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The Lion, the Witch, or the Schoolkid? A Study on How Children Understand Moral Lessons in Different Fantasy Stories
by Katherine A. Bos
Faculty Advisor: Jacqueline Woolley, PhD, Graduate Student Mentor: Jenny Nissel
Many children’s books and media use fantasy with the intention of entertaining and teaching children moral lessons. Recent findings question whether fantastical elements facilitate or disrupt moral lessons; in several studies, children who were shown stories containing anthropomorphic animals were less likely to correctly interpret the moral lesson. While this field is promising, research has largely overlooked the possibility that children are able to understand moral lessons with human characters but impossible scenarios. The aim of this study is to compare moral understanding of children when exposed to children’s books containing human characters and realistic settings, anthropomorphic characters and realistic settings, or human characters and impossible settings. Children ages 5-6 (N = 41) were read one of three picture books categorized as realistic, animal fantasy, or impossible fantasy and assessed for their moral comprehension. Findings trend towards children having significantly lower moral comprehension when reading anthropomorphic animal stories than either impossible or realistic. This seems to indicate children are impacted by the subject of fictional stories, as non-human characters cannot be understood as relatable and therefore cannot become models for moral behavior.