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Abstract
Children are exposed to anthropomorphized animals in a variety of contexts. The literature that analyzes this phenomenon suggests that exposure to anthropomorphic media may strengthen children’s anthropocentric representation of animals. There is an as yet unexplored difference between anthropomorphized and realistic depictions of multiple animal species presented simultaneously in films. The anthropomorphized animals all behave like humans, so they are more behaviorally similar to one another than animals depicted realistically. We asked whether witnessing multiple species depicted anthropomorphically or realistically influences the way 5-year-old children perceive internal commonalities among animals. One group of children (n = 37) watched a cartoon presenting multiple species of anthropomorphized animals, the other group (n = 38) watched a nature documentary that also presented multiple species. Both groups extended a novel internal feature from an animal to a variety of items including diverse animal species. Children watching a cartoon made significantly stronger projections to non-human animals than children watching the documentary. Children’s projections to humans and inanimate objects did not differ between the groups and were uniformly low. One of the possible explanations of the results is in terms of children’s essentialist expectation that behavior is caused by internal properties.
Highlights
Acquiring accurate biological understanding is a challenging developmental process
The results showed that 5-year-old children exposed to fully anthropomorphic material were more likely to make unduly anthropomorphic projections to animals compared to children exposed to fully realistic content
We focused on 5-year-olds, because this is the age at which the effects of exposure to anthropomorphic content on inductive inferences has been documented (Waxman et al, 2014)
Summary
Acquiring accurate biological understanding is a challenging developmental process. It is a truism to say that experiences with the natural world facilitate the acquisition of biological knowledge. Is it always the case that more experience translates into faster development of mature understanding? Primary school children often fail to delineate the boundaries of the living domain, most notably by excluding inanimate living things, such as plants and. Opfer and Siegler (2004) show that children tend to include plants in the living domain once they learn that plants, like animals, can move toward goals, but they do not progress to the mature understanding, when informed that plants, like animals, grow and need water Films Affect Children’s Inferences fungi (Anggoro et al, 2008). Opfer and Siegler (2004) show that children tend to include plants in the living domain once they learn that plants, like animals, can move toward goals, but they do not progress to the mature understanding, when informed that plants, like animals, grow and need water
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