The Effects of Commercials on Children’s Perceptions of Gender Appropriate Toy Use
Abstract
Exposure to commercials contributes significantly to the growth of every human and also acts as a constant influence on human ways. The study review an exercise on children’s perceptions of gender appropriate use of toy by evaluating with Sixty-two first and second grade students comprising of 28 boys and 34 girls. Both gender (Boy and Girl) were exposed to three commercial videotapes so as to determine which of the conditions (traditional, non-traditional and control condition) participants performed well. The traditional condition is known as all boys, the non-traditional condition is regarded as all girls while control condition is regarded as both boys and girls playing with a toy. It was reported that the toys that were manipulated were strongly for boys than girls.
Introduction
Report shows that children’s exposure to commercials has been increased to 40,000 ads per year on television, internet, in magazines and in schools. The nature, content and lessons being taught and shared on the advertisement watched by children has been constantly increased. Till date, changes have not occurred over time on the adverts which portray both boys and girls in stereotyped roles in commercials for children. Gender roles are being reinforced by several media messages, while few researchers have explored the portrayal of non-traditional gender roles.
Aims of the study:
Examining children’s exposure to gender-stereotyped toy commercials;
Manipulation of gender in children’s toy advertisements to measure the effects this manipulation may have on participants’ behaviors and toy preferences.
Mass Communication Theory
Over the years, mass communication has been focusing on attempts to understand the influence of television content. Theories were propounded which have been helpful in the course of understanding how the media act as socializing agents and how it influences the construction and perpetuation of gender constructs. The two theories work together with each other, known as: Cultivation theory and Social learning theory.
Cultivation Theory:
According to cultivation analysis, experiencing an imagination through the feelings or actions of another person can bring about a form of learning over and over again especially among heavy viewers of television such as children. Study shows that those expend more time ‘living’ in the world of television are more exposed to view the ‘real world’ in terms of values, portrayals, images and ideologies that appear through the lens of television which invariably means heavy television viewers are at the advantage of articulating their observation and values similar to those symbolized on television than light television viewers are.
Adults adopt television world view than children that are predisposed, mostly as it relates to the social construction of gender and gender roles.
In the case of social learning theory, both direct experience and experience of feelings or actions of another person can bring about a form of learning through observation of a variety models.
Study shows that individuals gain knowledge of a great deal about the world outside of their immediate setting through what they observe and listen to, particularly through television exposure. Social learning theory is based on the assumption that people study attitudes by observing the punishments and rewards of others.
Accordingly, the rewarded attitudes are expected to be studied and appealed to than the attitudes that are punished or unrewarded.
Facts have been proven on the effect filmed models can be compare to real life models in bringing out and broadcasting social conduct. Most of the models children come across during their childhood are seen on television. This enables television to be recognized as one of the most important coaches of gendered conducts.
Depictions of Gender in Children’s Television Commercials
Over the past few decades, commercials have been examined for roles played by male and female characters and conducts, activities, language and production features related to these illustrations. Study carried out in the early period appraising gender that is more at the advantage in television commercials directed toward children are boys. Nevertheless, study in the late 1990’s indicated that the distribution of girls and boys was much more reasonable; nearly one-half of the sample characters were boys (49%) and the other one-half were girls (51%). This distribution of girls and boys may increase over time, but focus regards how gender is portrayed within commercials directed toward children.
Stereotype roles are often portrayed on commercial among boys and girls. Imagine a commercial portraying girls engaging in shopping, while boys are portrayed as stealing or fighting which means only boys performs antisocial and aggressive behaviors than girls which seems to be more visible on commercials. It was reviewed that girls commercials have more fades and dissolves, smoother transitions, a great deal of talking, and softer background music played compared to boys commercial which are more likely to contain highly active toys, less talking and louder noise and music. Voiceovers were used in a research to compete with the orientation of the target for the toy such in a way that boy-oriented commercials featured a male voiceover and girl oriented commercials featured a female voiceover. All of these factors are likely to provide as indication of suitable gendered conduct and toy selection.
Effects of Televised Gender Portrayals
Research was carried out on the children’s programs and advertisement which indicates children’s perception on gender role stereotypes and also applies gendered characteristics. It was examined that boy’s toys such as toy guns were more violent than girls’ toys such as teddy bears. Violence is nothing new in these types of toys, often encourages aggressive plays, discourages open-ended play and doesn’t foster positive character traits typically associated with girls such as compassion and cooperation.
In addition, heavy exposure to television content such as watching wrestling in the ring celebrates and promotes ruthlessness of prison yard brawls and also encourages no-holds barred violence that children could exercise with friends at schools or anywhere behind their parents.
All of these bring about gendered stereotyped attitudes.
Suggestions were made during a research that children are aware of the gendered portrayals in commercials and thus have studied the gender appropriateness of toys through modeled conduct, which may affect their toy preferences and the nature of their play. The recurrent exposure to these images contributes to the development of children’s conceptions of gender and their expected roles as men and women.
Researcher explored gender stereotyped and reverse gender stereotyped commercials by coding their success and homemaking in a competition. The competition between men and women was based on what they look forward to in 10 years time. The result of the competition revealed the subject of success of women who observed the reverse gender stereotyped was much compared to the subject of success of women who observed the stereotypical depictions was recorded a smaller number of success in their competition than men who had been exposed to similar circumstance.
The research revealed a collective and mass media priming effect of satisfactory conduct towards their future ambitions in life. This implies that reverse gender stereotypical interpretation have a strong effect on the success script development for women and express an interaction between media portrayals and self-concept, especially gender roles and gendered behaviors.
It was revealed by some researchers about children perceptions of gender role can be influenced by non-traditional images. The traditional and non-traditional commercials were examined among boys and girls after observing counter stereotypical portrayals. The traditional commercials comprised of illustrations that has to do with non-career women activities such as mothers, house-wives or women performing domestic activities such as sewing while non-traditional commercials comprised of activities of career women such as female engineers, designers, female physicians and female professional athletes. After observing the non-traditional commercials, result revealed that both boys and girls have less traditional attitudes about women which imply the effects were stronger for girls than boys.
In particular, most children were exposed to commercials on television where pictures of girls digitally substitute those of boys in toy play which suggest that girls can play with the similar toys boys plays with.
Hypotheses were derived as the impact the operated pictures would have on whether or not children perceived specific toys to be for boys only, for girls only or for the both boys and girls.
H1: Effects will vary by condition.
(a) Participants in the traditional condition would be more likely than participants in the non-traditional condition to report that target toys are for boys.
(b) Participants in the non-traditional condition would be more likely than participants in the traditional condition to report that the toys are for both boys and girls.
H2: Girls and boys would respond differently in the non-traditional condition.
(a) Girls would be more likely than boys to report that the target toys are for both boys and girls.
H3: Previous experience with toys or commercials would have an effect.
(a) Participants who have had previous experience with target toys or viewed the commercials previously are less likely than participants who have not had previous experience with the target toys to report toys in the non-traditional condition to be appropriate for both boys and girls.
Methodology
62 participants comprising of first and second grade elements school students from an upper-middle class suburb of a large mid-western city were randomly assigned to one or two experimental conditions or the control condition.
Stimulus Commercials
Six commercials were selected for the use of this study during forty hours of children’s programming that was recorded from network and cable stations on weekdays and weekends.
These commercials are stated as follows:
Two toy commercials which are Harry Potter Legos (HPL) and Playmobil Airport Set (PAS)
Two non-toy commercials which are Chuckie Cheese restaurants and Lucky Charms cereal
Two public service announcements for the Center for Disease Control’s ‘Verb’ campaign and National PTA, all of these are with equal gender depictions and also selected to provide a context of regular television viewing of non-program content and to limit suggestion of gender roles through other means. This makes it four commercials and two public service announcements observed on each tape.
Due to the nature of the study which is the children’s play, only commercials that involved toys were manipulated which are HPL and PAS. Non-traditional commercials were created by placing girls’ faces over the boys’ faces in the two toy commercials. Skilled workers who work with an agency that majorly specializes in advertisement and commercials edited the commercials to ascertain the quality of the final outcome. Girls’ faces that were chosen had feminine traits and long hair. From the beginning till the end of the commercials, close frame shots of the children’s faces were used to bring about gender sensitivity. Girls’ faces that were static and also refused to change their emotional expression or does not correlate with the bodies on which they were placed brought a limitation. On the other hand, editing was digitally exercised on a very good framework which enabled fluid motion and the girls’ faces closely correlate the size of the original faces of the boys.
Procedures
A set of commercials with a mixture of sex group of 10 children per group was observed by the participants. The study was related to television commercials and toys. Each group of participants was assigned to observe either traditional toy commercials, non-traditional toy commercials or the no-toy control conditions.
A 3-mins tape was aired by pairing each participant with a female research assistant to respond to questions individually. Thereafter, questions were thrown at the participants in the traditional and non-traditional circumstances if they had ever seen any of the played commercials on the tape before and if they had ever played with any of the toys on the tape.
3 x 5 cards were placed in front of the participant in order to perform a toy sort. The first card that was given displayed a picture of a boy with the word scribbled boldly on the card as ‘BOY’, the second card that was given also displayed a picture of a girl with the word scribbled boldly on it as “GIRL’ while the third card displayed a picture of a boy and girl with the word scribbled on it as ‘BOTH BOYS AND GIRLS’.
A child was given a card with a picture of a toy on it and asked the child: ‘Is this toy X for boys, for girls or for both boys and girls? Also asked the child to place the card next to the picture the child think it matches. The researcher pointed to each category card, boys, girls, both boys and girls, as she read it to the child. The child got the whole exercise right. The six toys that were examined comprised of Harry Potter Legos, Playmobil Airport Set, and two toys similar to the toys displayed on the tapes-generic wooden blocks and a generic wooden train set. All these were carried out with the aim of observing the likely transfer of gender favorite play to similar toys.
A doll and a dump truck that were examined are two traditionally gender marked toys. They were used to provide a sign of gender placeholders.
RESULTS
Traditional Versus Nontraditional Conditions
A chi-square analysis was made use of in sorting task for PAS which indicated a considerably difference by condition while HPL indicated no reasonably difference. Results gotten supports Hypothesis 1: Children in the nontraditional condition reported more often than those in the traditional condition that the toys were for both boys and girls.
17.7% of the children of Harry Potter Legos recorded that the toy was for both boys and girls, whereas 36.9% more of the children reported that Playmobil Airport Set was for both boys and girls.
Gender Comparisons
Hypothesis 2, which states that girls would be more likely than boys to report that the target toys are for both boys and girls was not supported due to the result gotten. Results revealed the contrary that more boys than girls reported that the toys were for both boys and girls in the nontraditional condition. Findings imply that hypothesis 2 was not supported due to the fact that boys in the non-traditional condition were more likely to report that one of the target toys, PAS, is for both boys and girls.
Previous Experience
Previous experience with toys or commercials would have an effect.
(a) Participants who have had previous experience with target toys or viewed the commercials previously are less likely than participants who have not had previous experience with the target toys to report toys in the non-traditional condition to be appropriate for both boys and girls.
Hypothesis 3 which stated that previous experience with toys or commercials would have an effect was supported by the findings.
Participant reported a play with HPL and PAS was critically examined which gave no significant differences for the previous experience with HPL in the non-tradition condition.
On the other hand, the two girls who described previous play with PAS in the non-tradition condition, 100% described that the toy is for both boys and girls, while 75% of the 18 children with no previous play experience in the nontraditional condition reported that the toy is for both boys and girls, which is a significant difference. As a result, previous toy use had great effect perceptions of gender suitability for one target toy, Playmobil Airport Set.
Discussion
Results of this study clarified that the gender of the model in commercials has an impact on the perceptions of children on who should play with a particular type of toy. Most children who observed non-traditional commercials have the tendency to point out the type of toys meant for both gender rather than a single sex. This is related to boys that suggest paying more focus on the models presented.
Present study reveals that children were more open to pictures that challenge the television view of gender. Its relevancy is basically behind an even brief exposure to non-traditional pictures both boys and girls were tending to describe for both boys and girls the toy advertised as opposed to only for boys.
These results can be compared with other studies that revealed exposing participants, adults and children, to counter-stereotypical portrayals which brought about reduction in traditional gender role attitudes. If a brief experience of non-traditional pictures enables a change in the perceptions of children, visualizing what extended exposure could perform on children’s beliefs and their conducts.
In the situation of non-tradition, more boys than girls pointed out the toys that are meant for both boys and girls. These results are the opposite of a study in which boys are held more traditional behavior after observing nontraditional portrayals of women.
The findings of the study can also be compared with the significance among boys of appropriate gendered play. This study also opined how often boys are punished for involving in cross-gender play, while girls are rarely disciplined and possibly will be rewarded for cross-gendered play.
Limitations
The following limitations were observed which are stated as follows:
Firstly, the quality of editing the commercials was observed as a drawback. For instance, format of Harry Potter commercial used a speedy pace action with the toy itself and the characters were only available within the background of the commercials.
Also, the format of the Playmobil commercial was observed as a drawback which involved close-ups of the faces of the characters and cutting of action with the toys without the existence of the child characters.
Second limitation is known as the amount of time permitted with each group of participants. Minutes allowed for viewing of the commercial tape and the subsequent questions and the toy sort. Assuming there was quality period; sibling, teacher, perceived parental and friend approval or disapproval of cross gender play could have been observed.
Researchers in time to come may want to carry out a study on the participants’ degree of gender-typing earlier to exposure to advertising content and also encouraging the use of open-ended questions to comprehend the reason behind children’s selection of toys.
Conclusion
The study was concluded by advertisement focused on children is likely to perform gender roles through gender typed play. The author explored the implications of commercials that implies non-traditional play and recommended that these pictures should have an impact on children’s description of gender appropriateness for toys in the short term, especially for boys.
Though, a small number of commercials currently focused on children feature non-traditional play, this led the study to recommend these types of illustration which may lead to an increase in approval of non-traditional play among future generations and encourage neutrality gender orientation which was suggested by a researcher may be more sensitive at an advantage for the children.
Therefore, advertisement has the a strong prospect in educating the children about the roles of gender and agencies in charge of advertising should reflect on the profound effect the advertising agencies may have on the growth of children’s perceptions about gender.