Universal Principles of Design, Updated and Expanded Third Edition

141 Play Preferences

A tendency for male children and female children to like different kinds of play.

There are a number of innate cognitive-behavioral differences between males and females, one of which is early childhood play preferences. Male children tend to engage in play activities that emulate hunting-related behaviors, whereas female children tend to engage in play activities that emulate nurturing-related behaviors.

Play preferences were long thought to be primarily a function of social and environmental factors, but research increasingly favors a more biologically based explanation. For example, the fact that male children tend to prefer stereotypically male toys (e.g., cars) and females tend to prefer stereotypically female toys ...