Human characters promote prosocial behaviors faster in young children

[LazyPooky]

Children that read books where human characters promote prosocial behaviors show the behaviors faster in real life compared to books where animal characters were used, according to a recent study.

I wonder if this is the case with TV shows too. If so, than LazyTown has done a great job.

source:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...wfJowkFQ%3D%3D

In conclusion, the present study revealed that books with prosocial themes have immediate effects in promoting children’s real-world prosocial behaviors as long as the story characters are humans or can be construed as humans. Further, our study adds to the growing body of research on how picture books can best support children’s learning. Our findings are consistent with past studies that show that children are more likely to transfer knowledge learned from realistic stories to the real world than from fantastic stories (Ganea et al., 2014; Richert et al., 2009; Richert & Smith, 2011; Walker et al., 2015). This is not to say that fantastical books are not useful for learning. Certainly, children may find such books enjoyable and entertaining, and thus hearing such types of stories can instill the love of literature in them. Further, engaging children’s imagination is important for their socio- cognitive development, and children clearly enjoy immersing themselves in hypothetical worlds early in development (Harris, 2000). However, the findings from our study and existing studies taken together suggest that for children at a very young age fantastical stories may not be as effective for teaching real- world knowledge or real- life social behaviors as realistic ones.

[UnLearnEd]

Re: Human characters promote prosocial behaviors faster in young children

A similarity between the test books and lazytown is that both promote thru positive messages. For example, we never see all Ziggy's teeth fall out. Trixie never goes to juvenile hall. Instead we see the desired social behaviors performed happily by Sportacus/Stephanie. The flaw in that science journal mentioned is you never get their methodology for choosing prosocial books. They use the word moral throughout but they never say where the morals come from. Short of a clear definition by the authors of what constitutes good morals, I must assume they are making it up.