Movies' Effect on Children's Attitudes towards Animals: The Example of The Boss Baby

Abstract

Most of the scientific studies about movies' effects on children focus on the relationship between violence in movies and children's violent behaviors. The second most popular area is movies’ effects on developing positive attitudes. However, there are few studies on movies' effects on developing negative attitudes, which is so important. This study was conducted with the purpose of examining the effect of the television series The Boss Baby on children's (kindergarten through fourth graders) attitudes towards cats. The study's sample was comprised of 1398 children who continued formal education in five different public schools in Istanbul. The study relied on an experimental design with a pretest-posttest-retention test control group. The study involved three different groups: Experiment-I, Experiment-II, and the Control Group. The Experiment-I group watched The Boss Baby as a combined version (4 episodes together), the Experiment-II group watched The Boss Baby as a series (one episode every week), and the Control Group didn't watch the movie. In the study, the "Attitude Scale towards Cats" developed by the researcher was used to evaluate children's attitudes towards cats. An ANOVA was implemented to discover if there were a significant difference in the pre-test, post-test, and retention test scores between groups. An independent samples t-test was carried out in order to assess the difference between the sexes. The results suggest that there is no significant difference between groups when it comes to developing negative attitudes. Moreover, being a kindergartener, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th grader doesn't change the results. The only significant difference is between the girls and boys who were in the Experiment-II group. The girls who watched The Boss Baby had more negative attitudes than boys. However, this effect was temporary.