Altruistic and Egoistic Motivations of Male and Female Characters in Common Sense Media Television Programming for Children

Guided by previous work investigating media as a socializing agent for individuals’ expectations about gender roles in society and the model of intuitive motivation and exemplars, the present study investigated the extent to which television programing recommended as socially educational by Common Sense Media depicts male and female characters with certain altruistic (i.e., other-focused) and egoistic (i.e., self-focused) motivations for behavior. Specifically, the current study content analyzed 147 children’s television episodes to assess whether main characters were (a) male or female and (b) primarily motivated by one of 11 altruistic or egoistic motivations. Results revealed that (1) main male characters exemplified authority, security, and hedonism most often, whereas main female characters exemplified care, autonomy, and relatedness most often, (2) programming recommended for boys featured more portrayals of the authority and security motivations, whereas programming recommended for girls featured comparatively more portrayals of care, fairness, autonomy, and relatedness, and (3) main characters across socially-educational television programs were more likely to be women/girls than men/boys. Results are discussed in terms of their potential for gendered motivations emphasized in popular entertainment media to shed light on (a) how motivations for different genders are valued by content curators and (b) what motivations male or female audiences of this content would be expected to value after viewing.