TY - JOUR

T1 - The Animals in Moral Tales

T2 - Does Character Realism Influence Children’s Prosocial Response to Stories?

AU - Russell, Samantha J

AU - Cain, Kate

N1 - This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 219, 2022 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2022.105392

PY - 2022/7/31

Y1 - 2022/7/31

N2 - Previous research has suggested that moral stories depicting realistic characters may better facilitate children’s prosocial behavior than those containing anthropomorphized animal characters. The current study is a conceptual replication with a different sample and an extended age range. We examined the relationships between story character realism (anthropomorphized animal or human), theme (sharing or busyness), age and prosocial behavior (i.e., resource allocation). Four versions of an illustrated story book were created: An Animal Sharing book; an Animal Busy book; a Human Sharing book; and a Human Busy book. A total of 179 children, between 3 and 7 years old listened to one of the four versions of the story. Children’s sticker donating behavior was measured prior to hearing the story and again following a story recall task. All groups donated more stickers post-story than pre-story. Younger children were more likely to increase their donation than older children and children who had made higher human internal state attributions in a previous experimental session donated more stickers post-story. In contrast to previous research, we found that a sharing-themed narrative depicting human characters was no more influential on sticker donation than the other stories.

AB - Previous research has suggested that moral stories depicting realistic characters may better facilitate children’s prosocial behavior than those containing anthropomorphized animal characters. The current study is a conceptual replication with a different sample and an extended age range. We examined the relationships between story character realism (anthropomorphized animal or human), theme (sharing or busyness), age and prosocial behavior (i.e., resource allocation). Four versions of an illustrated story book were created: An Animal Sharing book; an Animal Busy book; a Human Sharing book; and a Human Busy book. A total of 179 children, between 3 and 7 years old listened to one of the four versions of the story. Children’s sticker donating behavior was measured prior to hearing the story and again following a story recall task. All groups donated more stickers post-story than pre-story. Younger children were more likely to increase their donation than older children and children who had made higher human internal state attributions in a previous experimental session donated more stickers post-story. In contrast to previous research, we found that a sharing-themed narrative depicting human characters was no more influential on sticker donation than the other stories.

KW - Anthropomorphism

KW - Prosocial story

KW - Sharing

KW - Children

KW - Zero-inflated model

U2 - 10.1016/j.jecp.2022.105392

DO - 10.1016/j.jecp.2022.105392

M3 - Journal article

VL - 219

JO - Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

JF - Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

SN - 0022-0965

M1 - 105392

ER -