The paper says that gender is learned from the environment, through observational learning. Children watch and learn from the people around them, and will copy behaviours they see. Children are more likely to copy behaviours they can relate to themselves, i.e. a male child copying the behaviour of a male role model. Adults will respond to that behaviour, either in a positive or negative way. The child will then learn that the behaviour which receives a positive response is the ‘right’ behaviour, motivating the child to behave the ‘correct’ way, feminine or masculine. This has been shown in the study of 3 siblings, James, John and Sarah. Sarah is rewarded for wearing a dress, while John is punished. This then shows them that wearing a dress is the right thing for a girl to do, but a bad and wrong thing for the boy to do. While James was watching, he is also learning that boys do not wear dresses, while girls do. 

There have been two types of studies undertaken by psychologists, laboratory experiments and natural observations. An example of an observational study was undertaken by Fagot in 1978. She observed a family at home, recording all instances of praise and punishment, finding that boys were praises for playing with ‘boy toys’ and punished for playing with ‘girl toys’ and vice versa. This study confirms the theory that gender behaviour roles are learnt from the environment. An American study by Dweck and other in 1978 also reflects this theory, although that the views of 1970s America does not reflect the views of the rest of the world. Several studies have shown that parents do not directly teach children gender roles through praise and punishment, but that children end up behaving in a gender specific way regardless. That may explain that behaviour is not just learnt through social learning, as social learning cannot explain how children’s understanding of gender roles change over time, suggesting that cognitive processes plays a greater role than they believe. Since there are universal features of gender role behaviour across all cultures, this suggests that some gender related behaviours are a result of genetics, something that social development theory does not take into account.