The Effect of Character Sex on Story Interest and Comprehension in Children

Abstract

The effect of the sex of the main character on boys’ and girls’ reading interest and comprehension was studied for 540 students in grade 5. Each student was randomly assigned one of 18 representative stories from children’s periodicals written at an appropriate readability. There were three stories in each of the three types of stories (mystery, adventure, and humor); each of the nine stories appeared in two versions that were identical except for the sex of the main character. Following the reading of the story, the students completed a measure of interest and two comprehension measures (multiple-choice and cloze tests). Students were classified by sex into three levels of reading, and a balanced five-factor (reader-sex, sex-of-protagonist, ability-level, type-of-story, and story [nested within type-of-story]) ANOVA was performed for each dependent measure. A strong sex-of-reader by sex-of-main-character interaction was observed on the interest measure. Boys rated stories much less interesting when the main character was female; girls found stories with male protagonists less interesting, although their preferences were much less pronounced. The interaction was evident at each of three levels of reading ability for each story type. The interest pattern did not translate into comprehension differences. On the comprehension measures, the sex of the main character had no significant effects—girls outscored boys, but this pattern was not significantly influenced by the sex of the protagonist.