Calming children's television fears: Mr. Rogers vs. The incredible hulk

Abstract

An experiment examined the effectiveness of two intervention strategies to reduce children's fear of the television series The Incredible Hulk, in which a mild‐mannered character (David) transforms into the monstrous Hulk. The Identity tape emphasized the similar positive motivations of David and the Hulk. The Visual Cues tape showed an actor being made‐up to look like the Hulk. Both tapes reduced fear (relative to a control condition) during the post‐transformation segment that featured the Hulk. Additional measures (ratings of the characters, explanations of the transformation) were used to evaluate several possible reasons for the success of the interventions.