Can Pro-diversity Television Program Influence a Change in...

American children, on average, spend more time watching television programs than they do engaging with adults, siblings, or attending school (Feldman, Coats, Spielman, 1996). This finding introduces the challenge for big networks to use television to positively guide children’s social learning while they are home from school. Studies have shown that even a brief exposure to television can produce positive effects on learning during childhood (Rice and Woodsmall, 1998), and television programming can also positively influence pro-social behaviors and gender-role concepts (Forge Phemister, 1987, Mares Woodward, 2001, O’Bryant Corder-Bolz, 1978 and Signorelli, 2001). Furthermore, many of the existing educational programs†¦show more content†¦The purpose of the current study is to explore the reasoning behind failed criteria, and to better determine how they may need to be adjusted. Although so many children’s educational programs attempt to influence at titudes relating to racial prejudice (Persson Musher-Eizenman, 2003), the amount of research that has been conducted to test the effectiveness of these efforts is extremely minimal. To date, only two known studies have successfully caused children to demonstrate positive changes in racial attitude as prompted by television programming. The first, Gorn et al. (1976) found that their Caucasian preschool-aged participants experienced a positive shift in attitudes towards race after watching Sesame Street. In one condition, participants watched an episode in which White children played with non-White children, and in another condition only children from ethnic minority groups played together. Most notably, participants who had watched either episode claimed they would rather play with the non-White children, whereas the participants in the control condition, who viewed an episode with only White children, almost unanimously claimed that they would rather play with White children (Gorn et al., 1976). In the second study that demonstrated television’s ability to influence children’s racial attitudes, Houser (1978) found that children aged 5-9 who viewed anti-prejudice mini episodes (10-15 minutes) recorded less prejudiced responses on