Fact or fantasy stories - what do children and adults prefer?

What type of stories do children and adults prefer – fact or fantasy? Most people would answer that children prefer fantasy stories and adults prefer factual stories. Is this actually the case? The Association for Psychological Science posted current research that answers this question (October 19, 2015).

Psychologists Jennifer Barnes, Emily Bernstein, and Paul Bloom from the University of Oklahoma and Yale University in America studied the story preferences of children and adults (published in the Imagination Cognition and Personality journal, March 2015).

Barnes studied children aged 4-7 years of age and adults. The researchers conducted two experiments. In the first experiment both groups were asked to choose which of two books sounded like it would contain ‘the better story.’ They were not told the story – they were only given a brief description of what the story was about.

Participants were asked to choose between a story about a child ‘who found buried treasure’ or a story about a child ‘who discovered a dinosaur bone.’ However, half of each group was told that the treasure story was ‘true’ (fact) and the dinosaur story was ‘make-believe’ (fantasy). The other half was told the reverse, that the treasure story was fantasy and the dinosaur story was fact. This was done to reduce bias for content preferences and to test stories that actually happened versus stories that didn’t.

The results showed that children aged 4-7 years significantly preferred fact over fiction, no matter what the content of the story was. In other words, children preferred the story that they were told was true. Adults chose fact and fantasy equally – there was no distinct preference.

In the second experiment, Barnes studied fantasy plots and characters versus realistic plots and characters. Participants were asked to choose between two stories: one about a boy ‘who lives on an invisible farm’ and the other about a boy ‘with lots of brothers and sisters.’ The choices were to test magical stories versus real stories.

The results showed that children aged 4-7 years chose the stories equally – there was no distinct preference. However, adults significantly preferred the fantasy (magical) story.

The results seemed counterintuitive – that in both experiments, children did not consistently prefer fantasy, and adults did not consistently prefer fact. The researchers did not study why, although they think it could be that young children are still learning about the ‘real’ world and that they want to hear stories about the real world. Adults, on the other hand, have the ‘luxury’ to choose fantasy over the real world.

Researchers did not test stories against dramas (play or pantomimes) or theatre, video, DVD, and cinema stories. The test was about what the stories would ‘contain’ – there were no visual images or actual stories. In addition, the age group was 4-7 years, and there was no comparison with other age groups to test when the difference changed or evolved – i.e. the preferential transition from childhood to adulthood.

http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2015/10/19/449865847/children-want-factual-stories-versus-fantasy-more-often-than-adults

http://ica.sagepub.com/content/34/3/243

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