Adolescents’ own-gender majority biased social learning and educational choices

Social learning (SL) biases are a fundamental process in culture and its evolution. Many cultures have gender inequality in labour division, which originates from gender differences in adolescents’ school subject choices. Gender conformity remains high in adolescence, and we suggest that adolescents’ educational choices are influenced by a SL bias towards copying the behaviour of own-gender peers. <br/>The current pre-registered study asked adolescents (159 males, 249 females) to rate their interest in eight educationally aligned projects (e.g., physics) after being told that the previous cohort had a majority that was either their gender or another gender. Additionally, adolescents listed their actual subject choices (subsequently rated for gender typicality) and completed a gender stereotype scale. <br/>As predicted, interest in a pathway was significantly higher when there was an own- versus other-gender majority (B= 2.75, t(3077) = 3.09, p = .002). Interest in own-gender-typical projects positively correlated with own-gender-typicality of actual subject choices (r = .54, P &lt; .001) and, for girls only, an own-gender majority bias correlated with gender stereotype endorsement (p &lt; .05). <br/>We will discuss how the identification of majority-based SL biases can help our understanding of real-world issues such as gender inequality in educational choices. <br/>