Gender differences in young children’s compliance to maternal directives: A meta-analysis

Abstract

Evolutionary theory and several lines of evidence suggest that the motive to establish positive relationships with others is stronger in females than males. Accordingly, it was predicted that in young children, girls would be more likely than boys to comply with their mothers’ directives. To test this prediction, the present meta-analysis examined gender differences in compliance to maternal directives in young children (ages 1–7 years) as assessed on structured tasks. The meta-analysis was performed on 80 effect sizes derived from 49 studies conducted in 10 countries. Two categories of studies were distinguished: those that assessed compliance with respect to the child’s presumed motives for performing compliant and those that assessed compliance without reference to the child’s presumed motives. For the former category of studies, girls were higher in internally motivated compliance whether the task required performing an action or not performing an action, and boys were higher in externally motivated compliance when the task required not performing an action. For the latter category of studies, results were mixed, with some evidence indicating that girls were higher in compliance. No evidence was found indicating that the magnitude of the gender differences changed with age. One caveat is that the effect sizes analyzed might have been attenuated due to measurement error. Discussion focuses on a number of explanations that may be offered to account for the gender differences found in internally motivated compliance favoring girls.