Children's books with humans have greater moral impact than animals, study finds | Hacker News Reader

Children's books with humans have greater moral impact than animals, study finds

theguardian.com

172 pointsgpresot60 comments

In animal intelligence studies, researchers have observed that species are more keen to learn from members of their own kind. There's a great chapter in Frans de Waal's "Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?"[0] which discusses the difference between wolves and dogs. Many people believe dogs are smarter than wolves because they are more keen to listen/observe humans. However when the tests are arranged so that wolves can learn from other wolves it becomes clear that wolves are far more intelligent. It's a matter of wolves not caring a bit about humans. de Waal goes on to discuss similar testing biases inherent in comparing chimpanzees and human children, with human children getting a one-up on chimps because the testing administrators are members of their own species.

If you're interested in diving into the motivation behind storytelling and how it effects us, I'd recommend reading The Storytelling Animal by Jonathan Gottschall[1]. It's one of the most approachable book on the subject.

[0] Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are by Frans de Waal: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/06/are-we-smart-e...

[1] The Storytelling Animal by Jonathan Gottschall: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/books/review/the-storytell...

We need neutral octopuses to be the judge.

But what will judge the octopi?

More octopodes

Dolphins.

I think that dolphins might be biased.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/science/dolphins-toss-sha...

This is the most reddit-like thread I've seen on HN.

Here are some advantages animal characters can have:

They provide enough psychological distance to allow dangerous situations or bad things to happen.

They allow stereotypes more easily without creating human prejudice.

So as the article supports, human characters may provide more immediate context, but animal characters probably allow more complex/difficult situations to be explored.

One of my friends kids had James and the Giant Peach lying around and it's really thin and I had never read it so I read it during a car drive. SPOILERS - It's hard to get darker than having your parents die while you are a child, or empathizing with a character and being happy when his evil aunts are killed.

One of the big advantages of children's literature is that it can portray things too dark for adult literature.

I may be missing it, but where is the discussion of blinding? If the person reading the story is the one who gives directions about sharing, then how do we know whether or not the effect was due to the experimenter?

The original journal publication is at least linked in the article [1]

but this is a very fundamental experimental design concept. I don't understand how this experiment can be run this way, let alone reviewed by peers and published.

1. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/desc.12590/epdf?s...

It's harder when using humans, though. How do you depict a slow person, two enemies etc? With animals, the turtle and the hare you instantly know have a difference in speed. The mouse removing something from the lions paw portraits two natural enemies etc.

Not all children know a rabbit is faster than a turtle, nor that x and x are an enemy of a lion. If we can teach this layer, why can't we do the other?

A simple thing like one kid being known to be fast, getting trophies, or the slower one having some sort of handicap would do the same. The second is easily strange kids at a new school, kids that look different or eat differently (with the one being helped having been unsure of it), and so on. After all, it isn't like the animals are natural enemies, but one happens to eat the other.

In other words, simply have the story tell the lesson outright, with people, rather than expecting them to learn from the animal metaphors.

True, but you lose the instant recognition of differences (which come to think of it might be a good thing).

As a parent with a child on Autism spectrum, it makes me mad to no end to try and shoehorn Animals everywhere. Like - Rabbit and Tiger going to school and doing things. Tiger going to "boys room". How do you explain that tiger is a boy?

I am not saying - to not have Animals in the stories. Turtle and the rabbit in their role make sense. Thirsty crow story won't be same without a crow or some other kind of flying Animal. So as Lion and the mouse.

But it doesn't stop there. We have Animals doing shopping, pigs buying ham (it comes quite close to that sometimes). In my experience of working with my child, he understands and retells stories that he can relate to. Contexts that I can explain without calling for helpful dose of fantasy. He and I still try and love books where use of Animals is out of place. Such as - Elephant & Piggy stories. But I believe, he will get so much more out of those books if they used Humans.

Then again, I may not be their target audience...

I used to babysit (as a 25-30+ old adult) for a pre-teen (and later teenager) with autism (it was really more supervision, just in case, as he did fairly well most times). He had much of the same issues - calling a fried chicken leg a "drumstick" was completely off limits as he wouldn't know what I was talking about. I can imagine he had much of the same problem with such stories. This is probably a facet that is often overlooked.

There are a couple of interesting books about metaphor for people with autism.

It's raining cats and dogs was written by someone with autism: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Its-Raining-Cats-Dogs-Expressions/d...

And here's another book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Asperger-Dictionary-Everyday-Expres...

My favorite example is one of the Poppleton books, where in one chapter the librarian is a chicken, and in the next, the pig is having chicken noodle soup.

How do the kids learn rabbits are fast and turtles are slow, along with the cultural significance of the pairing? I also think changing our traditions of story telling based on one study without even understanding the long term outcome is a bit too eager.

I assure you even small children have zero problem distinguish human looking good and bad in kids shows. From the way characters look, through the way they talk and lastly, by seeing bad characer doing something very very bad in first scene with him.

I have a huge issue with that trope. Most kids shows use the idea of inherently good and bad characters. We are teaching them that people are wrong because they are bad people.

We drill this into people's heads from a young age and then we wonder why adults are incapable of expressing a difference of opinion in a rational way.

For this reason I've been loving Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, the animated continuation of Mr. Rodger's Neighborhood. There are no villains or bad people, just friends making honest mistakes and learning how to deal with them.

When you feel so mad you want to roar, take a deep breath and count to four

One thing that bothers me about DTN is that Mr. Rogers was a believer in using real people and real-life representations of them (puppets) as a way to curb the contemporary use of cartoons to entertain children. I just can't decide whether or not DTN is something he would have approved of.

I agree with you about that trope. Moreover, we are also teaching them that good are always smarter/more skilled or win another way. Basically, when you are looking at the winner, winner must have been also morally right. And when winner does something bad to win competition or whatever, then it was still good.

However, I quite sure that all of these still can be conveyed with humans as much as with animals and anthropomorphous trains/cars etc. The only reason city kid knows that rabbit is fast is because the kid seen it running in cartoon anyway. It is not like kids would had hands on experience with rabbits and turtles.

You can name that character after his chief trait. It could be "John Slow", "Lazy Daisy", "Tardy Hardy", "Hagar, the Laggard" or whatever else you might think of. Or even literally name them after the trait and make it an allegory.

Enmity, on the other hand, can be inferred from the either from the story or from the context, by having one character hurt another another at some point in a way that sets them up for a grudge or by having them compete in a contest.

It really isn't necessary to have animals in children stories.

But animals are used inconsistently in stories.

In one book you'll have cats and dogs not getting on. In another book they'll be best friends.

In some books the animal are so anthropomorphised the animal characteristics appear irrelevant. For example, in You must bring a hat there is a human protagonist who meets a hat-wearing monkey, a monocle-wearing badger, a tutu-wearing and piano-playing elephant, etc.

(It's a nice book, with lovely illustration. https://www.amazon.co.uk/You-Must-Bring-Simon-Philip/dp/1471... )

The article interviews a few author's reactions at the end of the article which seem to indicate they either don't believe the scientific research, don't get it or don't care:

> Kes Gray, the author of the bestselling rhyming animal series Oi Frog and Friends, was unperturbed by the researchers’ findings. “Authors and illustrators have no need to panic here, as long as we keep all of the animal protagonists in all of their future stories unreservedly cuddly. Big hair, big eyes and pink twitchy noses should pretty much nail it,” he said.

Perhaps there might be a problem with these type of authors influencing large portions of the young population.

My nieces are 2 and 4 so I get to read the books and surprisingly often the books are awfully written with zero educational value. So the authors' sentiments don't really surprise me; if you don't bother with the quality of your craft, why should you bother with the scientific underpinnings of teaching/learning.

The moral education is only one of reasons why we read to kids and why kids read. I would even say that it is not the most important one.

However, author thinking that it is enough to show cuddly animal and nice picture does not surprise me. Most nchildren books, especially those with shiny appealing pics are awfully written. Kids want to buy them, but they rarely wants them to be read or care while you read.

On unrelated news, kids don't read or read less and less every day. I would not worry about children books not teaching right morality. They are being read less and less.

For decades, statistical experts have explained, again and again, to coaches and players that there is no such thing as a player with the 'hot hand'. The coaches and players have mostly ignored such advice, believing that their lifetime of following the sport matters more than researchers dipping into the field for a study or two.

And eventually, of course, it turned out that the statisticians are probably wrong, and the "hot hand" is real (https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/baseballs-hot-hand-is-r...). Perhaps the child authors think they know more about how children and stories interact than the researchers, because they've got a lot more experience with the topic.

I just thought he was being funny at the same time as pointing out we are animals too. And books serve several purposes, one being entertainment. So what if some books or authors don't take science seriously?

why should they care? books entertain children. whether they are based on the latest scientific theories or not shouldn't prevent authors from writing more books and entertaining more children

I think that using animals to impart moral lessons tends to imbue a child with the subconscious connotation that morality/ethics belong in "fairy tales", and not in the actual world of the "grownups" of their own kind.

I remember covering Jonathan Livingston Seagull in grade school. Absolutely loved the story and the message, but what I remember most clearly was the girl who stated: who cares, it's just a story about a bird.

"Moral impact" is one of those features conveniently impossible to measure, and at the same time very marketable to parents. Each little girl and boy reacts in an unique and personal way to the same stimulus and modify gradually their points of view after years of observation and experience. You can't just buy a magic book covering all possible cases to turn your little evil in an angel in a couple of hours.

The findings are interesting but perhaps the reason authors choose to include anomorphic characters is because those sell better? 'Oh my son/daughter loves [animal], I'll get this book rather than this one about human kids'

Also, interested to see what happens when characters are non-animals and non-human.. I would guess the results might be similar.

I have an inchoate theory that early moral indoctrination through children's books is basically a way of hardwiring the just-world fallacy into the broader populace such that a minority of individuals who resist this worldview grow up primed to embrace sociopathic realpolitik and advance to positions of power over the majority who accept it at face value.

As tempting as it is to just write "k" in response to this, I'll try to be constructive: so what do you suggest we do instead?

I don't know; this is observational rather than prescriptive. "Don't be institutionally hypocritical as a society" is inviting, but has problems whichever of the views is chosen. The sociopaths seem necessary so long as geopolitics is simply gang warfare on a global scale.

What about teaching everyone non-sociopathic realpolitik instead?

Likely to reduce overall efficiency.

Seems like a great idea.

I'd love to have been educated re: the importance of history, and the following topics: the lead-up to WW2, Communist Russia, the formation of Israel, the formation of the EU, NATO, and UN, the world banking system, the last 100 years of Middle-Eastern conflict and perhaps the American Civil War. I now consider these some of the most relevant historical events to the current Dutch political situation and also to most other Western countries, but I never learnt about them in high school (which is from 12-18 here, I did the variant that prepars you for university).

What we need to achieve that is a realization in the counter-culture that education is important and that what people considered counter-culture in the 70's, 80's and 90's has been coopted by now, or perhaps has been "controlled opposition" from the start. Conservatism and protecting the people of your country from international realpolitik is the real counter-culture now. I think Switzerland and Poland got a lot of this right.

> What about teaching everyone non-sociopathic realpolitik instead?

Teaching about an oxymoron?

It's not an oxymoron, it's in fact the definition of realpolitik, as coined by Ludwig von Rochau. It means having a principled position, while viewing the world as it is, without silly idealisms like the aforementioned just-world fallacy. The view of realpolitik as just a name for gaining power at any cost came later, and it's more prevalent in the English world.

I can recommend John Bew's Realpolitik: A History, it's quite interesting if one enjoys the history of political thought.

Identify that the only acceptable way to treat a human is as an end to her/himself and anyone who does not acts immorally.

Just a thought: Perhaps lessons about scientific fallacies that impact real life and to always think about experiments that challenge hidden assumptions.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (http://www.hpmor.com/) could give an idea how this might look like.

I'm already bored

I really do wish more fiction was like HPMoR. I think it would work out great in a school setting.

I cover this very point in my pamphlet, "Cucked by Narnia."

Books that had a big impact on me as a young kid were 'The Giving Tree', 'The Lorax', and 'The Velveteen Rabbit'. They were hard lessons. None of them taught a just world.

I think those books left such an impression on me because they were tragic and unresolved. There were dozens of other more simplistic moral tales that went in one ear and out the other, I'm sure.

I remember the animals from my children's book just as well as the humans

George Orwell disagrees.

That's a good point - I think when it comes to stories for adults, using a narrative tool like replacing the humans with animals or setting it in a fantasy or scifi setting can help people appreciate it more honestly. Kind of like how Battlestar Galactica can openly discuss the morality of violence against an occupying force, while if it was set in Iraq viewers would have been much less open minded to examining the concept.

Perhaps its adults books which should replace humans with animals?

See also: Game of Thrones (nuclear weapons, Iraq occupation, global warming, etc.)

As in the example you pointed out, this is a very common trope in SF. Often aliens are used, rather than animals; a recent well known example is District 9. Or my favorite example (in film), They Live.

Where did BG do that? (Not disagreeing, just not remembering/catching the particular reference).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_(Battlestar_Galacti...

I disagree with OP RE BSG.

It was not about morality in general it was directly referencing our current views on morality, specifically the Iraq war.

But do agree subbing in animals/zombies/aliens for humans allows movies to get away with more.

I don't think I agree. Many non fantasy non scifi books go there and adults get them. Irak is politically charged sure, because there is war right now and people support that war. That does not exclude fictional place, whether historical or current.

In particular, people who read historical fiction deal with these topics all the time.

Stories about German occupation, whether real or made up deal with it. French revolution is all about violence.

Animal Farm is not a children's book.

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