Media

• Support for the Influence of Media: McGhee and Frueh

  • used series of short stories to compar children's stereotypes
  • compare heavy tv watchers vs light tv watchers
  • heavy tv = hold more stereotypes about gender
• Difficulties Studying the Influence of Media

  • It is often impossible to randomly allocate participants to groups.
  • It is difficult to establish a control group.
  • There may be confounding variables that are difficult to control.
• The Effect of the Introduction of Television

  Williams

  • longitudinal study
  • town in Canada
  • Williams studied children in a town before (Notel) and after TV was introduced for the first time.
  • before: weaker gender stereotypes (compared to children in nearby town
  • after: stronger gender stereotypes