Children's Numerical Estimation Is Biased by Male Informants More Than Female Informants

Numerical estimation is one of the key early math skills and predicts children's long-term math achievement. While children are born with an intuitive "number sense," they do not form a mapping between nonverbal numerical representations and symbolic numbers until about 5 years of age. This protracted learning process is embedded in children's interactions with other people, although little is known about how children's existing social beliefs may influence how they receive numerical information from other people. Meanwhile, children in the United States develop a stereotype to associate men with being better at math at around 6 years of age. Does this gender stereotype influence how children receive numerical information from other people? Using a numerical estimation task, we showed 5- to 7-year-old children (N = 198; 93 girls; United States) competing answers from a male and a female informant before asking children to provide their own answer. We found that children's answers were biased by the male informant more than the female, even when the female was accurate. This bias was domain-specific, as there was no difference in children's performance on a memory control task. Furthermore, repeated exposure to inaccurate answers from a male informant (in contrast to accurate answers from a female informant) induced changes in children's estimation even when the informants were no longer present. Therefore, gender stereotypes may have profound impacts on how children acquire and process numerical information. SUMMARY: Children form structural mappings between numerical quantities and their mental number line, which can be calibrated by numerical information from other people. Here, in two studies, we tested how informant gender influences children's estimation performance. Numerical information received from men has stronger calibration effects on children's estimation performance compared to information from women. Repeated exposure to overestimation from men has lasting impacts on children's subsequent estimation performance.