AGGRESSION TOWARD GENDER-NONCONEORMING PEERS 847 oftheir grades.The numbers (and meana 43 ( cale ind The lts with this of the it al child preted cautiously aisals es of the school ensure th attractivenes wa asured by ha ving childre har e of the entire popul t each o hildren were tes individually ina library cubice in both the ce self-efficacy was asse hilnd spring the sch ght it feel like I am i stating that they were free to iny questio n the self-effica was a with si items ."Being popular hing suit is me. Being good looking is sment of Cognitive Variables 84.and87. identity uch they liked ates(Ho Assessment of Social Behavior nAchil's a e from sepa tion instrument per sex to indey ate were included on these instr gender nonconformity (a ified versions of Fo and Per es:th ixth and I cor not have 0n4 tha for me and e.g My fifth graders'classm nates and to sixth and seventh graders'grad chil nat girl )and the as administered.Item tems from p 5203 )bu the bous b For each item.children read descripti s of tw with bov "He lik of chac to do things that girls us lly do ones depic H alway inations):children cro list so th with higher so on of classmates (of either sex)who nominated the chilo the BUT Oth the ad very high loa s for all four gende for the The nents promin ce they were BUT all their life BUTOther girlsare glad they'beagr all their life and internalizing problems(e.gsadness.anxiety).A similar analof the children in their grades. The numbers (and mean ages in the fall) of children in Grades 4 through 7, respectively, were 52 (8.7 years), 56 (9.7 years), 43 (10.7 years), and 44 (11.7 years). Four additional children were tested in the fall but did not participate in the spring; participation in the spring was limited to children who had participated in the fall, and thus spring participants represented 98% of fall participants. The sample was approximately 51% White, 21 % Black, 20% Hispanic, and 8% other. The admissions procedures of the school ensure that the student body is represen￾tative of the entire population of Florida in terms of ethnicity/race and socioeconomic level. Children were tested individually in a library cubicle in both the fall and spring of the school year. At the start of each session, children signed an assent form describing the questionnaires and stating that they were free to leave blank any question they preferred not to answer. At the conclusion, children were asked not to discuss their responses or the study with other children. Assessment of Cognitive Variables Gender identity. Four dimensions of gender identity were assessed. Intergroup bias was calculated from children’s ratings of how much they liked each of their participating classmates (“How much do you like each kid?”). Ratings were on a 4-point scale with 1 indicating Not at all and 4 indicating A lot. A child’s rating of a peer was converted to a z score indicating the child’s liking of the peer relative to all children’s liking of that peer. The average other-sex z was subtracted from the average same-sex z to index intergroup bias, or ingroup favoritism. The other three facets of gender identity were assessed with modified versions of Egan and Perry’s (2001) scales; the scales were shortened to retain items with high item-total correlations in previous studies. Felt pressure for gender differentiation was assessed with seven items. Children rated statements on 4-point scales with 1 indicating Not at all true for me and 4, Very true for me. Items described possible reactions for gender-atypical behav￾ior from parents (two items; e.g., “My parents would be upset if they saw me acting like a girl”), same-sex peers (two items; e.g., “The boys I know would be upset if I wanted to learn an activity that girls usually do”), and the self (three items; e.g., “I wouldn’t like myself if I heard myself talking or laughing like a girl”). Scale totals were averages of the seven items. Cronbach’s alpha was .81. Items on the felt gender typicality and gender contentedness scales were formatted alike. Each had five items, with about half reverse-scored. For each item, children read descriptions of two kinds of children— ones depicted as high on the gender identity dimension and ones depicted as low—and chose which kind of children they resembled more; they then indicated whether this choice was Very true or Sort of true for them. This yielded a 4-point scale, with higher scores indicating greater gender identity. Scale scores were item averages. Items assessing gender typicality included (from the girls’ form) “Some girls feel they are different from other girls BUT Other girls feel they are similar to other girls” and “Some girls have the same feelings that other girls have BUT Other girls don’t have the same feelings that other girls have.” Gender contentedness items included “Some girls are happy that they were born a girl BUT Other girls are not happy that they were born a girl” and “Some girls wish they didn’t have to be a girl all their life BUT Other girls are glad they’ll be a girl all their life.” Cronbach’s alpha was .68 for gender typicality and .59 for gender contentedness. The marginal reliability of the gender contented￾ness scale indicates that results with this measure should be inter￾preted cautiously. Gender-nonspecific self-appraisals. Self-esteem was as￾sessed with Harter’s (1985) six-item global self-worth scale; each item is scored from 1 to 4 (averaged for the scale total); Cron￾bach’s alpha was .73. Self-efficacy for dominance, popularity, and attractiveness was measured by having children rate how hard versus easy it was for them to enact each of 18 behaviors. Children rated each behavior on a 4-point scale, with 1 indicating HARD! and 4 indicating EASY! Dominance self-efficacy was assessed with eight items (e.g., “Bossing others around is ____ for me,” “Making others feel like I am in charge is ____ for me”). Popularity self-efficacy was assessed with six items (e.g., “Being popular is ____ for me,” “Being cool is ____ for me”). Attractiveness self￾efficacy was assessed with four items (e.g., “Looking good in a bathing suit is ____ for me,” “Being good looking is ____ for me”). Cronbach’s alphas for these scales, respectively, were .79, .84, and .87. Assessment of Social Behavior The study required assessments of children’s gender-atypical behavior as well as of their aggression toward each classmate. These measures came from separate peer nomination instruments, described in turn. Only the names of children with parental per￾mission to participate were included on these instruments. Assessment of gender nonconformity (and other social be￾haviors) in the peer group. Fourth and fifth graders provided peer nomination data for all of their classmates. Because sixth and seventh graders did not have a homeroom class but knew all the children in their grade very well, each child provided nominations for 14 –15 grade-mates (a randomization procedure ensured that each child could nominate, and be nominated by, a similar number of peers). We use the term classmates to refer both to fourth and fifth graders’ classmates and to sixth and seventh graders’ grade￾mates. The mean number of peers serving as nominators for a child was 16.1 (minimum 14). A 23-item peer nomination inventory was administered. Items covered a broad array of social behaviors in the peer group. Most items came from previous studies (e.g., Pauletti et al., 2012), but four that assessed gender-atypical behavior were written for the present study (from the boys’ form: “He’d rather play with girls than with boys,” “He likes to do things that girls usually do,” “He acts like a girl,” and “He always plays with girls”). Children checked off the names of classmates who fit each item (unlimited nominations); children crossed their own name off the list so they did not nominate themselves. A child’s score on each item was the proportion of classmates (of either sex) who nominated the child for the item. A principal components analysis (with varimax rota￾tion) on the data of all children in the fall yielded five components, one of which had very high loadings for all four gender-atypicality items (.83 to .92) and very low loadings for the remaining 19 items (.16 to .23); it was labeled gender nonconformity. The other components were labeled social prominence (e.g., popularity, sports competence), prosocial qualities (e.g., helpful behavior, physical attractiveness), coercion (e.g., dominance, manipulation), and internalizing problems (e.g., sadness, anxiety). A similar anal￾This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. AGGRESSION TOWARD GENDER-NONCONFORMING PEERS 847