DURHAM, N.C. — Disguising ’til you make it turns out to be true for children too: Young girls who embrace the role of successful female scientists like Marie Curie are more likely to play challenging science games. Lasts long.

A new study published Sept. 28 in the journal Psychological Science found that scientific role-playing not only enhances scientist identity, but also improves women’s participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and careers. It has been suggested that it may help reduce inequality. .

Reut Shachnai, a Cornell University graduate student, was frustrated by the gender gap in STEM, which employs at least three times more men than women in some fields, and wanted to do something about it. . Shakunai, who is still studying at Yale University, said the idea of ​​helping young girls develop an interest in science came to her during a lecture in her class on “The Psychology of Imagination.” rice field.

“We read papers about how kids pretending to be superheroes did better at self-control tasks (the so-called ‘Batman effect’),” said Duke, who taught the class now. said Tamar Kushnir, Ph.D., a professor of psychology and neuroscience and co-author of the new paper. “Reut thought this might also help encourage girls to stick to science.”

Shachnai and Kushnir, along with Dr. Lin Bian, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, conducted an experiment to test whether taking on the role of a successful scientist would improve a girl’s tenacity in “sink-or-float” science. devised. game.

The game itself is simple but rewarding. A computer screen showed a slide with an object floating above a puddle. The children then had to predict whether objects such as anchors, basketballs and balloons would sink or float. After making a choice, we learned whether we made the right choice by watching whether the object sank or floated.

The researchers recruited 240 children between the ages of 4 and 7 for the experiment.

“Kids around the age of 6 start thinking that boys are smarter and better at science than girls,” said Bian, who identified this critical time in previous research.

Boys and girls were assigned to three different groups. The baseline group was told they would be scientists for the day, and then started playing games.

Children in the “Story” group received the same information, but also learned about the successes and struggles of gender-matched scientists before playing the game. I heard about Curie. Also, after the story he had to take a 2-question quiz to see if he was paying attention (and he was paying attention).

Finally, the children in the “pretend” group did exactly the same as the “story” group, with one important twist. game (“Dr. Marie, what are your predictions?”).

All children played at least one round of the game and were then asked if they wanted to play more or do something else. Once the children tapped out, they were asked to rate how good they thought they were at the game and as scientists.

Regardless of which group they belonged to, girls were just as likely to answer correctly as boys. It was almost 70% chance. However, boys never really benefited from stories and pretend play.

“Boys were at their limits,” said Kushnir. “No matter what we did, they were almost ceiling performances.”

Girls, on the other hand, benefited greatly from pretend play.

Without being exposed to Madame Curie, the girls quit it after six attempts. However, the girls who pretended to be Dr. Marie lasted twice as long in the sink or float game, playing just as well as the boys (about 12 trials on average).

The girls’ reputation as science gamers did improve, although they didn’t get much benefit from hearing Madame Curie’s story expand the range of games.

Kushnir and her colleagues’ work raises many new questions for researchers. For example, whether children who assume the role of successful scientists who match their race or ethnicity may also benefit (participants in this study were mostly white).

“Our findings suggest that we want to take representation one step further,” said Shachnai. “Children can benefit from being proactive in their role models, rather than just listening to them. Take a few steps with the model’s shoes.

Support for this research came from the US National Science Foundation (DRL-2145809; SL-1955280; BCS-1823658) and the Cornell Center for Social Sciences.

Quote: “Walking in her shoes: Pretending to be a female role model increases young girls’ persistence in science,” Shachnai, Reut, Kushnir, Tamar, Bian, Lin. Psychology. 29 September 2022 DOI: 10.1177/09567976221119393