Echoes of Our Favourite Childhood Figures

Abstract

Since its founding, Disney has become the symbol of values such as joy, magic, entertainment, and family in our lives through loveable stories, characters, and unique experiences. Disney also has had a significant impact on youth culture with its ability to appeal to universal human experiences through its versatile character portfolio. Disney's recent tendency to reproduce their earlier success in modern adaptations (e.g., The Little Mermaid and Snow White coming in 2023) is the focus of this paper. It aims to examine the influence of Disney's representation of the mechanisms of our world on youth character development by comparing the responses given for the ‘classic’ and the ‘modern’ versions. For this reason, in addition to explicit measures (survey), an Implicit Associations Test (IAT) was used to discover those attitudes which would generally be hidden from explicit methods of analysis due to their subversive nature (e.g., deep affective content like nostalgia). The analysis revealed a significant correlation between IAT-measured implicit attitudes and explicit measures of attitudes and behaviour toward modern and classic (our target) categories. The results also indicate the significance of these scenes (especially the childhood ‘classic’ ones) as they can form strong bonds with the young audience, affecting their preferences, values, worldview, and, thus, their character development.

Back to the nature and travelling off the beaten path? – The explicit and implicit examination of ‘new’ destination choices and travel decisions in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic

“…The sample composition was presumably influenced by the requirements of the IAT (Qualtrics) and the online data collection method, having a predominantly young, female population with a university degree. It is worth noting that this finding is aligned with recent observations made in Hungary across different domains using IAT (Fuduric et al, 2022;Griszbacher et al, 2022a;2022b). Nonetheless, the effort can be considered as successful to reach a group of young travellers (Travel impact AVG X =4.24, measured on a 1-5 Likert scale), whose daily habits (i.e., travelling) were heavily influenced by the pandemic.…”

“…The study showcased the applicability of IAT as a non-invasive unconscious technique in addressing present-day tourism challenges, such as COVID-19 and leaning towards nature-based experiences (RQ1-2-3). Consistent with prior IAT research, the findings suggest that despite a weak correlation observed in this instance, implicit and explicit measures are closely aligned and congruent (i.e., indicating a natural preference HUN-RO), making this revolutionary combination more effective (reliable) to measure consumer attitudes and preferences (Fuduric et al, 2022;Griszbacher et al, 2022a;2022b). Consequently, these findings can provide a firm foundation for future discussions; however, it is essential to recognize the limitations of the current study.…”

“…The response times were measured of the participants in the highlighted blocks, from which their preferences could be determined by using the so-called D-score algorithm proposed by Greenwald et al (2003). It is based on the theory that if the image of nature and the pleasant category are strongly connected, the respondents should respond faster if they must give the same answer on these two terms, which position was randomly assigned (then reversed) at each case by Qualtrics to counterbalance any distortion effects may arising from a left/right position (Carpenter et al, 2019;Fuduric et al, 2022;Griszbacher et al, 2022a;2022b).…”