Be Kind to Three-Legged Dogs: Children's Literal Interpretations of TV's Moral Lessons

Abstract

Abstract Sixty-four kindergarteners watched a 10-minute television episode intended to promote inclusive attitudes toward people with disabilities. In the original version, a disabled character was initially feared then eventually accepted. In an edited version, the fear was removed. The majority of children in both conditions, misunderstood the intended moral lesson, and failed to generalize beyond the specifics of the plot. Among children who were randomly assigned to the original version, those who understood the characters' goals and emotions better were less likely to comprehend the intended message of tolerance; remembering the happy ending had no effect. Among those assigned to the fear-removed version, those who better understood the goals and the happy ending were more likely to comprehend the intended message. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This research was supported by a grant to the first author from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Communication Arts Faculty Development Fund. The authors would like to thank the staff at Midvale Elementary School in Madison, Wisconsin for their help, as well as the following students for their assistance with data collection: Heather Axelrod, Brian Bania, Aaron Galarowicz, Joshua Juedes, Elizabeth O'Herrin, Jeffrey Parkes, and Travis Rogers. Notes ∗ The event marked was present only in the original video version. ∗ Differences between video versions were significant at p < .05; ∗∗p < .01. 1. The stations were the local affiliates for NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, and CW. 2. This is a conservative method of estimating of the number of programs that promote tolerance, because stations only listed a few core values, and did not describe the content of every episode. Unfortunately, examination of specific episode descriptions on TV.com revealed that the descriptions varied in the degree to which they merely outlined a few main events as opposed to discussing the educational or prosocial themes, so they could not be regarded as reliable indicators of pro-tolerance content.