The Influence Of Moral Image And Moral Behavior Of Cartoon Characters On 3-5-year-old Childrens Selective Trust

Selective Trust is a process in which young children make trust judgments according to certain when they are confronted with multiple information providers.Research shows that children’s selective trust is influenced by the information provider’s appearance,personality,behavior characteristics and other factors.The same is true when the information provider is a non-real person,such as an animation,a cartoon,Previous studies have found that 3-to 6-year-old children trust the cartoon character unconditionally,that is,whether the cartoon character’s image is good or bad and the cartoon character’s behavior is good or bad does not affect the child’s imitation of its behavior.In Selective Trust,previous studies have found that preschoolers have a preference for information providers with positive traits such as friendliness,kindness,and competence.However,when the information provider makes moral behavior inconsistent with its inherent image,will young children’s selective trust preference be different? Previous studies have not explored this issue.The purpose of this study is to examine the preference of 3-to 5-year-old children for the moral image and moral behavior of cartoon characters in the natural and social fields,and to explore the conflict between the moral behavior of cartoon characters and their moral image,whether young children’s trust choice preference will change.The first study explored the effect of moral images of cartoon characters on children’s Selective Trust.99 subjects in the natural field and 95 subjects in the social field were tested with the experimental design of 2(task field: nature,society)× 3(age: 3,4,5years)× 2-SEX-sex: male,female),the dependent variable was the number of times the children chose between the two tasks.The second study explored the effect of moral behavior of cartoon characters on children’s Selective Trust.The design of the experiment was the same as study 1,but the characteristics of the information provider were friendly and unfriendly.The third study explored the children’s selective trust when the cartoon characters moral image and moral behavior conflict.Subjects 186,the design of the experiment was the same as study 1,but the independent variable excluded sex,the characteristics of the information provider were positive-unfriendly,negative-friendly.The findings are as follows:(1)In the natural and social domains,boys and girls as young as 3-5 years old had significantly higher trust in the positive animated characters than the negative animated characters in the inquiry and approval tasks.(2)In the natural and social domains,boys and girls as young as 3-5 years old had significantly higher trust in the friendly animated characters than the unfriendly ones in the inquiry and approval tasks.(3)4-5-year-old and 3-year-old children’s trust in negative-friendly behavior was significantly higher than that in positive-unfriendly behavior in social field,but the probability of 3-year-old children’s trust in natural field was random.Conclusion:(1)3-5-year-old children in the natural field and the social field choose the positive image,friendly behavior of the animated character to trust;(2)In the conflict between moral image and moral behavior,4-5-year-old children choose to trust the opposite-friendly cartoon characters,but 3-year-old children only do this kind of trust choice in the social field.The results showed that positive preference,friendly behavior preference,and behavior preference when image and behavior appeared simultaneously.