| Description |
Storytelling has become an increasingly popular addition to preschool curricula. It provides children with an opportunity to dictate an original story that is transcribed verbatim by an adult. These stories provide teachers and researchers with valuable insight into children's thinking. Though very little research has examined the nature and content of children's stories, aggression is a common theme. This study provides a descriptive analysis of the aggressive acts, aggressors, and victims that children include in their stories. In addition, this study examines how age, gender, creativity, and aggressive behavior are related the use of aggression in storytelling. Over 1100 stories were collected from 239 children from 2003-2008. A subset of 75 children, Accounting;; for 513 stories, also participated in a creativity study where data on creativity and behavioral aggression were collected. Boys included twice as many aggressive acts in their stories than girls. Boys also included fighting, weapons, killing more often than girls, whereas girls included more instances of capturing than boys. Such gender differences may be explained by gender-targeted media. Age, creativity, and behavioral aggression were not significantly associated with aggression in children's stories. The lack of an association between behavioral aggression and aggression in stories supports the idea that many children use storytelling as a means of exploring otherwise threatening topics, like aggression, even if they do not normally act aggressively. |
