media

• How are males and females typically portrayed in these media sources?

  • Viewers identify with TV characters/celebrities, so they become role models
  • If viewers observe their behaviour receiving a positive outcome then vicarious reinforcement will occur
  • Mediational processes will influence whether or not the behaviour is actually imitated
• Heavy vs lighter viewers of television

  heavy viewers tend to hold stronger stereotyped beliefs about gender compared to those who watch less television
• In US TV programmes

  Males almost always outnumber females, especially in children's programmes, with men shown in dominant roles and higher occupational status and women in a narrow range of inferior roles and less able to deal with problems. This supports the idea that gender role stereotypes are present in the media, perhaps contributing to our own gender role stereotypes and behaviour
• Notel/Unitel/Multitel study


  1. Studied 3 Canadian towns (codenames): Notel - surrounded by mountains, not able to receive a TV signal, Unitel - only one Canadian TV channel (CBC), Multitel - access to a number of American TV channels

  2. The behaviour and attitudes of the children in these towns was assessed using questionnaires about their gender stereotypes (e.g. asking what characteristics were more typical of boys and girls)
• Children in Notel and Unitel had weaker sex-typed views than the children in Multitel. This was especially true for girls.
• The children were reassessed two years after the introduction of TV in Notel and it was found that their views had become significantly more sex-typed.
• It's introduction may have had other effects, such as reducing face to face socialisation, which could have an effect on behaviour.
• Although the study does appear to have high ecological validity, there are many factors that cannot be controlled for e.g. the fact that children in Notel live in a very rural setting, there may be many factors in their lives that are different to the other children in the study.
• It is very difficult to demonstrate the effects of media stereotypes because almost all children watch some TV.
• One similar study looking at the effects of TV on aggression (Charlton et al. 2000) did not find that there was a change in behaviour once TV was introduced and that differences between children with and without TV were due to pre-existing community values.
• However, it could also be argued that these studies have low population validity, for example, the Notel sample was a small group of children from one place (ethnocentric)
• research on male and female scientist characters - Of 196 scientist characters (across 14 popular TV programmes) 58% were male. Male scientists were no more likely than female scientists to be portrayed as high status. Male scientist characters were more likely than females to be portrayed with masculine qualities (independence, dominance but not athleticism)
• Female scientist characters were not more likely than males to be portrayed with feminine qualities (dependence, romantic etc.)
• Popular children's TV shows portray more male than female scientist characters
• Male scientist characters are more likely to be portrayed with stereotypically male characteristics
• Suggests some progress has been made in presenting non-biased portrayals - earlier research (1996) showed females more likely to be portrayed as assistants
• see evaluation