Can television make boys adore princesses and girls knights?
A cross-sectional experimental study on the relationship between interactivity and gender on the parasocial interaction of children.
Nina de Vriend 10280235
Master’s Thesis Entertainment Communication Graduate School of Communication
University of Amsterdam Dr. R. van Bronswijk
ABSTRACT
Parasocial interaction (PSI), the fictional one-sided connection between a viewer and a media character, can be very influential and can lead to social and behavioral change. Therefore, it is important to investigate how this relationship develops, especially among children. Additionally, with the upcoming world of interactivity, it is interesting to see if this can play a role in PSI between children and media characters. That is why this study investigates the effects of both gender and interactivity on PSI among children aged five to seven. We used the female main character of ‘Nella the Princess Knight’ (produced by Nickelodeon) to measure PSI. Not only is Nella a princess and a knight, she has a lot of male friends and is of color, which makes her not a typical princess. The results indicate that interactivity only led to a higher mean in PSI among girls. In general, girls had more PSI with the character than boys. Additionally, although age did not lead to a difference in PSI, we found that younger children wanted to see more episodes of Nella and felt more empathy and motivation to talk to Nella. We also looked at the coloring pages with the help of a content analysis and discussed some spontaneous quotes of the children, giving more qualitative insight. Not only can these results contribute to the scientific literature, it can also be useful information for media developers.
Keywords: parasocial interaction, interactivity, gender, children, cross-sectional experiment
‘Can television make boys adore princesses and girls knights?’
A cross-sectional experimental study on the relationship between interactivity and gender on the parasocial interaction of children.
“More than any other generation, children live in a world that is populated with influential media characters from the earliest days of their lives” (Calvert & Richards, 2014, p. 187). Around 50 years ago, academic researchers Horton and Wohl were one of the first to acknowledge an interaction between children and these media characters (Giles, 2002). They stated that a so-called parasocial interaction (PSI) is created when children develop a relationship or one-sided friendship with media characters. This PSI is of high influence in children’s lives and can even lead to social and behavioral change (Papa et al., 2002). Based on Bandura’s infamous social cognitive theory (1986), Hoffner (1996) for example states that children can learn from TV role models through observational learning. By means of this social learning technique, one is able to teach children about ruling norms and values. Yet, one should keep in mind that ‘negative’ media content can have an inversed effect, since children apply media content to real-life situations (Reeves & Greenberg, 1977).
Nevertheless, the world of media is continuously changing. Nowadays media are getting more and more interactive which can lead to an increased focus on learning, playfulness and narratives within children’s media content (Roussou, 2004). When a character is successful, many merchandise items will be manufactured or the character will be embedded into other media platforms, enhancing the perceived activity of the character.
Furthermore, many studies focused on the differences within PSI development (Brown, 2015; Dibble, Hartmann & Rosaen, 2016). For example, an empirical study of Brunick, Calvert and Richards (2015), showed that boys find masculine and dominant
characters more important within their PRS than girls, while girls prefer feminine characters with predominantly female sex role traits. By means of the following research question an answer to this these phenomena will be given: “What role does interactivity and gender play within parasocial interaction (PSI) among children aged five to seven?”
This study will not only give us new insights on how children are affected by media by focusing on the unique orientation of the world (Strasburger, et al., 2002), but will also deepen our understanding of the relationship between interactivity and PSI. In addition, this study will examine whether short-term exposure with a media character will affect PSI, which will be helpful information for media researchers. Also, this study can be helpful information for media developers; when they are able to reach both boys and girls by means of a single media character, they can broader their audience.
Lastly, the study’s results might encourage media developers to break through stereotypes. For example, in many fairy’s beauty is not only associated with goodness, but also with white-skinned characters and economic privilege (Baker-Sperry & Grauerholz, 2003). By using a princess of color, media will be able to change a child’s image of others. Additionally, scientific evidence about the formation of PSI with a character that hold either male and female traits is rather scare.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Parasocial interaction and parasocial relationships
PSI can be defined as a fictional one-sided relationship between a viewer and a media character (Giles, 2002). Although there is only vicarious interaction, “viewers feel that they know and understand the persona in the same intimate way they know and understand flesh-and-blood friends.” (Perse & Rubin, 1989, p. 60). This is not only the case for adults; also children may perceive their favorite media character as a trusted friend, where they can
express negative feelings towards as they do in real-life (Jennings & Alper, 2016). These characters can influence the credibility that they give to the character’s messages, like prosocial behavior, language learning and food consumption (Calvert & Richards, 2014). PSI can be divided in first-order PSI, a connection with realistic characters like news anchors, second – order PSI; a connection with actors, and third – order PSI; a connection with animated characters like cartoons (Giles, 2002). While many adults would have less strong feelings for third-order PSI, young children make fewer distinctions and even cartoon characters might feel like a real ‘friend’ to them. According to Brunick, Calvert and Richards (2015), the first parasocial relationship (PSR) starts at the beginning of toddlerhood and ends in the preschool years, and lasts around 2.2 years before the parasocial break-up occurs. They further conclude that 88% of the children experienced at least one parasocial break-up during their childhood.
Although there is a lot of research available about PSI, there are some conceptual and methodological misunderstandings (Dibble, Hartmann & Rosaen, 2017). For example, the misusing of the term parasocial interaction and parasocial relationships could lead to both conceptual and operational confusions (Dibble, Hartmann & Rosaen, 2016; Hu, 2016; Jennings & Alper, 2016). Hu (2016) describes the difference between PSI and PSR as a short-term versus long-term effect; PSI begins when people see a character and it ends when the encounter is over, while PSR is a long-term, enduring and cross-sectional concept. The researchers Horton and Wohl’s (1965), who first conceptualized PSR, were already imprecise about this term within their research (Dibble, Hartmann & Rosaen, 2016). They described the asymmetrical nature of a PSI during a single exposure, but also referred to the term as a more enduring, long-term and usually positive relationship. According to Perse and Rubin (1989), many researchers saw PSI as an atypical consequence of television viewing, while later on researchers saw it as a normal consequence of watching television. It is therefore important
for researchers to define and operationalize the concepts when referring to the term PSI. In this study, there is only a short-term exposure which is why the term PSI is used and not PSR (Hu, 2016). Still, we do focus on earlier studies of PSR to get a broader insight in the process of PSI.
Theories related to parasocial interaction
Parasocial interaction can be linked to Bandura’s social cognitive theory (1986), which states that children easily copy behavior they see (Hoffner, 1996). This means that children could copy the behavior of a media character and consequently PSI can have a negative or a positive influence on them. The drench hypothesis by Greenberg (1988) is mentioned by Hoffner (1996) and states that certain salient characters and programs have a more intense and significant influence than long term-exposure to certain television content. This is contrary to the drip-drip hypothesis, which says that media effects are linearly cumulative (Cohen, 1999, p. 328). This means that children’s favorite characters have more impact on them in comparison to characters they see regularly. This makes the drench hypothesis an important theory for this study, because it means that despite the fact that the participants only have a short-term exposure to the character, they can still develop a PSI that can have an intense and significant influence.
Another theory in application to PSI is the uncertainty reduction theory (URT), as mentioned by Perse and Rubin (1989). The URT, formulated by Barger and Calabrese (1975), claims that people seek information about a person to predict his or her behavior to reduce uncertainty. This means that relationships are expected to develop as individuals increase their ability to predict the behavior of a person. Therefore, giving the audience more information about a character could lead to a stronger PSI.
Developing parasocial interaction
To get a better insight in the increase and development of PSI, it is important to understand the components and formation processes (Brunick, Calvert & Richards, 2015). Of course, the factors and attributes described below are focused on children in general but they can change as children get older and can be applied to adults as well.
One way of creating PSI is to address the media performer to the viewer through the camera which means that performer is breaking the so-called fourth wall (Dibble, Hartmann & Rosaen, 2016). However, creating a PSI and PSR depends on several factors and is not guaranteed. Brown’s model (2015) gives better insight into the different processes that can lead to the worship of the media character (see Figure 1, below). According to this model, worship is the most intense form of involvement and identification is necessary to achieve this. Transportation and PSI are important processes to gain this identification. These processes are caused by attributes as familiarity, perceived realism, liking and attraction, and similarity. Familiarity can be described as getting to know a character, and can be compared by attachment, named in the study of Bond and Calvert (2014). Attachment is important for children to develop PSI and can be achieved by feelings of comfort, safety and being soothed which can be created by visual cues. The attribute perceived realism is also mentioned in several other studies (Bond & Calvert, 2014; Calvert & Richards, 2014; Brunick et al., 2016) although the findings are focused on different age groups. When children see characters as real persons they may also begin to trust them as friends (Calvert & Richards, 2014). Perceived realism can be created in a setting of social realism, which refers to how likely a show’s characters and events are to occur in the real world (Rosaen & Dibble, 2008, p. 147). Liking and attraction depend on several attributes, like the colors of a character but also the looks and so the visual cues of a character (Brunick et al., 2016). Additionally, children also appreciate binary contrasts, for example, media characters who are extremely good or
extremely evil, often to inform their gender identity (Valkenburg & Piotrowski, 2017). Similarity can be created by age (Rosaen & Dibble, 2008) or gender, which we will discuss in the next paragraph. If a child looks like a character, in appearance and/or behavior, he or she can observe a variety of events and outcomes that may be relevant to his or her own life (Valkenburg & Cantor, 2000).
Interactivity
Nowadays, characters are active on different media platforms such as television, computers, and smartphones in the form of programs, advertisement, games and apps (Calvert & Richards, 2014). The new different media platforms could lead to more interactivity with the characters. According to Kiousis (2002), interactivity can be defined as “the degree to which a communication technology can create a mediated environment in which participants can communicate (one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many), both synchronously and asynchronously, and participate in reciprocal message exchanges (third-order dependency). With regard to human users, it additionally refers to their ability to perceive the experience as a simulation of interpersonal communication and increase their awareness of telepresence” (Kiousis, 2002, p. 372).
Of course, if children do not like a character they may have less desire to see them and they will not follow them across different platforms (Jennings & Alper, 2016). Brunick et al. (2016) found that connecting different surroundings through joint interaction may foster children’s sense of social realism. For example, playing with a toy brings a character in a more tangible world, and the child will see the character as more realistic which could make the relationship between them more powerful (Calvert and Richards, 2014; Brunick et al., 2016). This could mean that the presence of characters on a television screen, game screen and as a toy will lead to a stronger PSI and can influence children more easily.
According to a study by Tung and Deng (2006), the use of social cues in interaction design may humanize computers (Tung and Deng, 2006, p. 254). Therefore, we could say that when children are more interactive, they perceive a computer as more human. It is therefore possible that this can be applied to television as well. According to Horton and Wohl (1956), one of the striking characteristics of radio, television and the movies is that they give the illusion of face-to-face relationship with the performer. Personality programs,
where a persona addresses to the audience, can create an illusion of intimacy which leads to participation of the spectator and deeper empathic involvements (Horton & Wohl, 1956, p. 218). This occurs in many social interactions. Therefore, making a television program more interactive by giving the feeling that the audience is involved, may possibly result in people seeing television characters more as social actors.
People in an activity “construct their own knowledge by testing ideas and concepts based on prior knowledge and experience, applying them to a new situation, and integrating the new knowledge with pre-existing intellectual constructs; a process familiar to us from real world situations” (Roussou, 2004, p. 4). This could be very beneficial for learning. According to Vorderer, Knobloch and Schramm (2001), there is a possibility that only people with a higher cognitive capacity are capable of using this. This could mean that older children, who are more cognitively developed, could benefit more from interactivity with television than younger children.
In this study, the focus lays on coloring as a form of interactivity. Although coloring may not necessarily be a form of communication, it is an activity with the focus on the character and children do apply their ideas and concepts to a new situation and integrate knowledge with pre-existing intellectual constructs (Roussou, 2004). Additionally, by giving a character color, it becomes more alive and this could make a character more human which can lead to more social presence and social interaction as mentioned by Tung and Deng (2006). Therefore, it is expected that coloring will have a positive effect on PSI, which leads to the first hypothesis:
H1: Children who perceive more interactivity with the media character will have more parasocial interaction in comparison to children who did not perceive interactivity with this character.
Differences in gender
Between the age of five and eight, children are getting more aware of the fact that they are a boy or a girl and “spend more and more time in separate groups and they feel more pressure to conform to behavior that the group sees as gender-appropriate” (Valkenburg & Piotrowski, 2017, p. 69). This can also have an effect on children’s media preferences. For example, boys tend to prefer more violent television content in comparison to girls (Cherney & London, 2006). In addition, different studies show that there is a big difference in gender for the preference in characters. Hoffner (1996) looked at the differences in gender for wishful identification and PSI. For girls, wishful identification was predicted by humor, while for boys this was only the attribute of strength. When looking at female characters, attractiveness was really important for girls’ wishful identification and PSI. Remarkable is the fact that in this study nearly all the boys selected same-sex characters as a favorite character while only half of the girls did so. A study by Jennings and Alper (2016) found that Nintendo’s Princess Peach was seen as a negative parasocial relationship character for boys while it was seen as a positive parasocial relationship by girls. Brunick, Calvert and Richards (2015) found that more masculine and dominant characters were important for boys while for girls more feminine characters with more feminine sex role traits were important. This also explains the different media preferences of girls and boys, because marketers make some characters more masculine and tough (like Cars and Fifa) which is attractive for boys and some characters feminine and soft (like Barbie and Pou) which is attractive for girls (Valkenburg & Piotrwoski, 2017). Since they are a lot of significant findings in earlier studies, it is expected that girls will have more PSI in comparison to boys, which leads to the second hypothesis:
H2: Girls will have more parasocial interaction with the female character in comparison to boys.
The development of children and their media use
In the Netherlands, Dutch children aged five to eight spend, on average, nearly seventy minutes a day watching television (Valkenburg & Piotrowski, 2017). Most researchers nowadays agree that television can be beneficial for children, for example for children’s learning and cognitive skills (Kirkorian, Wartella & Anderson, 2008). Since the arrival of Sesame Street in 1969, the educational world of television changed (Huston & Wright, 1998). Although young children adore educational television programs, around the age of five these programs become less interesting for children and they prefer more fast-paced and action-based programs; by identifying with a superhero they can feel strong and powerful in dealing with the everyday problems (Valkenburg & Cantor, 2000).
According to Piaget (1952), children from age two to seven years are in the preoperational stage; they cannot implement cognitive operations. One characteristic of this age group is their intuitive way of thinking “because the understanding of objects and events tends to ‘center’ on their single, most salient perceptual feature – the way things appear to be – rather than on logical or rational thought processes” (Shaffer, 2008, p. 57) which is called perceptual boundedness (Valkenburg & Piotrowski, 2017). As a result, children focus on the most striking aspects of an object or information (Valkenburg & Piotrowski, 2017) and they use perceptual dimensions to recognize and sort portrayals (Reeves & Greenberg, 1977). In addition, the importance of peers increases and children are getting sensitive to the thoughts, opinions, judgments and evaluations of other children (Valkenburg & Cantor (2000). This increases the interest in peers and social interaction in media content and the popularity of certain media among peers can influence children’s media preference.
When children get older, between three and ten years old, they can distinguish reality from fantasy on television and prefer more realistic content (Valkenburg & Cantor, 2000; Mares & Acosta, 2008). Of course, this is a slow process and different for each child. Nevertheless, this means that older children have favorite characters that are more socially realistic and that social realism is positively associated with PSI (Rosaen & Dibble, 2008) and that children can differentiate between realistic and fantastic threats, which influences their television – induced fears (Mares & Acosta, 2008). If a television program contents more imaginative and unrealistic attributes, like this study, it is therefore expected that younger children like the show more which could lead to more PSI with the main character in comparison to older children. The last hypothesis is therefore:
H3: Younger children will have more parasocial interaction with the character in comparison to older children.
METHOD
Experimental research design
This study wants to take a further look at PSI among children aged five to seven with the use of a quasi-experiment. Additionally, a content analysis of the coloring pages of the children and the quotes of the children in a qualitative analysis are performed, which will be discussed later. The use of an experiment is a suitable method for this study because the results collected from four different conditions are compared (Boeije, t’ Hart & Hox, 2009). The children in the experiment watched an episode of a television program and afterward the PSI with the main character was measured with the help of a PSI- scale based on existing literature. There was one interactivity group, which had to color in a drawing of the lead character and then watched the video, and one control group, that watched the video
immediately. The study also focuses at the differences in gender. Therefore, this experiment has a 2 x 2 factorial design with four conditions (see Table 1). In this study, we also do additional analyses with age and nationality, but these variables are not specified in the experimental design directly.
Table 1 – Experimental Research Design
Interactivity condition Gender Watching video with interactivity
condition
Watching video without interactivity condition
Boy N = 10 N = 16
Girl N = 12 N = 9
Note: N = 47 participants
Sample
In total, N = 47 participants were included in this study, 21 girls (44.7%) and 26 boys (55.3%). The participants were children aged five to seven (M = 6.04, SD = .86). This age group has been chosen, because they are suitable for answering a questionnaire (children aged five are used to primary school and have learned to follow instructions). In addition, there are some developmental changes at this age which can be interesting for this study, such as the realization of their own gender identity (Valkenburg & Piotrowski, 2017). The children in this sample were from Amsterdam, Haarlem and Arnhem, and were from all kinds of different nationalities (still they were Dutch – speaking): 24 children (51.1%) had parents who were completely Dutch and 23 children (48.9%) had at least one parent from a different nationality. These parents were from Germany, Morocco, Turkey, Indonesia, Slovakia, Brazil, Tunisia and Spain.Some children were unclear about which nationality they had, that
is why we do not have the exact numbers of the different nationalities. Of all the children, 41 (87.2%) did not know the main character and 6 (12.8%) did recognize her.
Stimulus material
In this study PSI is measured after short-term exposure, that is why it is important that children are not familiar with the character to avoid pre-existing PSI. With the permission of Nickelodeon, we used an episode (thirteen minutes long) of a yet unknown television character created for Nick Jr., which was eventually broadcasted on Dutch television in May 2017 named ‘Nella the Princess Knight’, (‘Nella de Ridderprinses’ in Dutch). The broadcasting of the show was after the collecting of the data which means that children were not acquainted with the television program or the main character. The script and a summary of the episode of the television program can be found in Appendix D.
The moral lessons embedded in the storyline of the episode are that working together is important, and that having a great experience is more important than winning. Nella has two male friends, which shows that girls can have a great time with boys as well and that girls and boys can do the same things and are equal. Another interesting fact is that Nella is of color. A picture of Nella can be found in Appendix B.
In the interactivity condition, children received a coloring page of the main character Nella (see Appendix C). In the drawing, Nella is posing in her knight clothes with her unicorn friend. This coloring page was most suitable for this experiment because the focus is fully on Nella, her knight outfit introduces the children to the character and makes her potentially more attractive for boys.
Procedure and data collection
Children were recruited via parents and via the ‘Community Kids’ daycare in Amsterdam. The parents were often acquaintances of the researcher which led to a snowball
effect (Noy, 2008). The experiment took place at the children’s home or in a classroom at the children’s daycare where they felt comfortable. In some situations, friends, parents, brothers or sisters of the child were present in the same room as the participant, but the researcher kept an eye on the children to prevent them from influencing each other. When participants joined the experiment in groups, there was always a maximum of five children. At first, the researcher gave the children instructions and explained that there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in this experiment and that they were only asked for their opinion. Some children started with coloring in the drawing, which was also a good way to make them feel at ease. In the other condition, the researcher first talked with the child(ren) before they watched an episode. Afterwards, the children were asked to sit individually with the researcher and answered questions about their sex, age and nationality. The participants could not hear each other’s answers or discuss the program before or after the questions. To measure PSI, thirteen questions were asked. These questions can be found in the Appendix A. Because it is hard for young children to concentrate for a long time (Valkenburg, 2005), the questionnaire did not take longer than five minutes. The participants could answer on the five-point Likert scales by touching the appropriate smiley/emoticon. For example, when a child had to answer the question ‘I want to be like Nella’ and fully agreed with the statement, he or she could touch the green and happy emoticon (see Appendix E). The researcher filled in the right score on a printed questionnaire. After the experiment they were thanked for their participation and they received a small present.
Ethical considerations
The parents/legal guardians had to sign an informed consent form (see Appendix F) to give legal permission for letting their children participate in the experiment. It was possible for a child to quit the experiment any time. The researcher of the experiment had experience
with working with children and tried to make the children feel comfortable. Parents/legal guardians could come in any time and to check on their child. The children were not filmed or audio recorded and the experiment was completely anonymous.
Demographic variables
To measure the independent variable gender, children were asked if they were a boy or girl. If necessary, the gender of a child was checked by an identification card or a passport since the gender of a person is officially registered. The same procedure was used for the independent variable age (five, six or seven years) and nationality (‘my parents are completely Dutch’ versus ‘my parents are not completely Dutch, namely…’).
Interactivity
To measure the independent variable interactivity, a coloring page of Nella was used. Children never saw Nella before the experiment. This means that by looking at the coloring pages, it is possible to see how children imagined Nella or how they wanted her to look like. Children’s drawings can be seen as a “mirror of the child’s emotional concerns” (Golomb, 2003, p.1). During the experiment, the researcher found out that children saw the coloring as a game. They wanted to have the right prediction of Nella and were disappointed when she looked different than their own coloring. Therefore, a content analysis of the coloring pages was conducted to see if it influenced the PSI with the character. We noted children’s choice for Nella’s hair (‘blond hair’, ‘dark hair’, ‘other, namely…’, ‘no hair color’, and ‘does not apply’) Nella’s skin color and the color of her suit, to see if the prediction of Nella influenced the PSI. The scale used for the content analysis can be found in Appendix G. A score of zero meant that the participants used none of the color correct and a score of five meant that all the colors were used correct on the right places. Pictures of the coloring pages were made by the researcher, so children could keep their own.
Parasocial interaction
The dependent variable in this experiment is PSI. Because there is only a short-term exposure, we refer to the term PSI and not PSR (Hu, 2016). PSI can be tested by several questions on a PSI – scale, which will measure the strength of the relationship. In this study, we used thirteen questions based on different scales by Tukachinsky (2010), Schramm and Hartmann (2008), Auter and Palmgreen (2000) and Rubin, Perse, Powell (1985) to test the PSI with main character Nella. There were no questions asked about other characters of the show. For some questions, it was necessary to adjust the question to make it more comprehensible for children or to make it relevant for Nella. For example, ‘Nella could be a friend of mine’ (Tukachinsky, 2010). In addition, we had to translate the questions from English into Dutch. All the questions can be found in Appendix A. Some questions are more focused on love aspects, others on friendship or identification. Two questions were reversed so children would not be influenced by the positive formulation. The questions were answered on a five-point Likert scale, which asks subjects to assign a number on a scale from one to five, indicating the amount of liking, agreement, and so on, with a statement or presentation (Peery & Peery, 1986). Five smileys were used, instead of numbers, because children can identify with the facial expressions of the smileys. This method was also used by Calvert & Richards (2014) to measure PSI with children.
While doing the survey, a lot of children felt the need to give additional information, not because the researcher asked them too but because they wanted to give their opinion. Because some of the quotes could be interesting for the findings of this study and can give us more insight in PSI, they are added to the results section.
RESULTS Analyses
In total, 47 participants were included in this experiment. The dependent variable PSI was measured with thirteen items on a Five-point Likert scale from ‘I totally disagree’ to ‘I totally agree’ (see Appendix A). All the questions were positively formulated, except for ‘I sometimes disliked Nella because of the things she did’ and ‘I would be more satisfied if there was a different princess instead of Nella’. That is why the answers of these items are reversed from ‘I completely disagree’ into ‘I completely agree’. Before a new PSI – scale was created, the factorial structure and the reliability by a factor-analysis was assessed. The items formed three components with an Eigenvalue above one. Seven items formed the first component (question one, four, six, seven, eight, nine and eleven) which predicts 60.77% of the variance. The Cronbach’s Alpha was higher with removing question six, ‘When Nella was shocked by the dragon, I was shocked as well.’. The new variable parasocial interaction (α = 0.87) formed a reliable scale, with a minimum score of 1 and a maximum of 5 (M = 3.8, SD = 1.19).
Interactivity
There were N = 22 (46.8%) participants included in the interactivity condition (where children had to color a coloring page of Nella) and N = 25 (53.2%) participants in the non-interactive condition. An independent samples t-test indicated that the difference in mean PSI between the interactive condition (M = 4.07, SD = 1.26) is not significantly different from the non-interactive condition (M = 3.56, SD = 1.1), t (45) = 1.48, p = .146. Therefore, since the mean in PSI was significantly higher for girls, when only selecting female participants (and not male), an independent t-test indicated that the interactivity group (M = 476, SD = 0.29) is significantly different than the non-interactivity (M = 4.02, SD = 1.11), t (19) = 2.25, p =
.036, when only selecting female participants. Therefore, H1 can be partly accepted. However, when looking at the interactivity and the identification question ‘I want to be like Nella’ (selecting all the cases), an independent t-test indicated that the interactivity group (M = 3.64, SD = 1.71) was significantly different than the non-interactivity group (M = 2.52, SD = 1.64), t (45) = 2.29, p = .027. This could mean that the coloring of the coloring page leads to more identification with the main character.
Gender
The second hypothesis focusses on the differences in PSI between girls and boys. An independent samples t-test indicated that the mean PSI for girls (M = 4.44, SD = 0.82) was significantly different than boys (M = 3.28, SD = 1.20), t (45) = - 3.804, p < .001. This means that H2 can be accepted. The difference in means of PSI between boys and girls can be found in Table 1. When looking at the interaction effects on PSI, an Analysis of Variance indicated that there was no interaction between interactivity and gender, F (3,43) = 1.72, p = .197, neither between age and interactivity, F = (2, 41) = .365, p = .697, or between gender and age, F (5, 41) = .243, p = .786. Since the PSI was higher among girls, we looked at the question ‘I would like to watch more episodes of Nella on the television’, because this measures the overall popularity of the show. An independent t-test indicated that girls indeed (M = 4.43, SD = 1.23) wanted to see more episodes of Nella in comparison to boys (M = 3.08, SD = 1.81), t (45) = -2.89, p = .006.
Table 1 – Mean differences in PSI between boys and girls
PSI boys PSI girls
5 years 6 years 7 years 5 years 6 years 7 years
M 3.8 2.97 2.93 4.83 4.52 4.08
SD 1.01 1.29 1.24 0.33 0.77 1.03
When looking at the question ‘I think Nella is pretty’ an independent samples t-test indicated that girls (M = 4.33, SD = 1.24) found Nella significantly prettier than boys (M = 3.08, SD = 1.7), t (45) = -2.84, p = .007. A two-way Analysis of Variance indicated that this effect is not significantly moderated by age, F (4, 41) = .503, p = .61. Another interesting analysis for the difference in boys and girls, is to look at the identification with Nella. When looking at the question ‘I want to be like Nella’ (Q1), an independent samples t-test indicated that girls (M = 4, SD = 1.27) wanted to be more like Nella than boys (M = 2.27, SD = 1.7), t (45) = -3.86, p < .001.
Age
The last hypothesis focusses on PSI among the different ages. The minimum age in this experiment was five years old and the maximum age was seven years (M = 6.04, SD = .86). The scores in mean PSI between age five, six and seven can be found in Table 2.
Table 2 -The differences in mean PSI between age
5 years 6 years 7 years
M 4.19 3.81 3.44
An Analysis of Variance indicated that none of the ages differed significantly in their level of PSI, F (2, 44) = 1.7, p = .194. Although it had no effect on the PSI, when looking at the question ‘I would like to watch more of Nella on the television’ an Analysis of Variance indicated that there was a significant difference between age five (M = 4.44, SD = .41), age six (M = 3.77, SD = .45) and age seven (M = 2.94, SD = .38) on the willingness to see more episodes of Nella, F (2, 44) = 3.57, p = .037.
There were some differences noticeable in age when carrying out the experiment. For example, it looked like younger children reacted more positively on the sixth question in comparison to older children (‘When Nella was in shock because of the dragon, I was in shock as well.’). An Analysis of Variance found a significant difference between the age of five (M = 2.94, SD = 1.91), the age of six (M = 1.31, SD = 1.11) and the age of seven (M = 1.89, SD = 1.37) on the identification with Nella’s feelings, F (2, 44) = 4.37, p = .019.
There was also a difference noticeable between younger and older children in the tenth question ‘During watching, I sometimes felt like I had to say something to Nella’, an Analysis of Variance found a significant difference between the age of five (M = 3.75, SD = 1.7), the age of six (M = 2.69, SD = 1.65) and the age of seven (M = 2.06, SD = 1.21) and the need to talk to Nella, F (2, 44) = 5.37, p = .008.
Additional findings
Some additional analyses were executed. Looking at nationality, 23 children (48.9%) of the participants were completely Dutch and 24 of the participants (51.1%) were from different nationalities. Moroccan (N = 8) was the most frequent nationality. An independent t-test indicated that there was no significant difference between Dutch children (M = 3.4, SD = 1.1) and children from a different nationality (M = 3.6, SD = 1.26) in PSI, t (45) = -1.1, p =
.28. Therefore, when looking at the correlation of nationality with every single item, there was an effect of nationality on the question ‘Nella is an open person who I can trust’. An independent t-test indicated that children who do not have a Dutch nationality (M = 4.13, SD = 1.39) have a significant lower difference in the trustworthy of Nella with Dutch children (M = 4.78, SD = .52), t (45) = -2.13, p = .039. This is contrary to the results of the analysis of the question ‘I would be more satisfied if there was a different princess instead of Nella’, an Analysis of Variance indicated that children who were not fully Dutch (M = 2.71, SD = 1.92) would be less satisfied if there was a different princess instead of Nella in comparison to children who are fully Dutch (M = 3.91, SD = 1.56), t (45) = -2.35, p = .023.
Content analysis
As mentioned in the methods section, the children’s’ reactions gave rise to further analysis of their coloring activities in relation to the other findings. First of all, none of the participants colored Nella with a darker skin color. This was remarkable because there were children with a variety of skin and hair colors, both darker and lighter than Nella’s. The hair color was colored blond (yellow) by N = 6 (27.3%) participants and dark (brown or black) by N = 5 (22.7%) participants. The hair was colored in striking colors like blue, pink or orange by N =9 participants (40.9%) and N = 2 participants (9.1%) did not color Nella’s hair at all. The participants did not have a score higher than three in the content analysis (M = .91, SD = 1.02). Out of all the participants who colored a coloring page, N = 10 children (45.5%) had none of the colors correct and a score of zero. Only N = 2 children (9.1%) had the correct hair color and the right use of pink and grey elements and a score of three, N = 4 children (18.2%) had the correct hair color and a score of two and N = 6 (12.8%) had the correct use of pink and grey elements and a score of one. There was no significant regression between the score of the coloring and the PSI, F (1,20) = .194, p = .665. In addition, there was no significant
correlation between the age, gender, and nationality on the score of the coloring. Therefore, the prediction of Nella’s colors did not influence the PSI.
Qualitative results
A significant effect of gender on PSI was found in the empirical, quantitative analyses, which was also noticeable in the conversations with the children. These conversations often spontaneously emerged on the child’s initiative. One boy (aged six) said: “I think Nella is stupid”, when the researcher asked him why, he said: “She is a girl but she is constantly the smartest and the strongest of the group. I do not like that”. Apparently, it frustrated him that Nella, the main character, did everything with success while the other boys needed her help. Another boy (aged seven) answered when the researcher asked him if he would like the show more if there was another princess instead of Nella; “No, it just has to be a boy.” A male participant (aged seven) answered to the same question: “I do not know, that depends on the princess. But I would like it if there was another person instead of Blaine, he is such a show-off!”. This participant was more focused on the male character Blaine, probably because he likes a same-sex character instead of the female main character (Jennings & Alper, 2016).
Because many children experienced the coloring as a game, a lot of children reacted surprised when they saw Nella for the first time. A girl (aged 7), had an observation about Nella’s appearance; “I think that Nella is just a little bit beautiful. You want to know why? Because she has a darker skin color and I do not like that.” Although this quote can be seen as discrimination among adults, children are not aware of this yet. We will discuss more about children and ethnicity in the discussion section.
There were no significant results when it came to differences in age and PSI. Although the differences were noticeable during the experiment among boys, in particular.
They found it harder to concentrate or felt more need to start talking to the other participants while watching. One boy of seven years old explained to the researcher why the television program was not suitable for him; “Nella is not my type; besides, this show is way too predictable for me. I knew from the start what was going to happen and I like to be more surprised.” In addition, it was interesting to see that when there were more boys together in one group, they felt the need to talk negatively about Nella but when they were answering the questions alone with the researcher, they ranked Nella quite high. This shows that peer pressure is indeed present among this age group (Valkenburg & Cantor, 2000).
CONCLUSION/DISCUSSION
This study wanted to answer the following research question: “What roles do interactivity and gender play in the parasocial interaction (PSI) among children aged five to seven?”. When it comes to interactivity, this study showed that the role of interactivity on PSI is gender related. The coloring in of the coloring page with the main character led to more PSI, but only among girls. However, the interactivity led to more identification with the character among both boys and girls. This can be explained by the model of Brown (2005). According to this model, familiarity/priority and perceived realism lead to transportation into the character and then identification with the persona which finally leads to the worship of the persona. According to Brunick et al. (2016), connecting different surroundings through joint interaction may foster children’s sense of social realism. It is possible that the coloring led to more social realism and dehumanizing of the character, which led to familiarity/priority and thus transportation and identification. This explains why the identification took place for both girls and boys. However, only girls felt liking/attraction and homophily/similarity, the attributes who are mentioned in the model of Brown (2005), because of the same-sex preference in characters (Jennings & Alper, 2016) or because girls liked the looks and the
visual cues of the character more (Brunick et al., 2016) which also explains why girls found Nella prettier than guys.
Additionally, Calvert and Richards (2014) found that children who play with a toy version are more likely to develop a PSR with that character. It is therefore possible that the coloring and playing with a character is the same experience for girls or that girls were more attracted to the coloring page which means that they experienced the coloring as more fun than boys. This means that the experience of the coloring may have been different for both sexes, which influenced the PSI. Nevertheless, the identification with the character for both boy and girls in the interactivity condition can also be explained by the uncertainty reduction theory (Barger and Calabrese, 1975). By seeing the coloring page of Nella, the participants received more information about her, for example her two sides (princess versus knight), which helped them to predict her behavior in the upcoming episode and which could therefore have led to more identification.
As expected, gender plays an important role in PSI. Girls scored higher on PSI with the main female character Nella in comparison to boys. This can be explained by a preference for the same-sex character (Hoffner, 1996; Jennings and Alper, 2006; Brunick, Calvert & Richards, 2014; Valkenburg & Piotrowski, 2017). This may also explain why girls wanted to see more episodes of Nella in comparison to boys and why girls could identify more with Nella. However, these findings are still quite remarkable because the creators of the main character did not make her as a typical girl, but more like ‘one of the guys’. Apparently, it is not easy to manipulate the gender of characters for children, which can be an important finding for media developers as well.
Although age had no effect on the PSI with Nella, the analyses showed that younger children did want to see more episodes of the show. This means that Nella is more popular among younger children, as expected. Additionally, one question asked if the children were
shocked by the dragon when Nella was shocked, which can be linked to an affective response and with the empathy towards the character (Schramm & Hartmann, 2008). It turned out that only younger children (aged five) were shocked in comparison to older children (aged six and seven). This can be explained by the fact that younger children may have less realistic fears (Mares & Acosta, 2008) and more fantasy. In addition, it is interesting that younger children feel more empathy, considering that theory of mind, the realization of existence of perspectives and perspective differences, develops among pre-schoolers (Flavell, 1999) and therefore older children. Of course, it is also possible that older children did not want to admit that they were shocked or wanted to look more ‘tough’ towards the researcher. This can be linked to theory of mind as well, since “children begin to learn that other people have distinct mental states and will act in accordance with those mental states” (Lapierre, 2015, p. 425). Additionally, younger children (age five) had more willingness to talk to Nella than older children (age six and seven) during watching. Apparently, the younger children were more impressed by the events or by Nella than older children, maybe because they still have more fantasy than older children (Valkenburg & Cantor, 2000).
A content analysis showed that none of the children colored Nella with a darker skin color and that almost half of the children did not color the coloring page in Nella’s actual colors. Almost 40% of the children colored Nella’s hair in striking colors like blue, pink and orange instead of the more common colors like dark hair or blond hair. This shows that most participants were not focussed on perceived realism (Rosaen & Dibble, 2008) and still have a lot of fantasy since these hair colors are not realistic. We noticed that children saw the coloring of the coloring page as a game, and wanted to have the right prediction of Nella’s looks. Around the age of seven, “children wish to exercise their newly developed concrete operational skills and are interested in social opportunities” (Valkenburg & Piotrowski, 2017, p. 72), this leads to an interest in playing games and this can explain why the children
interpreted the coloring as a game. Still, there was no effect of the prediction of Nella on the PSI. Maybe, if most of the children did predict her looks correctly they would have had a more positive attitude towards Nella and therefore a higher score in PSI.
First of all, girls found Nella prettier than boys. This is in line with the study of Hoffner (1996), since female characters’ attractiveness was really important for girl’s wishful identification and PSI. According to Baker - Sperry and Grauerholz (2003) and Herbozo (2004), a lot of children’s fairy tales are focussed on women’s beauty, which can influence their self-image, the importance of beauty and it can legitimize and support the dominant gender system. It is unlikely that girls thought Nella was pretty because it was not embedded in the storyline. A study by Felfe et al. (2017) showed that “native girls, by contrast, show no signs of discrimination against immigrants, while native boys can be classified as moderate discriminators” (Felfe et al., 2017, p. 3). It is possible that boys did not like the fact that Nella is of color, but it is hard to draw conclusions about this since boys’ opinions about Nella’s appearance were not asked. Since boys found more masculine and dominant characters important (Calvert and Richards, 2014) it is also possible that they were not focussed on Nella’s appearance. However, we see it as a positive outcome that girls ranked Nella’s prettiness so high despite the fact that she is of color.
Other interesting findings were between Dutch children and children with at least one parent with a nationality that is not Dutch. Dutch children preferred another princess instead of Nella in comparison to children from another nationality. Aboud and Mitchell (1977), found that children were indeed most positive to members of their own ethnic group and although this study is forty years old, it can still be relevant for children nowadays. This could explain why children from another nationality did not want to have another princess instead of Nella, because they are more positive towards a member of their own ethnic group.
On the other hand, a study by Gonzalez, Steele and Baron (2017) showed that exposing children from around ten years old to counter-stereotypical Black exemplars reduced racial bias, but not for younger children around the age of seven. This could mean that the age group of this study still has racial bias, and why they preferred another princess instead of Nella. Also remarkable is the finding that children with a different nationality thought that Nella was less honest and trustworthy than Dutch children. This can be explained by a difference in culture. Every culture has his own values which is taught to children (Hofstede & Minkov, 2016). It is possible that in the Netherlands honesty and trustworthy are seen as important values. Therefore, a Dutch child who has a positive image towards a person, will rank her with a higher score on honesty and trustworthy in comparison to a child from a different culture. Another explanation is a low self-image. According to Hurley (2005), “fairy tales have an important role in shaping self-image and belief system of children” (p. 221). The study describes how visual images are translated into beliefs children hold about status in particular group membership. A content analysis by Tukachinsky, Mastro and Yarchi (2015) showed that there is a severe underrepresentation of minorities and a tendency to depict minorities stereotypically, which can also be the explanation for the fact that none of the children colored Nella with a darker skin color. If people with a darker skin color are underrepresented or represented as dishonest people, children with a darker skin color adapt this thought and see their own ethnicity as less honest. Of course, not only the media can be seen as responsible, discrimination throughout the history could give a lower self-esteem to people of certain ethnicities (Porter & Washington, 1993). This means that children from another nationality, have a negative self-image and thus saw Nella as less honest and trustworthy.
Limitations
First of all, there were some limitations with regarding to our sample. According to VanVoorhis and Morgan (2007) fourteen participants per cell, given at least three cells, are a minimum for an effective research. This study should have had at least 56 participants, but since there was a lack of time and money we have a total number of 47 participants. A small sample could have lead more easily to significant findings.
Although there is a distribution in cultural background, different schools and different neighbourhoods, it is difficult to draw conclusions about all the children in this age group. Additionally, the age group itself, of five, six and seven years, may seem close, but there are a lot of differences between a girl who just turned five and a girl who is almost eight years old. For example, the answers were measured on a smiley Likert-scale. The researcher noticed that younger children had more difficulties with understanding this scale, and were more likely to answer towards the extreme ends of the scale. Maybe, this can be explained by the preoperational stage by Piaget (1952), and children aged five have more problems with implementing cognitive operations than children aged seven.
Secondly, the presence of the parents, their teacher and other peers, which was sometimes necessary, could have influenced the children’s behavior and therefore the outcome of the experiment. In the future, researchers should try to keep children separately.
Thirdly, there are some limitations related to the television show Nella the Princess Knight, which is created for the age group three to five years old. The children in this experiment were five to seven years old, which could make this show too childish for the high end of this age group. This would mean that the PSI that was measured is not valid for this age group. Additionally, there were more episodes of Nella the Princess Knight created by Nickelodeon, but we only used one for this experiment. An episode with a different storyline could have had a different effect on children. For example, if the episode was only
starring Nella and no other character, the PSI with Nella could have been higher. Also, the coloring page was printed with Nella in her knight suit on it. If it would have been Nella in a princess dress or with her and other characters on it, it may have had a different effect on the participants. Girls could have liked Nella as a princess more and could therefore have had a higher PSI with her.
The television show was not broadcasted during the data collection. Some participants said that they recognized Nella, but they often could not give an explanation. It is possible that children got feelings of recognition or familiarity when they saw the main character, because of the style of Nickelodeon or the storyline. It is also possible that children felt the need to give a desirable answer to the researcher or that it felt ‘dumb’ if they did not know who she was. They could also have misinterpreted the questions since they already colored a coloring page of the character or watched an episode of her. Since there were images of Nella online on the internet, it is also possible that they had already seen her online.
Lastly, in this experiment, there were some conclusions about the effects of gender on the evaluation of Nella. Since there was no control check, there is no insight how children would have reacted if Nella was completely white or if she was a boy. This could be interesting for future research. In addition, we did not ask the children if they liked the coloring or not. If the evaluation of the interactivity condition was asked, it could have given more insight into liking or attraction being predictors for PSI (Brown, 2005). This would be interesting for future research.
Recommendations
Interactivity plays an important role in PSI and identification, which could mean that the development of PSI could be influenced by media developers more easily. Also, with the changing media environment nowadays, we could have a stronger PSI with characters in the
future. For example, the gamification of television shows or the chatting with a vlogger could make the PSI stronger.
This study could be a contribution to the existing literature of PSI. Also, it showed that despite the short-term exposure with the character, the PSI could be measured. This is support for the drench hypothesis by Greenberg (1988) and means that the liking of is more important than the frequency of seeing a character. Therefore, other researchers should use the short-term exposure as a method for measuring PSI more. This method could also be used for future research to determine if multiple-platform characters could lead more easily or to a stronger PSR (Brunick et al, 2016). Or, “to attempt to create meaningful relationships between children and a range of media characters, including electronic toys that can respond contingently to young children’s actions and convey personal information about the child during their interactions” (Howard Gola et al., 2013, p .406).
Although boys did not have more PSI with Nella despite the fact that she is not a typical girl, media developers should try to break the stereotypes of girls only being princesses who have to be beautiful and wait for a prince. “Television shapes children’s sex role perceptions and that they do dominate television characters as people they want to be like when they grow up” (Miller & Reeves, 1976, p. 47). This means that media developers should handle careful and responsible with the creating of a character because of the influence it can have on children. Additionally, creating characters with a darker skin color may lead to less discrimination. And maybe finally, television can make boys adore princesses and girls knights.
REFERENCES
Aboud, F. E., & Mitchell, F. G. (1977). Ethnic role taking: The effects of preference and self-identification. International Journal of Psychology, 12(1), 1-17.
Auter, P. J., & Palmgreen, P. (2000). Development and validation of a parasocial interaction measure: The audience-‐persona interaction scale. Communication Research
Reports, 17(1), 79-89.
Baker-Sperry, L., & Grauerholz, L. (2003). The pervasiveness and persistence of the feminine beauty ideal in children's fairy tales. Gender & Society, 17(5), 711-726. Boeije, H. ‘t Hart, H., & Hox, J. (2009). Onderzoeksmethoden. Boom Onderwijs,
2009.
Bond, B. J., & Calvert, S. L. (2014b). Parasocial breakup among young children in the United States. Journal of Children and Media, 8, 474–490.
Brown, W. J. (2015). Examining four processes of audience involvement with media personae: Transportation, parasocial interaction, identification, and worship. Communication Theory, 25(3), 259-283.
Brunick, K. L., Putnam, M. M., McGarry, L. E., Richards, M. N., & Calvert, S. L. (2016). Children’s future parasocial relationships with media characters: The age of
intelligent characters. Journal of Children and Media, 10(2), 181-190.
Brunick, K. L., Calvert, S. L., & Richards, M. N. (2015). Children’s parasocial breakups with formerly-favorite media characters. In Poster presented at the annual Meeting of the american Psychological Society, New York City, NY.
Calvert, S. L., & Richards, M. N. (2014). Children’s parasocial relationships. Media and the well-being of children and adolescents, 187-200.
Cherney, I. D., & London, K. (2006). Gender-linked differences in the toys, television shows, computer games, and outdoor activities of 5-to 13-year-old children. Sex
Roles, 54(9-10), 717.
Cohen, J. (1999). Favorite characters of teenage viewers of Israeli serials. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 43(3), 327-345.
Dibble, J. L., Hartmann, T., & Rosaen, S. F. (2016). Parasocial interaction and parasocial relationship: Conceptual clarification and a critical assessment of measures. Human Communication Research, 42(1), 21-44.
Felfe, C., Kocher, M., Rainer, H., Saurer, J., & Siedler, T. (2017). Immigration,
naturalization, and discrimination: Combining a natural Experiment with a large-scale trust experiment in schools. Conference Iza.
Flavell, J. H. (1999). Cognitive development: Children's knowledge about the mind. Annual Review of Psychology, 50(1), 21-45.
Giles, D. C. (2002). Parasocial interaction: A review of the literature and a model for future research. Media Psychology, 4(3), 279-305.
Golomb, C. (2003). The child's creation of a pictorial world. Psychology Press.
Gonzalez, A. M., Steele, J. R., & Baron, A. S. (2017). Reducing children's implicit racial bias through exposure to positive out-‐group exemplars. Child development, 88(1), 123-130.
Herbozo, S., Tantleff-Dunn, S., Gokee-Larose, J., & Thompson, J. K. (2004). Beauty and thinness messages in children's media: A content analysis. Eating Disorders, 12(1), 21-34.
Hoffner, C. (1996). Children's wishful identification and parasocial interaction with favorite television characters. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 40(3), 389-402.
Hofstede, G. J., Minkov, M., & Hofstede, G. (2016). Allemaal andersdenkenden: Omgaan met cultuurverschillen. Business Contact.
Horton, D., & Richard Wohl, R. (1956). Mass communication and para-social interaction: Observations on intimacy at a distance. Psychiatry, 19(3), 215-229.
Howard Gola, A. A., Richards, M. N., Lauricella, A. R., & Calvert, S. L. (2013). Building meaningful parasocial relationships between toddlers and media characters to teach early mathematical skills. Media Psychology, 16(4), 390-411.
Hu, M. (2016). The influence of a scandal on parasocial relationship, parasocial interaction, and parasocial breakup. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 5(3), 217.
Hurley, D. L. (2005). Seeing white: Children of color and the Disney fairy tale princess. The Journal of Negro Education, 221-232.
Jennings, N., & Alper, M. (2016). Young children’s positive and negative parasocial relationships with media characters. Communication Research Reports, 33(2), 96-102.
Kiousis, S. (2002). Interactivity: A concept explication. New Media & Society, 4(3), 355-383. Kirkorian, H. L., Wartella, E. A., & Anderson, D. R. (2008). Media and young children's
learning. The Future of Children, 18(1), 39-61.
Lapierre, M. A. (2015). Development and persuasion understanding: Predicting knowledge of persuasion/selling intent from children's theory of mind. Journal of
Communication, 65(3), 423-442.
Mares, M.L. & Acosta, E.E. (2008). Be kind to three-legged dogs: Children’s literal interpretations of TV’s moral lessons. Media Psychology, 11, 377-399.
Noy, C. (2008). Sampling knowledge: The hermeneutics of snowball sampling in qualitative research. International Journal of social research methodology, 11(4), 327-344.
Papa, M. J., Singhal, A., Law, S., Pant, S., Sood, S., Rogers, E. M., & Shefner-‐Rogers, C. L. (2000). Entertainment-‐education and social change: An analysis of parasocial
interaction, social learning, collective efficacy, and paradoxical communication. Journal of Communication, 50(4), 31-55.
Peery, J. C., & Peery, I. W. (1986). Effects of exposure to classical music on the musical preferences of preschool children. Journal of Research in Music Education, 34(1), 24-33.
Perse, E. M., & Rubin, R. B. (1989). Attribution in social and parasocial relationships. Communication Research, 16(1), 59-77.
Piaget, J. (2000). Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. Childhood cognitive Development: The essential readings, 33-47.
Porter, J. R., & Washington, R. E. (1993). Minority identity and self-esteem. Annual review of Sociology, 19(1), 139-161.
Reeves, B., & Greenberg, B. S. (1977). Children’s perceptions of television characters. Human Communication Research, 3(2), 113-127.
Rosaen, S. F., & Dibble, J. L. (2008). Investigating the relationships among child's age, parasocial interactions, and the social realism of favorite television characters. Communication Research Reports, 25(2), 145-154.
Roussou, M. (2004). Learning by doing and learning through play: An exploration of
interactivity in virtual environments for children. Computers in Entertainment (CIE), 2(1), 10-10.
Rubin, A. M., Perse, E. M., & Powell, R. A. (1985). Loneliness, parasocial interaction, and local television news viewing. Human Communication Research, 12(2), 155-180. Schramm, H., & Hartmann, T. (2008). The PSI-Process Scales. A new measure to assess the
Shaffer, D. (2008). Social and personality development. Nelson Education.
Strasburger et al. (2013). Children and Adolescents: Unique Audience (Chapter 1, pp. 1-36). Tukachinsky, R. (2010). Para-romantic love and para-friendships: Development and
assessment of a multiple-parasocial relationships scale.
Tukachinsky, R., Mastro, D., & Yarchi, M. (2015). Documenting portrayals of
race/ethnicity on primetime television over a 20-‐year span and their association with national-‐ level racial/ethnic attitudes. Journal of Social Issues, 71(1), 17-38. Tung, F. W., & Deng, Y. S. (2006). Designing social presence in e-learning environments:
Testing the effect of interactivity on children. Interactive Learning Environments, 14(3), 251-264.
Valkenburg, P. (2008). Beeldschermkinderen: Theorieën over kind en media.
Valkenburg, P. M., & Cantor, J. (2000). Children’s likes and dislikes of entertainment
programs. In D. Zillmann & P. Vorderer (Eds.), Media entertainment: The psychology of its appeal (pp. 135-152). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Valkenburg, P. M., & Piotrowski, J.T., (2017). Plugged in: How media attract and affect youth. New Haven, Yale University Press.
VanVoorhis, C. R. W., & Morgan, B. L. (2007). Understanding power and rules of thumb for determining sample sizes. Tutorials in Quantitative Methods for Psychology, 3(2), 43-50.
Vorderer, P., Knobloch, S., & Schramm, H. (2001). Does entertainment suffer from
interactivity? The impact of watching an interactive TV movie on viewers' experience of entertainment. Media Psychology, 3(4), 343-363.
