psychology

• 2/3 children under 1 have watched tv
• 1/3 of children had a tv in their bedroom
• 1/3 children watched tv
• Jamie Bulger


  Two boys had been watching Chucky and imitated it on a little boy leading to his death
• Watershed at 9 pm

  Assume kids are asleep before 9pm so can show more inappropriate material
• The more times an ad is seen the greater chance of impact it has on behaviour (Nielson et al 2008)
• Classical conditioning


  Associating certain foods with certain body parts
• Operant conditioning


  Reward of fun if you drink a certain alcohol
• Advertising techniques


  • Calvin Klein = association with more desirable
  • Tango advert with the orange man slap = children copied this and were giving people the tango slap (Hanley 2000)
• Power Rangers


  • Consider to influence undesirable behaviour that are likely to be imitated as it uses role models of both sexes and several races which most children can identify with
• Buijzen and Valkenburg 2000 - important to not watch it alone
• Pine and Nash 2002 - children who watched more commercial television than non-commercial television tended to request far greater number of toys from father Christmas
• Factors that encouraged imitation (Hanley)

  Easy to copy, similar to other accepted behaviour, forbidden/people getting away with it, or humour
• Stereotyping in TV - women are portrayed as homemakers and men as hunter-gathers
• Simpsons - women were portrayed as long-suffering and clever and men as incompetent fools. Doesn't involve individual differences within everyone.
• Welch 1979 - Content analysis of 20 toy commercial found that not only gender differences in actors used but also a variety of production techniques that reinforced gender stereotypes
• Voiceover in both gender neutral and boys ads were male. The editing techniques displayed stereotypes such as more soft music in female ads.
• Products use certain colours, voiceovers and music to relate genders.
• Griffiths 1998 - Production techniques in 117 toy ads found more varied camerawork for boys ads compared to girls
• Tilt up action was exclusively for girl ads to mimic the action of looking up from a subservient position whereas tilt down for boys as superiority
• Boys ads are rapid pace action orientated. Girls ads had more fades and suggest girls like more gradual and gentle transitions
• Pike and Jennings 2005 - Children who watched ad with non-traditional girl more likely to say that toys were for both genders compared to child that saw traditional boy playing with the toys who said the toys were for boys
• Johnson and Young - Aim was to find out the themes and discourse style that might contribute to what children learn about gender from television commercials
• Script language different?
• How is gender used as a discourse code to link products to gender roles?
• Research method was content analysis and they coded film material relating to boys and girls
• Samples of TV children programmes on commercial (for profit) networks and independent stations and Nickelodeon were recorded for this study in autumn 1996 and 1997 -15 30 minute adverts and 24x 30 minute in 1999
• Categories of adverts


  • Food and drink
  • Toys
  • Education
  • Recreation
  • Video/film promotion
  • Other
• Toys were boys= big time action hero girls= girl talk
• Use of toys girls= little action compared to action figures
• Voiceovers gender orientated voiceovers 89% of the time girls adverts had female voices
• Verbs were nurturing for girls and competition and destruction of boys
• Speaking roles boys ads 26% and girls spoke over half ads reinforcing the stereotype girls talk boys preferred action
• Power discourse - western culture associate power with maleness. When there were girls and boys boys were represented as strong and girls as gossipy and subservient
• 21% of adverts for boys involved the word power but only 1 for girls