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Arch Sex Behav (2010) 39:12611273 DOI 10.1007/s10508-010-9618-z
ORIGINAL PAPER
Infants Preferences for Toys, Colors, and Shapes: Sex Differences and Similarities
Vasanti Jadva Melissa Hines Susan Golombok
Received: 3 September 2008 / Revised: 16 February 2010 / Accepted: 18 February 2010 / Published online: 16 March 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010
Abstract Girlsandboysdifferintheirpreferencesfortoyssuch as dolls and trucks. These sex differences are present in infants, are seeninnon-humanprimates,andrelate,inpart,toprenatalandrogen exposure. This evidence of inborn inuences on sex-typed toy preferences has led to suggestions that object features, such as the color or the shape of toys, may be of intrinsically different interest to males and females. We used a preferential looking task to examine preferences for different toys, colors, and shapes in120infants,ages12,18,or24months.Girlslookedatdollssignicantly more than boys did and boys looked at cars signicantly more than girls did, irrespective of color, particularly when brightness was controlled. These outcomes did not vary with age. There were no signicant sex differences in infants preferences for different colors or shapes. Instead, both girls and boys preferred reddishcolorsoverblueandroundedoverangularshapes.Thesendings augment prior evidence of sex-typed toy preferences in infants, but suggest that color and shape do not determine these sex differences. In fact, the direction of inuence could be the opposite. Girls may learn to prefer pink, for instance, because the toysthattheyenjoyplayingwithareoftencoloredpink.Regarding withinsexdifferences,asopposedtodifferencesbetweenboysand girls, both boys and girls preferred dolls to cars at age 12-months. The preference of young boys for dolls over cars suggests that olderboysavoidanceofdollsmaybeacquired.Similarly,thesex similarities in infants preferences for colors and shapes suggest
thatanysubsequentsexdifferencesinthesepreferencesmayarise from socialization or cognitive gender development rather than inborn factors.
Keywords Sex Gender Infants Toy preference
Color preference Shape preference
Introduction
Children show clear sex-typed toy preferences, with girls showing more interest than boys do in dolls and boys showing more interest than girls do in vehicles (Alexander & Hines, 1994; Pasterski et al., 2005; Serbin, Poulin-Dubois, Colburne, Sen, & Eichstedt, 2001). In addition to these differences between the sexes, within sex analyses show that boys play more with masculine toys, like vehicles and weapons, than with feminine toys, like dolls and tea sets. In contrast, although girls play more with feminine toys than with masculine toys when the feminine toys are sufciently interesting (e.g., Hines & Alexander, 2008; Pasterski et al., 2005), they sometimes show no signicant preference for...