Social Development, Volume 34, Issue 1, February 2025.

ABSTRACT

Women score higher than men on measures of social cognition such as empathy and reading non-verbal cues. How early does this gender difference emerge? Systematic review and meta-analyses were used to assess gender difference in social perception within 1 month of birth. A total of 31 studies (40 experiments) reported on gender effects in 1936 neonates (50% girls) between 1968 and 2021. No significant difference (Hedges’ g = 0.076, p = 0.321) was found across 20 experiments measuring visual fixation on human faces. Nine experiments on neonatal imitative crying also revealed no gender difference (g = 0.157, p = 0.118). Seven studies using the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale found no gender difference in total orientation (g = 0.161, p = 0.154), but girls oriented more to both animate (g = 0.279, p = 0.011) and inanimate (g = 0.242, p = 0.003) stimuli in the studies that analyzed these separately. Existing evidence supports a possible maturational difference but not a specific social advantage for girls at birth. While more research and better reporting are needed, the present findings challenge the claim that girls are innately more socially perceptive than boys.

ABSTRACT

While educational preferences can be influenced by friends through various mechanisms, the specific pathways of this influence remain underexplored. This study employs random-coefficient multilevel stochastic actor-oriented models to examine a longitudinal sample of Hungarian students (N _students = 493, N _classes = 21) observed from fifth to seventh grade. The study investigates how friends' preferences and friends' parental resources influence educational preferences while accounting for friends' academic achievement and friendship selection. The analysis identifies distinct pathways through which friends can influence educational preferences. The study suggests that adolescents do not adjust their secondary school track preferences to conform to their friends' preferences but are instead affected by the indirect influence of their friends' parental background. Students who befriend adolescents with highly educated parents are more likely to adjust their preferences toward the academically oriented secondary school track.