Giving your daughter a Barbie doll to play with as a child may "limit" her views on career options in the future, according to a new study.
Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz and Oregon State University authored a paper about a psychological study relating to how girls see themselves after playing with Barbie.
"This is one of the first studies to investigate how playing with sexualized dolls affects young girls, and also one of the first to look at the impact of such play on achievement or career aspirations, rather than body image," Eileen Zurbriggen, psychology professor and study co-author, said in a statement.
The study included 37 female participants ages four to seven, according to a news release. The girls were randomly tasked to play for five minutes with a sexualized Doctor Barbie or Fashion Barbie doll, with the neutral toy being a Mrs. Potato Head doll.
Afterwards, the girls were shown photographs of 10 occupations and were asked if they saw themselves in the career path or a boy taking the job in the future. According to the news release, girls who played with the Barbie dolls saw themselves in fewer "boy" occupations than those who played with Mrs. Potato Head.
"Perhaps Barbie can 'Be Anything' as the advertising for this doll suggests," Aurora Sherman, psychology professor and study co-author, said in a statement. "But girls who play with her may not apply these possibilities to themselves."
The researchers claimed the doll's physical features were affecting girls' perception of themselves. The dolls used in the experiment, Doctor Barbie and Fashion Barbie, also had the same characteristics; the only difference between the two dolls were their clothes.
"It's sobering that a few minutes of play with Barbie had an immediate impact on the number of careers that girls saw as possible for themselves" Zurbriggen said. "And it didn't matter whether Barbie was dressed as a model or as a pediatrician, suggesting that the doll's sexualized shape and appearance might trump whatever accessories are packaged with her."
