Discussion In the current study, we sought to analyze the portrayal of gender stereotypical behaviors in Disney films. We developed this study based on previous findings from Kirsch and Murnen (2015), Junn (1997), and Leaper et al. (2002) and because of the potential implications of Disney’s portrayal of gender stereotypes in their films. We developed two hypotheses to test this. First, we hypothesized that male characters would exhibit masculine stereotypical behaviors, such as giving orders and being aggressive, more often than feminine stereotypical behaviors and women would display feminine stereotypical behaviors, such as performing domestic duties and primping, more often than masculine stereotypical behaviors in Disney movies. Second,
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First, our study contained four separate researchers and although all of us coded the movie Beauty and the Beast, for the remaining four movies we all only coded one and shared our results. Therefore, although our reliability for all four of our behaviors was above the threshold of 80%, our result may also be due to the slight difference or bias that each researcher may have had while watching the movie. Third, although theoretically our operational definitions were thorough enough to encompass all possible character behaviors in the movies, one limitation may be if a behavior that we did not think of, did in fact occur and it was more of a judgment call on the part of the researcher to include the behavior or not. Therefore, one researcher may have included a behavior that another researcher would not have. Fourth, we were conducting an event based observational study and thus we were recording the amount of times a specific behavior was exhibited. However, for many instances, especially fighting scenes, they went on for a prolonged period of time, which could not simply be represented by one notation of the behavior. We attempted to control for this by giving a tally per five seconds of these behaviors, but our results still may slightly be …show more content…
If we were going to conduct a similar study, then ideally we would increase our number of movies watched, thus increasing our sample size and limiting the potential of our results being due to chance. Additionally, in future studies, researchers could break away from Disney movies and begin to analyze other forms of media outlets such as DreamWorks, Nickelodeon, and Pixar. Then researchers can evaluate whether similar gender stereotypes are present in other media outlets as has been found in Disney media. We did not find these results, but Junn (1997) did. Next, further research can expand beyond television and movies into other popularized media forms that may be influential on children, such as advertising on the internet, commercials between shows, video games, etc. Many factors may have limited our results and there are numerous other studies that can be conducted stemming from this study in order to support or not support our findings or that of previous studies.
References
Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S. A. (1963). Imitation of film-mediated aggressive models. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 66(1),
First, our study contained four separate researchers and although all of us coded the movie Beauty and the Beast, for the remaining four movies we all only coded one and shared our results. Therefore, although our reliability for all four of our behaviors was above the threshold of 80%, our result may also be due to the slight difference or bias that each researcher may have had while watching the movie. Third, although theoretically our operational definitions were thorough enough to encompass all possible character behaviors in the movies, one limitation may be if a behavior that we did not think of, did in fact occur and it was more of a judgment call on the part of the researcher to include the behavior or not. Therefore, one researcher may have included a behavior that another researcher would not have. Fourth, we were conducting an event based observational study and thus we were recording the amount of times a specific behavior was exhibited. However, for many instances, especially fighting scenes, they went on for a prolonged period of time, which could not simply be represented by one notation of the behavior. We attempted to control for this by giving a tally per five seconds of these behaviors, but our results still may slightly be …show more content…
If we were going to conduct a similar study, then ideally we would increase our number of movies watched, thus increasing our sample size and limiting the potential of our results being due to chance. Additionally, in future studies, researchers could break away from Disney movies and begin to analyze other forms of media outlets such as DreamWorks, Nickelodeon, and Pixar. Then researchers can evaluate whether similar gender stereotypes are present in other media outlets as has been found in Disney media. We did not find these results, but Junn (1997) did. Next, further research can expand beyond television and movies into other popularized media forms that may be influential on children, such as advertising on the internet, commercials between shows, video games, etc. Many factors may have limited our results and there are numerous other studies that can be conducted stemming from this study in order to support or not support our findings or that of previous studies.
References
Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S. A. (1963). Imitation of film-mediated aggressive models. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 66(1),