Children’s cartoons may seem to be just Saturday morning fun for Generations Alpha and Z, but the emotions showcased in gender representation in media targeted toward boys and girls is an important factor in the values formation of the men and women of tomorrow.

Eric Setten and Steven Chen, both young fathers and marketing professors at Cal State Fullerton’s College of Business and Economics, resolved to better understand the emotional tone of children’s media by target gender.

Their study “Playing with emotions: Text analysis of emotional tones in gender-casted Children’s media,” forthcoming in the Journal of Business Research, provides an accessible and thorough look at the emotions promoted in gender-directed media, and how this is changing over time.

Thanks to a partnership between the CSU Libraries Network and scholarly journal giant Elsevier, the study has free access, enabling public access and discussion.  

Positive and Negative Emotions, Changing By Gender and Generation

The researchers found that media focused on girls tends to be more positive – but the positivity of girls’ programming is becoming less acute over the years.

“Shows that are targeting girls such as ‘My Little Pony’ and ‘The Littlest Pet Shop’ have a lot more positive emotions shown, such as relationships and friendships, and in general terms like ‘this is good’ and ‘oh, great,’” says Setten, the lead author.

“On the boys’ side of things, you see much more negative emotions, particularly anger. That correlates with a lot of violence seen in boys’ shows. A lot of angry words are used, such as ‘hate,’ ‘kill,’ ‘enemy’ and ‘violence.’”

Though this imbalance is strong and pervasive, it is changing over time.

When examining programming from 1983 to 2003 – when millennials were growing up – compared to newer media over the past decade, Setten and Chen found that media directed at boys has gotten a lot more positive, while media focused on girls has turned more negative, even introducing the violence seen in programs appealing to boys in some cases to keep excitement and engagement in today’s fast-paced technological times.

“We took a set of franchises and looked at older and newer versions and compared them. We found the older versions had more negative boys programs and more positive girls shows, but over time, it has started to converge,” explains Setten. “We believe this is a reaction to some of the criticism of gender targeting of children’s toys and the accompanying media.”

Though primarily focused on U.S. programming, Setten and Chen did provide some globality to their research by examining “Sailor Moon,” a girls-focused Japanese manga TV series.

“Most of the shows we looked at are available for streaming in the United States, but it is a lot of the same shows being consumed globally. Kids watch ‘Ninja Turtles’ and ‘Transformers’ all over the world,” says Setten.

Using LIWC – the Linguistic Inquiry Word Count, Setten and Chen could look up key words to assess negative emotions such as “anger”, “anxiety” and “sadness.”

Girls’ shows did have more sadness, but anger was so pervasive in boys’ media that it cancelled out the negativity of the prevalence of sadness in girls’ media.

Perhaps surprisingly, there was not an increase in anxiety as an emotion depicted in older vs. newer media, despite the rise in anxiety disorders in today’s younger generations.

A Ph.D. Project Sets the Stage for Cal State Fullerton Research

“This study goes back about eight years to my first-year Ph.D. program paper, when I was looking at food in children’s programing,” says Setten, who earned his doctorate at the University of Oregon. “I have two daughters and noticed that there was very different food depicted in the programs they watch compared to what I saw as a kid.”

Sweet foods came up more than eight times as frequently in girls’ shows compared to boys’ programming.

Setten’s curiosity introduced him to automated text analysis, which opens up a world of research possibilities for analyzing and understanding media.

When Setten joined the Cal State Fullerton faculty in 2020, Steven Chen’s focus on pop culture provided a perfect connection for further exploration.

“This is a space both of us wanted to play with, inspired by the findings of my first project,” says Setten. “If there were differences in foods, perhaps there were gender differences in emotional tones.”

“One day, Eric and I were brainstorming on how we might collaborate on research, recalls Chen. “I had published several articles on gendered consumption. So we married these two domains together, and the project was born! Additionally, both Eric and I have young children who watch cartoons, so on a “dad-level,” we asked: What are our kids really learning about gender when watching these cartoons?”

Is Children’s Media Getting Better or Worse?

So is the convergence between boys and girls media a positive trend?

Setten says it’s hard to determine.

“Less positivity in the girls’ shows could be a good thing if it is encouraging girls to not always put on an artificially happy face. But we’re also seeing more violence seep in to the girls’ shows to keep them more interesting and engaging. But the increase in positive emotions in boys’ shows is definitely positive,” observes Setten.

Setten hopes the research will call attention to the differences in media targeting boys and girls and how they are socialized to think about emotions and expressions in very different ways.

“Girls in general are taught to put on a happy face, maybe masking some emotions,” says Setten. “For boys, the only appropriate negative emotion they are told they can show is anger. So anxiety or sadness can become anger.”

“This is an often-overlooked area of how children are socialized. It’s important to pay attention to as we seek to understand the trends in our society.”

For More on Marketing Research

Eric Setten and Steven Chen are just two of the prolific marketing researchers at Cal State Fullerton.

Focused on trends in pop culture, advertising, social media and much more, Cal State Fullerton marketing research offers interdisciplinary understandings of the dynamic, diverse and ever-changing world we live in.

For more on CSUF marketing research and the undergraduate and graduate academic programs in this exciting field, read more of our articles on marketing.