Children's and adults’ responses to fairy tales

Despite reports that fairy tales reflect social attitudes and play a role in children's socialization, little evidence has been gathered directly from children. The present study investigates a sample of North American children's (n = 40) and adults’ (n = 30) familiarity with, and liking for, fairy tales. Present data support the hypothesis that liking for this genre is related to childhood exposure to it and to children's involvement in imaginal activities. In addition, factors expected to influence liking for a given tale (i.e. emotion attribution; consistency of listener's and protagonist's gender; conformity of protagonist's gender to gender stereotype) were examined in response to a traditional narrative presented in either a female‐ or male‐protagonist version. Present findings indicate that the emotions attributed to the story were similar across child and adult respondents, and similarly affected one's liking for the tale. It was found that females liked the tale more than did males across both protagonist versions.. Contrary to expectations, neither gender‐consistency (same gender for listener and protagonist) nor gender stereotype‐consistency (female or male hero) significantly affected one's own liking of the tale. However, stereotype consistency did affect children's predictions of how much other persons would like the tale: the female‐hero was predicted to be liked more by females (less by males). Children's predictions across both versions suggest that gender‐based heuristics operate more when predicting to others’ preferences than in affecting their own. Present findings are discussed in light of some critical viewpoints presented regarding fairy tale literature, and should contribute to the limited empirical research available on this topic.