Citation

Gosselt JF, De Jong MDT, van Hoof JJ. J. Commun. 2012; 62(6): 1084-1101.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, International Communication Association, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1460-2466.2012.01597.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Media ratings serve to inform parents about and protect minors from violent or otherwise harmful media content. Most of these systems use age pictograms and content warning pictograms for entertainment products. An experiment was conducted to investigate whether these pictograms, contrary to their purpose, have an appealing effect on children and adolescents. Compared to prior studies into this forbidden fruit effect concerning DVDs and games, more realistic materials were used. In the experiment, 322 elementary school students (911 years) and 335 high school students (1315 years) were exposed to 10 DVD or game covers and asked to judge the products' attractiveness. The results show that the pictograms did not increase the attractiveness of games and DVDs for children and adolescents.

Language: en