Sticks and Stones Can Break My Bones, But Ethnophaulisms Can Alter the Portrayal of Immigrants to Children

Abstract

An archival study examined the portrayal of ethnic immigrants to children as a function of the prevailing cognitive representation of those ethnic immigrant groups in ethnophaulisms. The complexity in ethnophaulisms (and, to a lesser degree, the valence in ethnophaulisms) predicted the portrayal of ethnic immigrant groups. Overall, ethnic immigrant groups characterized in terms of ethnophaulisms of low complexity were less frequently present in children's literature, children from these ethnic groups were described more in terms of physical appearance than in terms of personal traits, fictional child characters from those ethnic groups were portrayed with smaller heads and with lower verbal complexity, and the folksongs attributed to these groups had a more negative affective tone. The implications of these results for approaches to intergroup relations are considered.

About face: Facial prominence of George W. Bush in political cartoons as a function of war

“…The interpretation of Dodd et al (1989) is essentially the same hypothesis developed earlier by Eagly & Steffen (1984) to explain gender stereotypes: Women tend to be seen as more communal because women are more likely to hold positions of low dominance; men tend to be seen as more agentic because men are more likely to hold positions of high dominance. This possibility is logically consistent with research findings indicating that lower facial prominence is observed for targets in positions of low dominance (e.g., Archer et al, 1983;Mullen, 2004;Zuckerman, 1986;Zuckerman & Kieffer, 1994). Moreover, this is the only interpretation proposed to date that is also consistent with the results of the present study.…”

“…For example, just as low facial prominence is associated with diminished intelligence (Archer et al, 1983;Schwartz & Kurz, 1989), low verbal complexity is also associated with diminished intelligence (Kaldegg, 1950;Tillman, 1969). Mullen (2004) recently showed that ethnic immigrant characters in children's books were derogated through portrayals of both low facial prominence and low verbal complexity. This suggests that cartoonists' efforts to enhance or derogate the target would be observed in changes in the verbal complexity of the target as a function of the onset of war.…”

“…The Flesch Readability Index (Flesch, 1948;Twedt, 1951) was calculated by Microsoft Word using the following formula: 206.835 − (1.015 − (average number of words per sentence)) − (84.6 × average number of syllables per word). In order to scale this indicator in the direction of higher complexity, the Flesch Readability Index was subtracted from 100, so that higher scores indicated high verbal complexity (see Mullen, 2004). Chi-squared analyses revealed no significant differences in the number of cartoons that portrayed Bush talking for the war in Afghanistan compared to the war in Iraq, χ 2 (1) = 1.12, p = .29, or before the onset of war and after the onset of war, χ 2 (1) = 2.11, p = .15.…”

“…The media of visual portrayal in which facial prominence has been documented have included newspaper and magazine photographs (Archer et al, 1983, Studies 1 and 2; Dodd et al, 1989;Nigro et al, 1988;Sparks & Fehlner, 1986;Zuckerman, 1986, Study 1;Zuckerman & Kieffer, 1994, Studies 1 and 2), prime-time television programming (Copeland, 1989), artistic portraiture (Archer et al, 1983, Study 3;Zuckerman & Kieffer, 1994, Study 3), illustrations in children's books (Mullen, 2004), amateur drawings (Archer et al, 1983, Study 4;Zuckerman, 1986, Study 3), experimental stimulus videotapes (Levesque & Lowe, 1999), experimental stimulus photographs (Schwartz, & Kurz, 1989), websites for Fortune 500 companies (King, 2003), and postage stamps (Zuckerman & Kieffer, 1994, Study 4).…”

Estudios científicos sobre literatura infantil y su didáctica: revisión bibliográfica (2000- 2014)

“…Su trabajo demuestra que el discurso narrativo referido a personajes de raza blanca es utilizado para situar estos personajes en el centro y núcleo de la acción narrativa. Del mismo modo, Mullen (2004) describe casos de etnofaulismo en textos de LI en los que personajes de una etnia concreta son dibujados con cabezas pequeñas y con un discurso verbal muy simple. Esta investigación es una contribución a la mejora de las relaciones intergrupales entre niños.…”