Young children have a lot of trust in scientists, and watching superhero TV shows with villainous researchers has little impact - and only in certain situations, a new study shows.
Findings showed that children's trust only declined when the villains in a video they watched were explicitly labeled as scientists or talked about them "doing science" in the show.
"Our findings revealed some harmful effects of superhero television, yet those effects appeared weak and limited in scope," said Blue Lerner, co-author of the study and a doctoral student in communication at The Ohio State University.
"Even then, it is easy to mitigate that harm by removing associations between villainy and science. That's good news."
The findings also suggest that the "mad scientist" stereotype may not be as commonly believed by children as previous studies have suggested, said study co-author James Alex Bonus, associate professor of communication at Ohio State.
The study, published this week in the Journal of Media Psychology, involved 256 children aged 8 to 12 and their parents.
At the beginning, participating children completed measures that examined whether they thought scientists were best described as "smart" or "dumb." They also answered questions that measured three dimensions of trust in scientists: expertise, integrity and benevolence.
