Heroes and Villains: Moral Judgments of Characters Loss

For 10-year-olds and a caregiver living in the United States.

This study will take place on a video call, live with a researcher! Clicking on the “Schedule a time to participate” button will send you to an online calendar where you can select a date and time that works for you.
The parent will complete a survey about their family demographics. They will also answer similar questions about the characters children will see before the interview. This survey might take 5 minutes. Children will answer questions on what they know about heroes (e.g., Aladdin, Snow White) and villains (e.g., Captain Hook, Ursula), and what they think other characters think about heroes' and villains' deaths (e.g., how Peter Pan feels now that Captain Hook is dead). All characters are from Disney animated films, and we will not show any death scenes. It is okay if your child does not know all of the characters we might talk about.

In this study, we are interested in how children think about characters' feelings around death. We ask children and parents to tell us how they think different characters from animated films might feel when someone dies. People’s reactions to a death can depend on how close they are to the character that died and what they think about that character's behavior, for example, whether it was a good or bad person. We are investigating how children reason about these situations and whether they think characters who are closer to the person would feel sadder.

30 minutes

Children must be in our age range and from the United States to participate. Families that participate in the study will receive a $10 Amazon.com e-gift card for their participation in the study. Families that decide to end the interview early for any reason still get compensated. Your family will receive the compensation within two business days. Only one eGift card per child/parent.