put the negative smiley faces and when the girls command the boys on that side".

Each participant was randomly assigned to one of two orders: in Order 1, positive attributes were first paired with female power and then with male power; in Order 2, the reverse order was used, with male power paired with positive attributes first. Gender distribution in each order was counterbalanced: 15 girls and 15 boys were assigned to order 1 and 14 girls and 18 boys to order 2. Each trial began with a fixation cross that appeared for 1 second followed by an image, which remained on the screen until the participant responded by pressing one of the keys. Feedback was provided after each response but the experiment did not wait for a correct response to proceed. Within each block, the images were presented in a random order. All sessions lasted about 15 min.

**4. 1. 4. Scoring and analyses.**

Analyses were conducted using Bayesian methods to estimate the strength of evidence
supporting the potential absence of bias in favor of evaluating one type of power more
positively than the other. This hypothesis is grounded in prior findings that have not revealed
significant explicit preferences for male power (Helmlinger et al., 2024; Galusca et al., 2025;
Vial & Cimpian, 2024). Reaction times were recorded from the onset of the stimulus to the
participant's response. Because the experiment did not include a built-in error penalty, we
applied an adjusted reaction time (RT) to the mistaken trials (Greenwald et al., 2021).
Specifically, the error penalty was calculated as the mean correct RT for the block in which
the error occurred, divided by the standard deviation (SD) of RTs across all trials in both
blocks. This error penalty was added to the reaction time. We did not exclude trials based on
reaction times (see Greenwald et al., 2021), as following recommendations of excluding
participants whose response times are shorter than 300 ms for more than 10% of trials did not
result in any exclusions. The D-score was calculated by subtracting mean RT's of "female
power = positive" block from "male power = positive" block (B3-B5 for Order 1 and B5-B3
for Order 2) and dividing by the standard deviation of RTs for all trials of block 3 and block 5
(see Nosek et al., 2014). Hence, a *negative* D-score indicates a facilitation of pairing female
power and positive valence, whereas a *positive* D-score indicates a facilitation of pairing male
power and positive valence. Analyses were conducted with Jamovi version 2.3.28 (The
Jamovi project, 2022).
## 4. 2. Results and discussion

Overall, the mean D-score was -0.03 (SD = 0.53; 95% CI [-0.17, 0.1]; BF<sub>01</sub> = 6.37; error % = 0.08), providing moderate evidence for an absence of general bias favoring one pairing over the other (3 <BF< 10 is considered moderate evidence in favor of the null hypothesis in this case). A Bayesian ANOVA was conducted to assess the effect of gender on D-score, condition order was also included as a predictor variable in this analysis. Default priors in Jamovi were used. Model comparison showed that the best model includes both Gender and Condition Order as predictor variables but no interaction between them.

Results of the Bayesian ANOVA indicated strong evidence for the inclusion of gender (BF = 62.5) and condition order (BF = 39.1), with BF higher than 10 indicating strong support for these effects in the model. The gender effect was characterized by an own-gender bias for both girls (*M* = -0.27; *SD* = 0.48; 95% CI [-0.45, -0.09]) and boys (*M* = 0.174; *SD* = 0.48; 95% CI [0.001, 0.34]; see Figure 2). The D-score was also influenced by the condition order: Order 1 (i.e., female power paired with positive attributes first) facilitated this association overall, resulting in a negative mean D-score (*M* = -0.25; *SD* = 0.50; 95% CI [-0.44, -0.07]). Conversely, Order 2 produced the opposite facilitation, with a positive mean D-score (*M* = 0.17; *SD* = 0.47; 95% CI [0.001, 0.34]). The most plausible interpretation of this order effect is that children of both genders were biased toward the first learned association, which subsequently interfered with their response times in the subsequent association block.

An additional analysis was conducted to examine whether the magnitude of the own-gender bias differed between boys and girls. To do so, D-scores were transformed to reflect own-gender advantage: for girls, the original D-score (Female power – Male power) was retained, while for boys, the sign was reversed (Male power – Female power). In this transformed metric, a negative D-score thus indicates a facilitation toward associating own-gender power with positive valence relative to the reverse association. A one-sample Bayesian T-test on this transformed D-score yielded strong evidence in favor of the alternative hypothesis of a difference between this score and 0 (BF<sub>01</sub> = 38). An independent-samples Bayesian t-test assessing the effect of gender yielded a Bayes Factor (BF<sub>01</sub>) of 2.94, indicating that the data are 2.94 times more likely under the null hypothesis than under the alternative hypothesis. This constitutes small to moderate evidence in favor of the absence of a gender difference in the size of own-gender bias.

*Figure 2: Mean D-score by participant's gender*
<figure><img src="image_9.png" /></figure>

Note: A *negative D-score* indicates a facilitation of pairing female power and positive valence, whereas a *positive D-score* indicates a facilitation of pairing male power and positive valence.

Overall, the experiment provides strong evidence that children hold more positive implicit attitudes toward own-gender power compared to other-gender power, and weak evidence that the magnitude of this bias is similar across genders. The hypothesis of stronger own-gender bias among boys that would have indicated stronger value held by boys for the powerful position of their gender, was not therefore not confirmed. Overall, the results suggest that although children aged 8-10 are well aware of the stereotype of male power (e.g., Charafeddine et al., 2020; Mandalaywala et al., 2020; Reyes-Jaquez & Koenig et al., 2022; Santhanagopalan et al., 2022), these stereotypes do not lead to more overall positive attitudes toward male power compared to female power. However, to draw valid conclusions about the influence of male power expectations on evaluative attitudes, it is crucial to first establish that such expectations are indeed active in the types of situations used in the task. Prompted by a question from an anonymous reviewer regarding this issue, a follow-up experiment was conducted one year later. This additional study used the same stimuli as the main experiment and investigated whether children apply descriptive stereotypes of male power, and whether these stereotypes influence their explicit evaluative responses to the presented scenarios.

# 5. Additional experiment: explicit descriptive stereotypes and attitudes towards power in mixed-gender interactions

## 5.1. Method

### 5.1.1. Participants.

The children were tested after obtaining their oral consent as well as the written consent from their parents, the school teachers, the school directors, and the local Board of Education. This additional experiment was conducted in May 2025 in two public schools from mixed socioeconomic backgrounds in the same medium-size, urban area of north-eastern France as the main experiment. The study initially included 30 girls ($M_{age}$ = 9.41;
[8.44, 10.47]) and 29 boys ($M_{age} = 9.47$; [8.45, 10.30]) aged 8 to 10 years. One girl was excluded because she had an insufficient understanding of French to complete the task.

**5. 1. 2. Materials and procedure.**

Children were individually taken from their classroom to a quiet room in the school. The first part of the session aimed to test the presence of *descriptive stereotypes* of male power. First, the experimenter ensured that children correctly understood the power relations in the pictures used in the main experiment, by showing them one of the images (M>F or F>M, counterbalanced order) and asking them: *“In this picture, who commands who?”*. The experimenter then showed them the second image (F>M or M>F, counterbalanced order) and asked: *“And in this picture, who commands who?”*. Once the children’s comprehension of the pictures was checked, they were asked about the descriptive stereotype itself: *“In real life, when one sees girls and boys talking together, which does one see more often: the girls commanding the boys as in this picture, or the boys commanding the girls as in that picture?”* (counterbalanced order). In the second part of the session, we aimed to assess children’s explicit attitudes towards gendered power (possibly reflecting prescriptive stereotypes of male power), using the same couple of pictures as in the first part. Children were asked to respond using a Likert scale with emoticons ranging from very frowning (1 = it’s not good at all) to very smiling (5 = it’s very good). After presenting the scale, the experimenter placed the two pictures in front of the child (F>M on the right and M>F on the left for half the children, the opposite for the other half of the children) and asked: *“How good you think it is when girls command boys, like in this picture? How good you think it is when boys command girls, like in this picture?”* (counterbalanced order). Finally, the experimenter concluded the session with an informal, educationally-oriented brief discussion about the egalitarian distribution of power across genders (e.g., *“Don’t you think that we all have the right to sometimes command, whether we’re a boy or a girl?”*). Children were thanked and walked back to the classroom. The session of questions lasted about 5 min.

**5. 2. Results and discussion**

Three children (2 boys, 1 girl) did not wish to answer the question and were excluded from this analysis. Forty-five children (22 girls, 23 boys) answered that boys more frequently commanded girls than vice versa (81.8%; CI [0.696, 0.898]) and 10 children (6 girls, 4 boys) answered that girls more frequently commanded boys than vice versa (18.2%; CI [0.102, 0.304]). These proportions were significantly different from chance, as indicated by a Bayesian binomial test ($BF_{10} = 21997$), providing strong evidence in favor of the alternative hypothesis. A Bayesian contingency table (equivalent to $\chi^2$ independency test in frequentist analysis) showed that this proportion did not vary according to the participant gender ($BF_{01} = 1.7$ which represents only weak evidence in favor of the null hypothesis). The male power stereotype was therefore strongly prevalent among the participants.

Concerning the evaluative attitudes towards the power situations in the second task, children showed an overall tendency to evaluate both power situations equally, with 39 children out of 58 rating F>M situations in the same way as F>M situations (67%). However, when children did show a preference for one situation over the other, it was more frequently
towards F>M (16 children, including 11 girls and 5 boys) than M>F (3 children, including 1 girl and 2 boys). The mean score attributed to the female-over-male (F>M) situation was 2.43, and the score for the male-over-female (M>F) situation was 2.05. Both means were significantly below the neutral midpoint of the scale (3), which was used as the reference value in the analysis (Bayesian one-sample t-tests; $BF_{10} = 9.86$ for F>M; $BF_{10} = 162803$ for M>F). In order to compare these two scores and to test an own-gender effect in the explicit measure, a Bayesian repeated measure ANOVA was conducted. The results of this analysis contradict the hypothesis that male-dominant situations are evaluated more positively. Specifically, moderate evidence was found in favor of the inclusion of the situation as predictor in the model (BF = 5.43), showing that children rated the F>M situation more positively than the M>F situation (Mean difference = 0.4). Evidence was weakly against the inclusion of participant gender as a predictor ($BF_{Inclusion} = 0.97$), but small to moderate evidence for a gender-by-situation interaction ($BF_{Inclusion} = 2.9$), suggesting an own-gender bias. Overall, girls rated F>M more positively than M>F ($M_{F>M} = 2.69$ vs. $M_{M>F} = 1.97$), while boys gave similar ratings to both ($M_{F>M} = 2.17$ vs. $M_{M>F} = 2.14$). To further investigate this result, a score of own-gender bias was computed for all participants by subtracting rating of own-gender power from rating of other-gender power. A one-sample Bayesian t-test showed a small to moderate evidence in favor of the alternative hypothesis, that is that the mean score of own-gender bias is different from 0 (BF = 2.25). Contrary to the own-gender bias in the implicit association task, girls were significantly more biased than boys toward power of their gender in the explicit task ($M_{girls} = 0.724$ vs. $M_{boys} = -0.03$; $BF_{10} = 7.32$), as revealed by a Bayesian two-sample t-test. This value of BF is interpreted as moderate evidence in favor of a gender difference.

Finally, we also included children's responses to the descriptive stereotype question as a predictor in the ANOVA. Moderate evidence for the inclusion of children's descriptive responses was found (BF = 3.59) but evidence was against including interactions of this response with gender and situation (BF = 0.79 and BF = 0.68, resp.). Children who provided counter-stereotypical answers to the descriptive question evaluated both types of power more positively (see Figure 3). However due to the small proportion of children who provided this answer (n = 10), this result should be interpreted with caution.

*Figure 3:* Mean evaluative attitude scores on the evaluative question as a function of participant gender (girls, boys), power situation (M>F, F>M) and descriptive representation of power (male power more likely, female power more likely).
<figure><img src="image_10.png" /></figure>

Notes: Each panel corresponds to participants who endorsed one of two descriptive representations of power: “Male power more likely” (left side) or “Female power more likely” (right side). Vertical bars represent computed 95% CI.

In sum, the additional experiment showed that descriptive stereotypes of male power are operant in both girls and boys. The second task of this experiment showed that although the descriptive stereotype of male power was found for the stimuli used in the main experiment, it was not related to children’s explicit attitudes towards gendered power. These explicit attitudes were negative regardless of the direction of the asymmetry (F>M or M>F), reflecting a reluctance towards inequality (Charafeddine et al., 2016). An own-gender bias, as in the implicit task was nevertheless found. However, this bias was found only among girls and not boys, echoing a recurrent difference in the extent to which girls and boys value their gender (Halim et al., 2017; Gasparini et al., 2015). Importantly, they show that girls favor their gender even in dominant roles, even if these roles contradict expectations of warmth and agreeableness stereotypically associated with their gender and with stereotypes about subordinates (Cuddy et al., 2008; see Helmlinger et al., 2024 for a similar result).

# 6. General discussion

The main experiment of this study used a child IAT procedure to examine 8- to 10-year-old children's implicit attitudes toward power dynamics in two conditions: one where a woman held a position of power over a man, and another where a man held a position of power over a woman. It showed evidence of positive attitudes toward individuals of one's own gender in positions of power. This experiment thus confirms the existence of a gender ingroup bias in the case of power (Galusca et al., 2025; Helmlinger et al., 2024), adding to a long list of positive characteristics that children preferentially attribute to members of their gender group (e.g., hard workers, nice, smart; Etaugh et al., 1984; Halim et al., 2017; Powlishta, 1995). Furthermore, this finding adds to own-gender preference found through indirect and implicit techniques as early as age 4. For instance, using child-friendly IAT
assessing gender attitudes, Cvencek et al. (2011) and Dunham et al. (2016) observed that children associated more their own gender with positive attributes and the other gender with negative attributes than the reverse.

However, when explicitly asked to rate the valence of masculine and feminine power situations in an additional task, children from the same social context and age group did not attribute positive value to the power of their own gender group. Instead, they rated both types of power situations negatively, with a slight preference for female power situations—driven by girls’ tendency to evaluate these scenarios more positively than those involving male power. Coherently with our predictions, explicit attitudes towards gendered power mostly reflected children’s negative attitudes towards power, independently of gender. Moreover, the asymmetry between implicit and explicit ratings—especially among boys, who did not exhibit an own-gender bias in the explicit follow-up task—highlights the importance of using implicit measures to study attitudes toward power and hierarchy. Such measures help circumvent potential negative evaluations of power commonly observed in children of this age group. Specifically, they suggest that implicit attitudes do not necessarily reflect conscious beliefs or explicit justifications of social norms. They may instead reveal automatic tendencies with affective valence, which can coexist with divergent explicit judgments (Greenwald et al., 2009; Nosek et al., 2011). Studies in adults have shown that implicit attitudes can predict certain behaviors, particularly in fast-paced, ambiguous or highly normalized contexts (Bargh, 1999; Dovidio et al., 2002), but that they do not always coincide with explicit attitudes. This underlines the complementary nature of the two levels of analysis. In children, this dissociation is particularly important for understanding the incorporation of social norms, especially on sensitive topics such as gender and power.

The reason why boys, contrary to girls, evaluated their own gender's power as equally negative as that of the other gender in the explicit task remains unclear. Moreover, the direction of the asymmetry between girls' and boys' own-gender biases appears to contradict children's awareness of gender hierarchy, as shown by the high proportion who explicitly judged male power situations as more likely than female ones. If children had been applying a gender normative reasoning to their evaluations, we might have expected them to rate male power as less negative than female power. Our results might indicate, on the contrary, a critical stance among children toward this reality—that is, toward the idea that men are more likely than women to hold power. Some evidence for this critical stance is provided by the few participants who did not provide a stereotypical response to the descriptive question, as they overall evaluated both situations (M>F and F>M) more positively. The fact that our participants were schooled in France—where gender equality principles are increasingly emphasized—may partly account for the observed negative attitudes toward male power (see McKeown et al., 2025, in this issue). Anecdotally, for example, one of the classes in which we conducted the additional task (n=9) had taken part in a gender inequality awareness project just one week prior to the experimental session. While such educational efforts may not erase children's expectations of male dominance—as our findings suggest—they might nonetheless reduce its prescriptive influence and lead to explicit attitudes against the statu-quo (see McKeown et al., 2025, in this issue). Future research could explore children's explicit
attitudes toward power in cultural contexts where gender hierarchies are more strongly
legitimized.

In conclusion, neither the explicit task nor the implicit one revealed an overall bias
toward endorsing male power. On the contrary, in the explicit task, boys were significantly
more negative than girls toward own-gender power. Importantly, this difference was not
reflected in the implicit association task, where boys' tendency to associate their gender with
positive attributes did not significantly differ from that of girls. This asymmetry suggests a
divergence between explicit attitudes that challenge the status quo and implicit attitudes that
favor one's own gender group. Concerning girls, these results suggest that although their
descriptive expectations about the gender hierarchy may appear to conflict with ingroup
favoritism (see Heck et al., 2022, for a review), these expectations do not translate into
negative attitudes toward their own gender in position of power. These findings build on
previous research on children's attitudes toward gendered power (Galusca et al., 2025;
Helmlinger et al., 2024; Vial & Cimpian, 2024), confirming two key patterns: the absence of
positivity toward male power, and a consistent bias for own-gender in position of power. By
using an implicit and continuous method, potentially more sensitive to subtle variations in
children's evaluations, our results suggest that positive attitudes toward own-gender power
may stem from automatic ingroup preferences—resistant both to social expectations favoring
male power as well as potential critical stances against it.

**7. Limitations and further research**

To our knowledge, this study is the first to use an Implicit Association Test (IAT) with
relational stimuli to examine children's developing attitudes toward gendered power. This
type of stimulus is particularly promising, especially given the challenges of using linguistic
material in gendered languages such as French. However, the results should be interpreted
with caution. For instance, it remains unclear why girls did not show a stronger pro-gender
bias than boys in the implicit task as in the explicit task and as might have been expected
based on previous findings on own-gender bias in the power domain (Helmlinger et al., 2024)
as well as in other domains (e.g. Halim et al., 2017). The mean D-scores, transformed to
reflect the strength of facilitation in associating own-gender power with positive valence,
were in the direction of a greater own-gender bias among girls. However, the Bayes Factor
(BF) provided more support for the null hypothesis (i.e., no gender difference) than for the
alternative. That said, the strength of this evidence was weak, indicating only a slight
preference for the null hypothesis. This leaves open the possibility that the study was
underpowered to reliably detect gender-based differences in implicit own-gender bias.

Moreover, the IAT method may be improved in the future to fully rule out simple
associations between gender and valenced attributes. In the present experiment, the dominant
individual in the picture may have been perceived as more salient, and children may have
developed a simple strategy by detecting the gender of that individual albeit our precaution to
use a relational prompt for the association (e.g. "*If it is the boy who commands the girl, you
should place it on the [purple/orange] side. If it is the girl who commands the boy, it will be*"
on the [orange/purple] side”). Future research comparing children’s attitudes toward mixed-gender versus same-gender power situations, and/or contrasting power situations with non-power ones, may provide a more precise understanding of how children respond to their gender’s hierarchical positions.

Future studies may also benefit from directly comparing children’s attitudes toward women and men in high-power positions versus those in low-power or neutral roles, in order to better explore potential prescriptive stereotypes regarding female power. Insights from the backlash literature suggest that occupying a position of power tends to negatively affect adults’ attitudes toward women more than toward men (Bowles et al., 2007; Chatman et al., 2022; Eagly et al., 1992; Rudman & Glick, 2001; Rudman et al., 2012; Rudman & Kilianski, 2000). Moreover, Bailey et al. (2020) showed that adults display less favorable implicit attitudes toward women in dominant poses compared to those in submissive ones. These findings raise the possibility that a similar mechanism may be worth testing in childhood.

Finally, our stimuli included a dominance situation where the power asymmetry between the woman and the man was highly detrimental to the subordinate character. Intergroup gender attitudes might have prevented girls from displaying positive attitudes towards this type of extreme male power over female characters. However, it can also be argued that the subordinate may be perceived as kinder than the dominant as the first is picking a sheet of paper from the flour while the second is displaying a mean facial expression. This echoes some findings which nuance the associations ‘dominance=positive’ and ‘subordination=negative’: while social dominance can be associated with coercive and antisocial behavior, subordinate people can be seen in a positive light (e.g., Terrizzi et al., 2020). Further work using relational stimuli might consider depicting power in less coercive ways. Broadening the range of power dimensions would enable to extend the scope of interpretation not only to power expressed through physical postures (as is the case in our current stimuli), but also as prestige, social status and leadership (for the distinction between dominance and prestige, see Cheng et al., 2013; Heck et al., 2022; Maner et al., 2017). A related remark can be made regarding the type of attributes used. The emoticons were intended to represent the valence of attitudes, but may instead have been perceived as conveying discrete emotional states such as happiness or sadness. This raises the question of whether the associations truly reflected ‘dominance of one gender over another = positive vs. negative’, or rather ‘dominance of one gender over another = happiness vs. sadness’. Further studies are needed to replicate these findings using alternative operationalizations.

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