When boys wear pink : gendered color-cue violations and risk-taking

A primary way to signal gender differences starting in infancy is via clothing color: pink\ud for girls and blue for boys. We examined whether a violation of this seemingly innocuous\ud cue would affect decision-making. Participants were given a modified version of Tversky\ud and Kahneman???s (1981) Asian Disease Problem in a gain frame and asked to make riskaverse or risk-taking decisions about infants dressed in gender-congruent versus genderincongruent colors. In Experiment 1 and 2a, participants tended to choose the risk-averse option when presented with color-congruent and the risk-taking option with colorincongruent infants only. Experiment 2b yielded a surprising finding with female infants, such that girls dressed in pink were subject to riskier decision-making. Experiment 3 addressed the possibility that these findings could be explained through simple\ud expectancy violation. We use psychological essentialism as a framework to discuss why\ud people would make riskier decisions with boys in pink than boys in blue