Female comic characters' goals and means vary by class: upper class being loved and lovable, middle class career recognition by hard work, lower class serving others and accepting fate¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associational r1 · q2
Currency · newest study 1953 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person · overdue for a recheck since 1958: baselines and conditions change

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Among female characters, the upper class shows greater concern with being loved and lovable, the middle class tends to achieve career recognition by hard work, and the lower class tends to serve others and accept their fate. → Audio-Visual Communication Review 1953

Evidence¶

Audio-Visual Communication Review 1953¶

Audio-Visual Communication Review. (1953). Audio-Visual Communication Review, p. 316 (digest of Spiegelman, Terwilliger & Fearing, The Journal of Social Psychology, 37:189-203, May 1953; and Wolf & Fiske, The Children Talk about Comics, in Communications Research 1948-1949, Harper and Brothers, 1948). https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02713301

q2 · i? · associational · r1

Content-analysis result on female characters' goals and means across socio-economic classes in the 52-strip sample; the digest reports the class tendencies without a printed statistic.

"Goals and means of the females of the various classes indicate a greater concern of the upper class with being loved and lovable, the tendency of the middle class to achieve career recognition by hard work, and the tendency of the lower class to serve others and accept their fate."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Comic strip characters of both sexes highly prize altruistic group-oriented goals while self-oriented goals are frequent though disapproved — related
• Female comic characters skew toward upper socio-economic classes while males skew toward lower classes — related
• Male comic characters' goals and means differ by socio-economic class: upper class humanitarian, middle class self- and power-goals with aggressive means, lower class fate and charm — related
• Content analysis of 52 nationally syndicated Sunday comic strips finds over twice as many male as female characters — related
• Comic strips reflect ambiguous attitudes toward the status of women — related