Perceptions of female and male comic strip characters II: Favorability and identification are different dimensions

Abstract

Identification ratings of 20 daily newspaper comic strip characters replicated a prediction that male characters would elicit greater identification than female characters, even though previous research had reported the favorability of Adjective Generation Technique (AGT) descriptions for female characters to be equivalent to or greater than that for male characters depending upon primary or secondary familiarity. Significant interaction findings affirming greater same-sex identification by both male and female subjects occurred within a context of significantly greater same-sex and lesser cross-sex identifications on the part of male subjects.