SMILING DINOSAURS – GENDER BIASES IN THE PERCEPTION OF DINOSAURS AMONGST STUDENTS FROM K-12 TO COLLEGE UNDERGRADUATES

Students learn not only in classrooms, but their perceptions are shaped by information they are exposed to in many aspects of their daily lives. Popular culture has a profound effect on the interests of people and biases the information they retain. Dinosaurs are a staple of children’s culture. They appear in movies and books for kids and are omnipresent on everything from clothing to lunch boxes. This study explores how dinosaurs are perceived by this generation of children exposed to images of dinosaurs in their daily lives.

We collected dinosaur drawings from K-12 students, and college undergraduates. We defined ten categories and scored each drawing. For example, we identified the type of dinosaur illustrated and examined the presence of teeth, claws, and facial expression.

We processed 514 drawings to date including 384 elementary school students, 59 high school students and 71 college students from schools in the northeastern United States. The participants include 48% male and 52% female students. Overall, male students drew carnivorous dinosaurs 56% of the time, while female students drew herbivores more often (55%). Many students illustrated dinosaurs with claws (male 53%, female 31%) and teeth (male 55%, female 36%); these gender differences can be observed to different degrees in all age groups we have examined. We noted the most distinct difference in facial expressions of the illustrated dinosaurs. Female students drew smiling dinosaurs 35% of the time, while male students illustrated happy dinosaurs only 17% of the time.

These preliminary results suggest that there is a gender difference in how dinosaurs are drawn and, interestingly, this difference is most pronounced in college students and elementary age artists and least prominent in high school students included in our study.