Learning Social Skills from Witches and Princesses
The effect of pro-social entertainment media on Pro-social Behavior, Inclusion Attitudes and Stigmatizing Behavior
by
Elsemiek Stoeten 10353895
Master’s Thesis
Graduate School of Communication Master’s programme Communication Science
S.R. Sumter, 2 February 2018
1 Abstract
Although TV shows often aim to teach children social lessons, research has shown that the effects of pro-social TV shows are limited or even absent. For this reason, the aim of the current study is to find out how children can learn moral lessons from TV shows. It has been argued that effectiveness might depend on program features, i.e. salience of the moral message, and child features, e.g. theory of mind. Therefore, an experiment was conducted amongst 66 four to six year olds. Children were exposed to one of three conditions, a TV show without a moral message, a pro-social TV show with an implicit moral message (low salience) or a TV show with an explicit moral message (high salience). After watching the TV show the children answered questions about pro-social behavior, inclusion attitudes and stigmatizing behavior, as well as questions related to the content of the episode they had just seen, i.e. recall and recognition of the show’s message. In addition, theory of mind was assessed for all children.
The results showed that watching a pro-social TV show was not related to message recall, pro-social behavior, inclusion attitudes and stigmatizing behavior. Children who were exposed to the explicit or implicit message prior to watching also did not differ from each other. However, children did recognize the message from the pro-social TV show, but the results did not differ for children who saw the explicit or the implicit message prior to watching. Finally, no interaction effect was found between condition and theory of mind. Although the current study showed no effects, several suggestions for future research are presented. Future research should focus on improving the current research, other program features that might help children learn from pro-social TV shows and characteristics of the child that might be able to explain susceptibility to pro-social TV shows.
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Learning Social Skills from Witches and Princesses:
The effect of pro-social entertainment media on Pro-social Behavior, Inclusion Attitudes and Stigmatizing Behavior
Nowadays Dutch children between the ages of three and six watch television for approximately one hour a day. This means that television is still the medium young children use the most (Mediawijzer, 2016). As most parents are very busy, they want to be able to entertain their children with television, so that they can finish important tasks (Rideout, Vandewater, & Wartella, 2003). Most parents (43%) expect that the television content mostly supports their children’s learning processes (Rideout et al., 2003).
For a long time research predominantly focused on learning academic skills from television content (e.g., Rice, Huston, Truglio, & Wright, 1990; Richert, Robb, Fender, & Wartella, 2010; Wright et al., 2001). However, several content analyses showed that most children’s TV shows do not merely focus on academic skills but also contained messages that focused on getting along with others or overcoming prejudice (Jordan, 2004; Jordan, Schmitt, & Woodard, 2001). Where improvements are found in for example, reading, math, receptive vocabulary, and school readiness after watching educational television content (e.g., Wright et al., 2001), these results are not yet generalized to other skills TV shows try to improve, for example the socio-emotional skills (e.g., Mares & Acosta, 2008).
Socio-emotional skills are competences that are useful in the emotional, cognitive and behavioural domains in order to achieve a normal social interaction (Domitrovich, Cortes, & Greenberg, 2007). One of the important socio-emotional skills is moral reasoning. Moral reasoning is how humans use moral rules, laws, authorities and formal obligations while making decisions when there is a moral conflict (Kohlberg, Ricks, & Snarey, 1984). Moral reasoning and understanding morality are necessary to live in a social community. Morality is important because it includes concepts such as justice and fairness, and it contributes to social
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norms and behaviors (Decety & Cowell, 2014). Although we are not born with moral knowledge, most people develop this over time (Carpendale & Hammond, 2016). When people do not develop morality or have an atypical development of morality, this can have negative consequences. Atypical morality is for example linked with more antisocial and criminal behaviors (Blair, 1995). The development of morality is guided by conversations with others and listening to or watching moral stories (Walker, Henning, & Krettenauer, 2000; Williams et al., 2002). Moral stories obtain themes including getting along with others or being nice to others (Narvaez, Gleason, Mitchell, & Bentley, 1999). It is exactly these stories that are known to be included in children’s TV shows (Jordan, 2004; Jordan et al., 2001), and it is expected that watching these televised stories can support the development of morality.
Since moral reasoning develops during childhood it is important to understand how TV shows can support the development during early childhood (Killen & Smetana, 2014). Although many children TV shows claim to teach children important socio-emotional lessons, research showed that it is hard for children to understand the moral lessons embedded in TV shows (Mares & Acosta, 2008). Up to now, research into televised moral stories claims that children interpret the message in a different way than is intended by the writer, for example focusing on other, more concrete, parts of the show (e.g., Mares & Acosta, 2008). The effect of pro-social content increases sharply between the ages of 3 and 7, with a peak at age 7 (Mares & Woodard, 2005). For this reasons, it is important to investigate which children are able to understand moral lessons embedded in TV shows and which program features can help accomplish this goal.
The current study uses the Differential Susceptibility to Media Effects Model
(DSMM; Valkenburg & Peter, 2013) to better understand under which circumstance and for which children TV shows can influence the moral understanding. The DSMM claims that
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media effects depend on differential susceptibility variables, for example on development. Although age is often taken as a proxy for development it is becoming increasingly clear that research should look at more direct measures of development, since age is not always the most reliable measurement for development (e.g., Lapierre, 2015). The model also recognizes the importance of looking at specific features of media, i.e. content and formal features: “..the DSMM argues that media use and the differential-susceptibility variables have an interactive influence on the media response states: Certain characteristics of media (e.g., content or formal features) influence media response states, but this influence depends on dispositional, developmental, and social-context differences among media users” (Valkenburg & Peter, 2013, p. 231).
In this study an experiment will be conducted to answer the question how children can learn moral lessons from TV shows. In the current study an experiment will be conducted among 66 four to six year old children.
The Development of Morality and Socio-Emotional Skills: Understanding Normal Development and the Role of Media
One of the most prominent theories about moral reasoning and the development of morality is the moral reasoning theory of Kohlberg and Hersh (1977). Moral development is: “... the transformations that occur in a person’s form or structure of thought” (Kohlberg & Hersh, 1977, p. 54). Kohlberg and Hersh (1977) claim that there are qualitatively different stadia through which morality is developing.
Studies showed that context is an important aspect in developing higher stadia of morality (e.g., Parker, Barnhardt, Pascarella, & McCowin, 2016; Walker, Henning, & Krettenauer, 2000; Williams et al., 2002). For example, social interactions teach children group norms, which are necessary in order to obtain a higher level of morality (Smetana, Jambon, & Ball, 2014). The socio-emotional skills which are required to develop moral
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reasoning also follow a developmental trajectory (Carpendale & Hammond, 2016). Since TV shows for children contain many social stories, these shows might also play an important role in teaching children morality (Jordan, 2004; Jordan et al., 2001). However efficacy of the TV shows, on for example understanding of the message, being more pro-social, being more inclusive and being less stigmatizing, is not proven yet (e.g., Mares & Acosta, 2008).
Different outcomes are used to assess whether exposure to prosocial TV shows is actually effective. One outcome measure is pro-social behaviors and attitudes, for example being more social, being more inclusive and being less stigmatizing after watching a pro-social TV show. Meta-analytic research on these outcome measurements showed that
watching pro-social TV shows might be related to higher levels of pro-social behavior, however most studies still focus on negative consequences of TV shows for children (Mares & Woodard, 2005).
Even when there is no recall nor is there recognition, unconscious effects on behavior and attitudes might occur. Recalling the lesson that the TV show wanted to teach is however still another way to measure if the child understood the message. Research showed that young children have a hard time recalling the lesson of the TV show (e.g., Mares & Acosta, 2008; Williams et al., 2002)
However when children cannot recall the message from the TV show this is not yet prove for inefficacy of the content. Research on persuasive communication often showed that although some commercials were not remembered by the audience they were recognized (Van Reijmersdal, Rozendaal, & Buijzen, 2012). Moreover, research showed that recalling the right message of a television show might also be too hard for children (e.g., Mares & Acosta, 2008). Therefore, it is also important to look at both recall and recognition of a message. The hypothesis of the current study was:
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H1: There is no main effect of exposure on recalling (1a) the message, but there is a main effect on recognizing (1b) the message and on pro-social (1c), inclusive (1d) and stigmatizing (1e) behavior.
In short, the group of children who are exposed to the TV show with a moral lesson will recognize, but not recall this message better and they will show higher pro-social behavior and inclusion attitudes, while stigmatizing behavior will be lower compared to the group of children who are not exposed to the TV show with the moral lesson.
Do Media Features Matter?
Up to now, most studies found no or small effects, and it has been argued that specific program features might influence the way children learn from media (e.g., Mares & Acosta, 2008). Thus, it is expected that with the right media features it is possible to enhance the effect. For example focusing on negative elements during the episode has negative effects on moral lesson comprehension (Mares & Acosta, 2008). One program feature that might be important when looking at research about learning in general is repetition (Kornell, 2009). However, in research looking at anti-prejudice messages in TV shows this had no influence (Persson & Musher-Eizenman, 2003). Adding inserts, short messages including explanations, showed to have an effect in research. The children who saw the TV show scored lower on inclusiveness compared to children who did not saw the TV show, but these negative effects were not found when inserts were included (Mares & Acosta, 2010).
Children might be better able to generalize results when adding an insert to the story. In earlier research on learning it became clear that generalizing lessons is hard for young children (Vlach & Sandhofer, 2011). Presenting an object in different contexts helped
children generalize the learned information (Goldenberg & Sandhofer, 2013). While younger children need help to generalize the message to everyday situations (Goldenberg &
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with the fantasy-reality distinction that is developing in early childhood (Valkenburg & Cantor, 2000). Even between four and six year old children there is a noticeable difference in judging fantastic events (Li, Boguszewski, & Lillard, 2015). The distinction between fantasy and reality might be important to be able to generalize, instead of keeping the message within the story. In addition the perceptual boundedness is off influence (Valkenburg & Cantor, 2000). Perceptual boundedness means that children focus more on appearance of the character than on the behavior or motivations behind the behavior. Older children however are able to focus more on behavior and motivation (Valkenburg & Cantor, 2000), so that the moral lesson in TV shows might be easier to understand.
The problems young children experience in fantasy-reality distinction and perceptual boundedness might influence their understanding of a pro-social message from TV shows. For TV shows aimed at teaching a moral lesson to young children therefore explicit mentioning of the lesson in a new situation, as a way of presenting the lesson in a different context, might play an important role in the ability of young children to learn. The importance of explicit mentioning of the moral message, also called an insert, in children's television programming is previously investigated (Mares & Acosta, 2010). However, this research did not find a positive effect for all kinds of TV shows. Differences might be due to realism of the show (Mares & Acosta, 2010). In the current research it is therefore chosen to investigate the influence in a moderately realistic show (human characters with non-human powers). Since explicit mentioning plays an important role in learning in general it might be expected that it also is important in teaching through media. Based on the results from previous research the hypothesis in the current research was:
H2: It is expected that children who are exposed to the explicit insert video will report the highest level of recall (2a) and recognition (2b) of the message, and the highest levels of
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social (2c) behavior and inclusion (2d) attitudes and the lowest level of stigmatizing (2e) behavior compared to children who are exposed to an implicit message.
Importance of Development: Theory of Mind
Children of the same age often develop differently. Therefore it is important to take into account different developmental characteristics that might be of influence, instead of taking age as a measurement for development in general. Theory of mind is one factor that might be influencing the way children respond to media (Lapierre, 2015). Theory of mind is the ability of people to understand that other people have thoughts, knowledge, desires, attitudes and intentions different from their own (Premack & Woodruff, 1978). Previous research already pointed out the importance of theory of mind in understanding
advertisements (Lapierre, 2015). For example, children’s understanding of the selling intent of advertisements is linked to theory of mind beyond the influence of age (Lapierre, 2015). Children understood selling intent better when they correctly answered the first- and second-order false belief tasks (Lapierre, 2015). Also theory of mind is in multiple studies linked to moral reasoning and moral behavior (Sommer et al., 2014; Weimer, Dowds, Fabricius, Schwanenflugel, & Suh, 2017). For example, more advanced theory of mind was related to more pro-social reasoning in conflict situations (Weimer, et al., 2017).
However, to our knowledge theory of mind is not yet investigated in research on understanding the message in pro-social TV shows for children. Since theory of mind seems to be important in understanding other forms of media, like advertisement (Lapierre, 2015), and it is linked to morality in previous studies (Sommer et al., 2014; Weimer et al., 2017) it might be important to investigate if this developmental characteristic is of influence in understanding pro-social media messages. It is expected that children who mastered the theory of mind tasks do not need as much help in understand the content compared to children who did not master these tasks. Therefore in the current research the hypothesis was:
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H3: It is expected that children who are exposed to the explicit insert video will report the highest level of recall (3a) and recognition (3b) of the message and pro-social behavior (3c) and inclusion attitudes (3d) and the lowest level of stigmatizing (3e) behavior compared to children who are exposed to an implicit message but only if children have low theory of mind. Current Study
In short, the current study will look at the effect of watching a children’s TV show with a pro-social message. So far studies did not found significant results, therefore in the current study it is tested if a program feature of explicit mentioning of the lesson might be a way to improve the learning ability. In addition it investigates if theory of mind is having an influence on the importance of the program feature and the learning ability from these kinds of TV shows.
Method Sample
In the current study 66 participants were included. Participants were randomly assigned to the condition in which the moral message was explicitly mentioned (n = 23), or the condition in which the moral message was implicitly mentioned (n = 24). The remaining participants were in a control group (n = 19), in which a TV show with no moral message was shown. The participants were recruited through three classes within two regular schools in the Netherlands, so that the external validity will be high. Rural and city schools were addressed to make the external validity even higher. No exclusion criteria were included, except for the child being able to see and hear and the child being no younger than four years of age and no older than six years of age (M = 4.94, SD = 0.55). Girls (n = 33) and boys (n = 33) were included in this study.
10 Experimental Design
The study adopted a between subjects approach, with 3x3 design, i.e. Condition (control vs explicit vs implicit) x Theory of Mind (none vs first-order vs second-order). The three levels of the condition factor are, 1) control group who is shown a TV show without a moral lesson, 2) group who is exposed to an explicit message prior to watching, and 3) group who is exposed to an implicit message about the prosocial message prior to watching.
The second factor was quasi-experimental and reflected children’s level of theory of mind (ToM). The three levels of ToM are, 1) not having mastered ToM, 2) having mastered first-order theory of mind, and 3) having mastered both first- and second-order theory of mind.
Procedure
Before starting the experiment ethical approval was obtained from the University of Amsterdam. Passive informed consent was obtained from all parents of the children, with one parent objecting towards the study. This child was excluded from the experiment. The
participants for whom passive approval of the parents was obtained were asked to join the researcher in a separate room in school during school hours. First, an introduction was given on who the researcher was and introduction questions were asked about the child’s name and age. Then the procedure was explained and the child was asked if they wanted to help the test leader with the research. The child needed to give his or her permission on a specially
designed child approval form in order to continue with the research. Three children did not want to join the study.
The study consisted out of four phases, namely introduction, theory of mind assessment, video exposure, and post-viewing assessment. After the session, which lasted approximately 45 minutes per child, the child returned to class.
11 Stimulus Videos
The video shown was about a princess that is hosting a birthday party and a witch who is acting mean but actually wants to be friends. The movie shown is a combination from two episodes, called bewitched and no witch on my birthday, of Sophia the Princess. The witch in the movie is acting mean because she does not know how to act kind and make friends. Therefore the princess decides to talk to her and finds out that the witch wants to be invited. The princess decides to help her making friends. The moral lesson was that sometimes other children act mean while they do not want to, because they do not know other ways to make friends. Children needed to learn from the movie that accepting those children at some point is the right way to act. In Appendix A a summary of the episode in components of the moral message is given.
An explanation about what the child is going to see and how to adapt this to everyday life was added right before the movie starts in the explicit moral message condition. The children in the implicit message condition were not hearing this explanation, but instead heard general information about the TV show (Appendix B). The control group watched another episode of Sophia the Princess without a moral lesson.
Measures
Theory of Mind. Theory of mind was measured using first- and second-order false belief tasks (e.g., Lapierre, 2015). The child was presented to a situation in which two puppets play with a ball and together they put it in a black box. When one puppet leaves, the other puppet decides to play some more and afterwards puts the ball in a green box. The puppet that left re-enters the room and the child was asked where the puppet will look for the ball and where the ball really is. First-order false beliefs were obtained when the child answers both questions correctly. Children scored 1 if they answered both questions correctly and 0 when they made one or more mistakes.
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Second-order false beliefs were measured with two (different) puppets on pictures. They go and get ice cream at the playground, but one puppet (Pieter) needs to go home first to get money. The puppet’s mother tells him that the ice cream truck is actually at the church, and meanwhile the other puppet (Loes) also finds this out and heads to the church to get the ice cream. The child was then asked where Pieter thinks the truck is, where Loes thinks the truck is and where Loes beliefs Pieter thinks the ice cream truck is. If a child answered all three questions correct the child successfully completed the task. Again children scored 1 if they answered all questions correctly and 0 when they made one or more mistakes.
A sum score was calculated by adding the score for first-order false beliefs and second-order false beliefs. Therefore the score for Theory of Mind ranged between 0 and 2. Higher scores on the scale reflect higher levels of theory of mind.
Moral lesson comprehension: Recall and Recognition. Children were asked five questions to assess whether they had understood the moral lesson of the show. The first question addressed recall and the last four questions addressed recognition.
Recall. After explaining that some stories are intended to teach children something,
the participants were asked “Do you think this story about Princess Sophia has a lesson in it we should learn?” The answers yes (scored as 1) and no (scored as 0) were possible. Children who answered yes were asked what the moral lesson was about. Their answers were coded following the method used by Mares and Acosta (2008), i.e. 0 (wrong/didn’t know), 0.5 (general cooperative theme e.g., be nice, be good, be friendly), or 1 (tolerance-related theme e.g., you should try to be friends with someone even if he/she is not acting kind in the first place). The scores were added and the score for Recall therefore ranged between 0 and 2.
Recognition. Four questions were asked to assess recognition. Two questions
explained an accurate comprehension (do you think the movie was about being kind to other children even though they are not acting nice towards you / do you think that the movie was
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about being inclusive, so that you should never tell someone you are not allowed to join?). The answers were scored as 1 (yes) or 0 (no). Two slightly less accurate and less generalizing messages were also added (do you think the story was about princesses who needs to act kind / do you think the story was about witches who can be nice?). Those were coded as 0.5 (yes) or 0 (no).
After these questions it was asked to pick up the story which had the same lesson as the story about Princess Sophia. Three stories were told, one with the correct moral lesson. The stories were coded as 0 (story about a girl called Sophia hosting a birthday party and story about a princess helping a witch being nice) or 1 (story about a child who is helping someone who is acting mean in making friends). This question was solely asked to children in the experimental groups. The stories are also accompanied by pictures to make the
possibilities more recognizable. Thus, by adding the scores and calculating the mean, the score for Recognition of the message ranges between 0 and 1.
Pro-social Behavior. Pro-social behavior was measured by using five items from the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ; Goodman, 1997). Questions formed a pro-social subscale, measured on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (always). One of the five items was for example “I share my toys and candy”. A mean score on all five items was calculated so that the score for Pro-social Behavior ranges between 1 and 5. The scale has a Cronbach’s Alpha of .57. The slightly low reliability of this scale is similar to other studies (e.g., Cingel, Sumter, & Van de Leur, 2017).
Inclusion Attitudes. Being inclusive was measured by reading four vignettes to the participants. The first was about exclusion of an overweight child, one was about a
nondisabled child, one about a child with crutches and one about a child in a wheelchair (Cingel et al., 2017). The participant was asked to what degree they found the exclusion was right or wrong on a 5-point scale from 1 (very right) to 5 (very wrong). A mean score was
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calculated so that the score for Inclusion Attitudes ranges between 1 and 5. The scale had a Cronbach’s Alpha of .67. Again the slightly low reliability was similar to other studies (e.g., Cingel et al., 2017).
Stigmatizing Behavior. Stigmatizing behavior was measured with four pictures of children (Cingel et al., 2017). Since the pictures were outdated and rated as a little scary new pictures were developed for the current research. The pictures showed a non-overweight and non-disabled child, a non-disabled overweight child, a child in a wheelchair, and a child on crutches. The participant was asked to play a pretend game, to pretend that a boy/girl would join the class. The question about how the participant would feel about the child on the picture was asked for all four pictures and answered on a 5-point scale, from 1 (very unhappy) to 5 (very happy). Also questions about how kind the boy/girl is, if the participant wants to play with the girl/boy on the picture and how smart the participant thinks the boy/girl is were asked on a 5-point scale, from 1 (very kind, really want to play, very smart) to 5 (very unkind, do not want to play, very stupid). The score for Stigmatizing Behavior was calculated after reverse coding the first item. The items were averaged to create an overall score of stigmatization beliefs that ranged from 1 to 5, whereby a higher score on the scale means more stigmatizing behavior. The scale consisted of 16 items and demonstrated good internal reliability, Cronbach’s Alpha = .93.
Analytical Procedure
The analyses of the current research were performed using SPSS Statistics 20 (IBM Corp., 2011). To test hypotheses 1 and 2 two MANOVA analyses were conducted. The first MANOVA included condition as an independent variable with Recall and Recognition as dependent variables. It was expected that there would not be a main effect on recalling the message, while recognizing the message was expected to be higher after watching a pro-social TV show and that children who were exposed to the explicit insert video reported the highest
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level of recall and recognition of the message compared to children who were exposed to an implicit message. The second MANOVA again included condition as the independent variable, but here Pro-social Behavior, Stigmatizing Behavior and Inclusion Attitudes were included as dependent variables. It was expected that there would be a main effect on Pro-social Behavior, Inclusion Attitudes and Stigmatizing Behavior and it was expected that children who were exposed to the explicit insert video reported the highest level Pro-social Behavior and Inclusion Attitudes and the lowest level of Stigmatizing Behavior compared to children who were exposed to an implicit message.
For the third hypothesis, five regression analyses including moderation were conducted using PROCESS model 1 (Hayes, 2004). In this analysis Theory of Mind was included as a moderating variable, again condition was the independent variable in each model. Distinct models were conducted for the dependent variables of Recall, Recognition, Pro-social Behavior, Inclusion Attitudes and Stigmatizing Behavior.
Results Preliminary Results
The means and standard deviations of all variables are presented in Table 1. This table also includes the correlations between the variables. Theory of mind is related with more pro-social behavior, higher inclusion attitudes, and less stigmatizing behavior. The correlations are all small to medium. In addition, recalling the moral message is moderately correlated to inclusion attitudes, whereas recognition of the moral message is moderately correlated to stigmatizing behavior. When children recalled the moral message better they scored higher on inclusion attitudes, while when children recognized the moral message better they scored lower on stigmatizing behavior. Also pro-social behavior and stigmatizing behavior were negatively correlated. When children scored higher on Pro-social Behavior they scored lower on Stigmatizing Behavior.
16 Table 1
Mean Scores and Standard Deviations of all Variables and Correlations Between Main Variables
M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1. Gender 4.94 0.55 - -.05 .38*** -.02 -.19 .29** .17 -.09 2. Age 1.50 0.50 - .05 .10 -.04 .17 .03 -.47*** 3. ToM 0.76 0.66 - .04 .02 .37*** .28** -.29** 4. Recall 0.41 0.60 - .03 .08 .33*** -.14 5. Recognition 0.33 0.22 - .08 -.13 -.30** 6. Pro-social Behavior 4.09 0.78 - -.07 -.46*** 7. Inclusion Attitudes 3.54 1.19 - .01 8. Stigmatizing Behavior 2.35 1.06 - Note. ***p < .01, **p < .05
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The Effect of Exposure to Pro-social TV Shows and the Influence of Adding Explicit Message Mentioning
The first MANOVA assessed whether condition predicted recall and recognition of the message. The second MANOVA measured whether condition predicted pro-social behavior, inclusion attitudes and stigmatizing behavior. The means and standard deviations for each variable are presented per group in Table 2.
Table 2
Mean Scores and Standard Deviations of all Variables per Group
Control group Implicit message group Explicit message group
M SD M SD M SD Recall 0.26 0.45 0.52 0.68 0.39 0.62 Recognition 0.19 a 0.25 0.40b 0.16 0.39b 0.20 Pro-social Behavior 3.94 1.01 4.13 0.71 4.22 0.60 Inclusion Attitudes 3.86 1.05 3.60 1.04 3.20 1.41 Stigmatizing Behavior 2.70 1.18 2.35 1.11 2.05 0.85 Note. Group with superscript a differs significantly from groups with superscript b.
In the first MANOVA, Wilk’s Lambda showed that there is a significant difference between groups on recall and recognition, Wilk’s Lambda = .80, F (4, 122) = 3.66, p = .008. Univariate tests showed that children did not differ for recall, F (2, 62) = .97, p = .386, partial eta-squared = .03, but did differ on recognition, F (2, 62) = 6.69, p = .002, partial eta-squared = .18. Bonferroni post hoc analysis showed that children who did not see the pro-social TV show had a lower recognition of the TV show than children in the implicit message group, mean difference = .20, p = .006, and children in the explicit message group, mean difference
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= .20, p = .007. Although hypotheses 1a and 1b are accepted, hypotheses 2a and 2b were rejected.
In the second MANOVA, testing the effect of condition on pro-social behavior, inclusion attitudes and stigmatizing behavior, the results of Wilk’s Lambda showed that there is no significant difference between groups on Pro-social Behavior, Inclusion Attitudes and Stigmatizing Behavior, Wilk’s Lambda = .89, F (6, 122) = 1.25, p = .288. The analysis showed that no differences existed in Pro-social Behavior, Inclusion Attitudes and
Stigmatizing Behavior for children who saw the pro-social TV show compared to the children who did not saw this TV show. Neither was there a difference between the children who saw the implicit message prior to watching the pro-social TV show compared to the children who saw the explicit message prior to watching the pro-social TV show. Hypotheses 1c, 1d and 1e are rejected, as well as hypotheses 2c, 2d and 2e.
The Influence of Theory of Mind
Finally, it was expected that children who were exposed to the explicit insert video will report the highest level of recall and recognition of the message and showed more pro-social behavior and inclusion attitudes and less stigmatizing behavior compared to children who were exposed to an implicit message, but only if the children had low theory of mind. Therefore five regression analyses were conducted. All regression analyses included the condition as the independent variable and theory of mind as the moderator, but the dependent variable was respectively for each model Recall, Recognition, Pro-social Behavior, Inclusion Attitudes or Stigmatizing Behavior (Table 3).
The overall models for Recall and Inclusion Attitudes were not significant,
respectively F(3, 62) = 0.85, p = .474, R2 = .04. for Recall and F (3, 62) = 2.30, p = .086, R2 = .100 for Inclusion Attitudes. The overall models for Recognition, Pro-social Behavior and
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The Relation Between Conditions and Recall, Recognition, Pro-social Behavior, Inclusion Attitudes and Stigmatizing Behavior and The Moderating Effect of ToM
Β SE T p Model 1 (Recall) Constant 0.01 .31 0.02 .987 Theory of mind 0.17 .34 0.49 .629 Condition 0.19 .14 1.36 .179 Interaction -0.07 .14 -0.50 .622 Model 2 (Recognition) Constant 0.16 .11 1.46 .151 Theory of mind -0.05 .12 -0.39 .697 Condition 0.09 .05 1.87 .067 Interaction 0.01 .05 0.24 .812
Model 3 (Pro-social Behavior)
Constant 3.56 .38 9.47 .000
Theory of mind 0.71 .42 1.71 .092
Condition 0.09 .17 0.51 .610
Interaction -0.12 .17 -0.69 .494
Model 4 (Inclusion Attitudes)
Constant 3.79 .59 6.39 .000
Theory of mind 0.12 .65 0.19 .854
Condition -0.32 .27 -1.18 .243
Interaction 0.19 .27 0.70 .489
Model 5 (Stigmatizing Behavior)
Constant 3.47 .52 6.69 .000
Theory of mind -1.30 .57 -2.27 .026
Condition -0.37 .24 -1.58 .120
Interaction 0.38 .24 1.61 .114
Stigmatizing Behavior were significant, respectively F (3, 61) = 3.20, p = .030, R2 = .14 for Recognition, F (3, 62) = 3.53, p = .020, R2 = .15 for Pro-social Behavior and F (3, 62) = 2.88, p = .043, R2 = .12 for Stigmatizing Behavior. However, none of the models showed a
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significant interaction effect. The analyses did show that theory of mind was significantly related to stigmatizing behavior. This means that children who had mastered a higher level of theory of mind reported lower stigmatizing behavior. None of the models found interaction effects, therefore hypotheses 3a till 3e are rejected. This means that hypothesis 3 is rejected as a whole.
Discussion
The aim of the current research was to study if children can learn moral lessons from TV shows and if they are influenced by it. Although children who watched the pro-social TV show were not able to identify that the show watched included a moral message themselves, they were more likely to agree that the show was about kindness than children in the control condition. Thus although children struggle with unaided recall of moral messages, they are able to recognize moral messages in entertainment media. Moreover, in contrast to our expectations, children reported similar levels of pro-social behavior, inclusion attitudes and stigmatizing behavior across all conditions. The findings will be discussed in more detail below.
Understanding Moral Messages
According to the first hypothesis it was expected that the group of children who saw the TV show with a moral lesson will recognize, but not recall this message. These results were indeed found in the current research. This is in line with previous research that shows that recalling the right message of a TV show might be too hard for children (e.g., Mares & Acosta, 2008). These findings are also in line with the idea that although some information might not be remembered by the audience they can be recognized (Van Reijmersdal, Rozendaal, & Buijzen, 2012).
It was also expected that adding an explicit message about the moral lesson contributed to recalling and recognizing the message. However, the results of the current
21
study were not in line with these expectations. Recalling the right message seems to be too hard for the young children even when they were exposed to it prior to watching. This might be explained by the fact that the message is not repeated, since repetition seems to be
important for learning (Kornell, 2009). Although Mares and Acosta (2010) added two inserts in their material, this might still be too little repetition to find results. The children might not be able to remember the message during the show and might be distracted from the moral message by other features of the TV show.
Being Affected by Moral Messages
Secondly, it was expected that watching the pro-social TV show would improve children’s pro-social behavior, inclusion attitudes and stigmatizing behavior. None of the expected results were found in the current research. This contradicted the idea that the effect of pro-social content increased sharply between the ages of 3 and 7 (Mares & Woodard, 2010). Since the children in the current research are four, five and six years old, so in between the age range, we expected to find results. However it might be that the increase will be visible only at the upper end of the age range, so when a sample of six and seven year olds will be taken. Also meta-analytic research showed that watching pro-social television content might be related to higher levels of pro-social behavior (Mares & Woodard, 2005). However the results might be explained again by the importance of repetition of the message in learning (Kornell, 2009). Since the message was only ones shown to the children there might be no effect on the children’s behaviors and attitude. Although a relationship between pro-social TV shows and pro-social behavior was found in the meta-analysis this relationship was also very small (Mares & Woodard, 2005).
In addition, little effects were expected to be found in children who were exposed to the implicit message prior to watching, but it was expected that the scores would be higher when an explicit message was included prior to watching. It was expected that the salience of
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the message would help children understand the lesson. Again no effects were found. This might be explained by underdeveloped fantasy-reality distinction and perceptual
boundedness. The distinction between fantasy and reality might be important to be able to generalize, instead of keeping the message within the story (Valkenburg & Cantor, 2000). It is possible that the children were not able to make the distinction between the fantasy world they are seeing and the real world they are living in, even though they were exposed to it explicitly. In addition it might be that children focused more on appearance of the character than on the behavior or motivations behind the behavior, this is called perceptual boundedness
(Valkenburg & Cantor, 2000). Since the TV show in the current study used a witch and a princess this might distract the children from focusing on the moral message, even when that message was explicitly mentioned. This might be because in the TV show many events happened after the explicit message, therefore it might have more effect to use an explanation before the TV show when the show is shorter or when inserts were added throughout the video when the TV show was long.
Does Theory of Mind Make a Difference?
For the third hypothesis it was expected that the relationship between condition and measurements for understanding the moral message and being affected by the TV show was influenced by theory of mind. However, no interaction effects between condition and theory of mind were found. Theory of mind on itself, however, was related to stigmatizing behavior, inclusion attitudes and pro-social behavior. The results are not in line with previous research that showed theory of mind to be important in understanding other forms of media, like advertisement (Lapierre, 2015). The results are in line with research linking moral
understanding to theory of mind in general (e.g., Sommer et al., 2014). It might well be that theory of mind in itself influences moral understanding and moral reasoning and therefore this might not be a developmental feature that can be seen as a factor for perceived susceptibility
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(Valkenburg & Peter, 2013). Also the relatively low variance within theory of mind founded in the current research might contribute to these results. If the children differed more on theory of mind, e.g. when three till seven year olds were included in the research, it might be possible to find results.
In the current research just one perceived susceptibility variable was added. Although theory of mind seemed not to be a perceived susceptibility variable it is also still important to find other perceived susceptibility variables in feature research, focusing for example on fantasy-reality distinction and perceptual boundedness (Valkenburg & Cantor, 2000). Limitations and Future Research
Although the current study was conducted with great care some limitations must be mentioned. These limitations are related to the generalizability of the findings, the measures and the design of the study. First, it is unclear to what extend the findings can be generalized. All children were from two schools located in the eastern part of the Netherlands, where no large cities can be found. Although there is no reason to expect differences in results when children from other parts of the country were included we are still not able to generalize the results of the current study to all Dutch children within this age category. Future research should include a larger amount of schools, a larger sample and schools that are located in different parts of the Netherlands to improve generalizability.
Second, the current research used only one stimulus. It might well be that different TV shows show different results. Now boys and girls watched the same content and it might be that the message in the TV used in the current research was to subtle. More obvious moral messages including an explicit mentioning of the message might be able to teach children more about morality. In future research multiple stimuli should be included, focusing on both girl and boy characters and more obvious pro-social messages, to be able to generalize the results to pro-social TV shows in general.
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Third, also the low reliability, although similar to previous studies, is a limitation of the current research. Due to the low reliability we cannot be sure to state that the scales are measuring the right concepts. Future research should therefore focus on conducting new scales for measuring inclusion attitudes and pro-social behavior that have higher reliability to be able to measure these more accurate. By observing inclusion attitudes and pro-social behavior in free situations the questions can be adjusted so that they might fit better into the experiences of a child’s everyday life.
Fourth, the length of the study might not be ideal for the young children. The
experiment took about 45 minutes per child. Some children were well able to concentrate for this amount of time, where other children lost concentration at the end of the experiment. In future research a shorter video should be included to improve concentration of all children. Since theory of mind is stable this could also be measured on an earlier or later moment so that the total time of the experiment will be divided over days and the concentration of the child improves. Also in conducting new scales for measuring inclusion attitudes and pro-social behavior focus should be on the possibilities for making them less lengthy.
Finally, although an experimental setting is necessary to assess effects, the setting does not contribute to the external validity. While the location might not be unusual for watching pro-social TV shows, there was no possibility to watch the show multiple times and the TV show was not chosen by the child itself as in a natural setting. Observations in realistic settings should be conducted to be able to say more about effects when children decide for themselves what to watch and how often they want to watch it. Changes might be observed after following a child over a longer period of time.
Conclusion
The current research was one of the first to look at formal features in combination with development. However, future research should expand the results of the current study and
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improve the knowledge on the topic. Future research should focus on different program features that might improve the learning of the child. They should, amongst other features, focus on the influence of adding multiple inserts in order to test the effect of repetition of the message. It might also be useful to test other characteristics of the show, for example it should be tested if the perceptual boundedness of the children is influencing this result. By not using stereotypical characters researchers might find effects, since the reasoning of the child is not influenced by the more superficial characteristics of the character.
Also different characteristics of the child should be investigated in future research. As mentioned perceptual boundedness and fantasy-reality distinction of the child might be of influence in understanding a moral message in pro-social TV shows. By measuring the effect of these characteristics future researchers might be better able to explain the findings of previous research and to develop interventions through which the effects of pro-social TV shows can be found, also for young children.
To conclude more research is necessary to be able to produce pro-social TV shows that do influence the behavior and attitude of children. Since TV shows are often watched and effects are not found yet, future research should contribute to expand the possibilities of making meaningful content even for the youngest audience.
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31 Appendix A
A Summary of the Episode in Components of the Moral Message Table 1
Story Sequence of the Episode of Sofia the Princess Story sequence
Initiating event: A child is handing out invitations for her birthday party
Event: The witch conjures one of the invitations, so that the receiver needs to run after it Event: All children run away because they saw Lucinda (the witch)
Event: Lucinda laughs and conjures a lot of things
Event: A girl tells Lucinda angry to stop and Lucinda conjures the invitations again Event: Sofia decides to talk to Lucinda about not ruining the birthday party
Event: Lucinda sits o a stairs and is sad when Sofia sees her
Event: Lucinda talks in herself about never getting invited to parties
Event: Sofia walks to Lucinda and Lucinda acts mean again while Sofia asks her to stop Event: Sofia starts talking about friends and Lucinda admits that she doesn’t have them Event: Sofia asked if Lucinda wants to join the party, but Lucinda says no
Event: Lucinda tries to walk away and gets angry at Sofia and conjures her
Event: Lucinda admits she wants to have friends and that she doesn’t know how to behave friendly
Event: Sofia tells Lucinda that she knows how she feels and that she wants to help
Event: Lucinda needs to say sorry to everyone she conjured in the past but says she cannot do that, but she tries
Event: Jade and her friend are decorating the house for the birthday party and set up a witch trap
Event: Sophia and Lucinda walk in and Sophia gets trapped in the witch trap
Event: Jade gets mad because the party is ruined and tells everybody that the trap was for Lucinda and that she needs to leave
Event: Lucinda runs away sad
Event: Sophia explains why Lucinda was at the birthday party and Jade sees the decorations Lucinda puts up in the garden and goes to her to invite her and say sorry
32 Appendix B
Inserts
Explanation explicit group: This is Lucinda. Lucinda is a witch. This is Sophia. Sophia is a princess. In the movie you see Sophia handing out invites, because a friend of her is having her birthday. Lucinda did not get an invite and decides to bewitch everybody. Sophia finds out that she is acting like this because Lucinda actually wants to have friends and she is unaware of how to act different. Luckily Sophia understands what is going on and decides to talk to Lucinda to help her. This is also sometimes seen in class, since sometimes a child is not acting kind but when you act kind to the child yourself the other child might be kind as well and he or she might be unaware how to act differently. Let’s watch the movie.
Explanation implicit group: This is Lucinda. Lucinda is a witch. This is Sophia. Sophia is a princess. In the movie you see Sophia handing out invites, because a friend of her is having her birthday. This movie is a short part of a longer episode of Sophia the Princess. In each episode a new story is told. Let’s watch the movie.
