The Representation of Altruism and Egoism in Children’s Books

Although the social implications of children’s media have been a central public concern for millennia, there has been no systematic attempt to quantify the representation of other- versus self-serving values in children’s literature. A coding scheme based on the model of intuitive motivations and exemplars was applied to examine the representation of altruistic and egoistic motivations in popular children’s books. Echoing previous findings on the content of popular children’s songs and television programming, the current findings suggest that egoistic motivations were represented significantly more often than altruistic motivations. Examining differences by the target age of books revealed that altruistic motivations were more prominent in books targeted at younger children, whereas egoistic motivations became more prominent in content for older children. The fact that these findings replicated across several children’s media denotes the societal importance of these motivations and their representation. These findings are discussed in terms of their social import and note the particular need for future investigations into the exemplification of egoistic motivations, which have been overlooked in most previous content analyses of children’s media.