This seems both surprising and obvious at the same time.
A new study has found that kids first pick up “language biases” from even the most vanilla cartoons, because it’s very common for VILLAINS to speak in “non-standard and foreign accents.”
The study analyzed more than 100 popular children’s movies and TV shows, and revealed the negative impact of ACCENTS being used, disproportionately, to indicate evil characters. Or ones with bad traits.
In one of the experiments, they played video clips of the same actor using different accents and asked the participants which voice they preferred for a hero and for a villain. Both the kids AND their parents were more likely to choose foreign accents for the bad guy.
One of the authors says, “We were the first to actually see if kids internalize this. These biases first appear at the age of three in the studies that we’ve done, and they grow stronger with age.”
She says this matters, because associating different accents with negative stereotypes, like being less trustworthy or less intelligent, can negatively impact people’s lives.
(CBC / Child Development)
