THE EFFECTS OF EDUCATIONAL FILMS ON ATTITUDE CHANGE

Neil R. Tuller

During the past decade, a quiet revolution has been taking place in primary and secondary schools across the United States. It is a revolution which has gone practically unnoticed by the general public, a revolution whose impact has yet to be assessed. I am referring to the rapidly-expanding use of audiovisual media by teachers and students in grades one through twelve. If present trends con­tinue, the sales of audiovisual products will equal or exceed those of elementary and high school text­books and library books by the end of this decade. By 1980, approximately nine billion dollars will be spent for audiovisual materials in the schools.1 This widespread use of non-print media is astonish­ing when compared to the fact that fifteen or twenty years ago many schools did not even own motion picture or filmstrip projectors, and most teachers had never heard of film loops, cassettes, or videotape. In light of this rapid growth of educa­tional audiovisual media, it is also astonishing that neither educators nor psychologists have made much of an attempt to study the effectiveness of these media.

It is estimated that approximately fifty-three percent of the money spent on non-print media in education is spent on motion pictures.2 Several studies on the effects of motion pictures have been done, two specifically in the field of primary and secondary education. But it is indeed amazing that more studies assessing the effectiveness of educa­tional films have not been done since motion pictures have been used in schools longer than any other audiovisual media.

Carl Hovland and his associates, Arthur Lums­daine and Fred Sheffield, were among the first psychologists to test the effectiveness of films. During World War II, they conducted an experiment to see whether an Army film series called, "Why We Fight" taught the viewers any factual knowledge about the events leading up to the War, or changed their opinions toward the War in the direction of

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the interpretations presented in the films. Hovland, Lumsdaine and Sheffield concluded that the films were very effective in teaching the viewers "facts," and that they also had some marked effects on opinion formation. After testing the short-term effects of one of the films, "The Battle of Britain," Hovland, et al., found that the most significant opinion changes occurred on items of a specific nature while there were very few changes of opin­ion on items of a more generalized nature.3 The experimenters present several hypotheses to account for this lack of effectiveness in changing more generalized attitudes. They suggest that perhaps this one fifty-minute film was simply too small an influence to produce measurable changes in deep-seated convictions. Another possible explanation they present is that the amount of change which could be influenced by indoctrination had already occurred as a result of influences in the soldiers' lives before they entered the Army. A third possibility presented is that the lack of effects might be due to the fact that the opinion changes which the film's producers wanted to affect were not explicitly stated. The film simply imparted information and "let the facts speak for them­selves."~ This last possible explanation of the fact that the film was not very effective in changing generalized attitudes points out one of the weak­nesses of Hovland, Lumsdaine and Sheffield's study. Since the film used to study attitude change, "The Battle of Britain," did not explicitly draw conclusions, perhaps it was a poor film to use in this experiment. It is unfortunate that the experi­menters did not also test the effectiveness of a film which did draw explicit conclusions.

After re-testing the attitudes of the soldiers who viewed "The Battle of Britain," Hovland, et al., discovered that on some of the more generalized opinion items, the attitudes of the men had changed slightly more in the desired direction after nine weeks than they had at the time of the first measure

one week after the viewing of the film.s While this finding supports the hypothesis that changes in opinion of a generalized nature may show increas­ing effects with the lapse of time, it is inconclusive since the attitude change had increased only slightly during the nine-week period.

Two studies have been done which were designed specifically to determine the effectiveness of films on elementary and secondary students. The first was conducted by Herbert Blumer and his asso­ciates and involved two thousand children.6 The experimenters administered autobiographical questionnaires to the children to find out how films affect their emotions, ambitions, and actions. The information from the questionnaires was sup­plemented by interviews and observations of children in movie theaters. Blumer found that films have a very profound effect on children due to what he characterizes as "emotional possession." W.W. Charters explains Blumer's term:1

Watching in the dark of the theater, the young child sits in the presence of reality when he observes the actors perform and the plot of the drama unfold ... He forgets his surroundings. He loses ordinary control of his feelings, his actions, and his thoughts. He identifies himself with the plot and loses himself in the picture. His "emotional condition may get such a strong grip on him that even his efforts to rid himself of it by reasoning with himself may prove of little avail" [Charters quoting Blumer).

Blumer believes that films create an authoritarian condition which is favorable to certain types of learning. He reports that children accept whatever they see on the screen as true. Once they become "caught up" in or "emotionally possessed" by a film, they are very impressed with the confidence­producing people on the screen, and according to not only Blumer and his associates but also to Holaday and Stoddard, children accept both true and false "facts" as true.s

Another study, which was done to assess the effects of films on school children, was undertaken by Peterson and Thurstone in an attempt to discover whether educational films can change childrens' attitudes. Thirteen films were chosen for the study

and approximately four thousand students, most of them from the junior and senior high school level, were used as subjects. Each film presented attitudes on one of the following social topics: the Germans, war, crime, prohibition, the Chinese, capital pun­ishment, the punishment of criminals, or the Negro. Eleven different attitude scales were used as measures, and the experimenters re-tested some of their subjects five months and then nineteen months after seeing the films to determine whether any long-term opinion changes had occurred.9

Peterson and Thurstone concluded that the attitudes of children toward social issues can be measurably changed by exposure to one film. An example of one change which occurred after the subjects saw "Son of the Gods," a film which was thought to be favorable to Chinese people, is reported by W.W. Charters:io

Prior to the showing of the picture the mean attitude of a population of 182 children from grades 9 to 12 inclusive stood at 6.?2 on a scale in which the extreme positions were approxi­mately 3.S at the favorable end of the scale and 9.S at the unfavorable end. After the children had seen the picture the mean shifted 1.22 steps in a favorable direction from 6 .72 to S.SO and this difference was 17.S times the probable error of the differences. The shift in attitude is "very striking."

Peterson and Thurstone also found that in cases where exposure to one film related to a social issue had an insignificant effect on a person's attitude, repeated exposure to films of a similar nature would result in measurable attitude change.II

Peterson and Thurstone's follow-up studies five and nineteen months after the subjects viewed the films show that the attitude changes created by the films have substantial permanence. Reporting the results of the follow-up studies on "Son of the Gods," Charters says:l2

Before seeing the film, ... the children's posi­tion on a scale of attitude toward the Chinese was 6.61 and promptly after seeing the film it was 5.19-a shift in favor of the Chinese. Five months after seeing the film there was a reces­sion to 5.72 toward the original position of 5.19

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and nineteen months later the position was 5.76. That is to say, the effect of the film had not worn off in a year and a half.

The three studies reported here suggest several hypotheses. First is the hypothesis that educational films can change attitudes. Hovland's study of orientation films gives some support to this, although the Peterson and Thurstone study provides the most convincing argument. Peterson and Thurstone present additional evidence to support the hypothesis that the effects of films on attitude change are cumulative (i.e., two films which communicate a certain attitude are more likely to affect an attitudinal change than is one film) . Hovland and his associates, and Peterson and Thurstone have provided some strong evidence to support another hypothesis: Attitude changes which result from viewing films seem to be long­term and may even increase in time. A final hypothesis, supported by Blumer's study, is that children seem particularly susceptible to persuasi­bility by films. They become ''emotionally pos­sessed" by a fantasy world which seems to them to be very real and attractive. Although these three studies provide some insight into the effects of films on the attitudes of the viewer, particularly the young viewer, they can do no more than offer us hypotheses which require further examination. Hypotheses which attempt to explain anything as complex as human behavior must be tested by many different experimenters under a variety of different conditions before they can be considered valid. Unfortunately, little experimentation has been done to test the validity of the hypotheses presented here concerning the effects of films on opinion formation.

In an attempt to begin investigating some of these hypotheses, I conducted an experiment using two third-grade classes and a conservation film produced for primary-school-age children. The purpose of the study was to determine whether a short film could change children's attitudes. The results give support to Peterson and Thurstone's hypothesis that films are indeed a powerful edu­cational tool which can be very useful in changing children's attitudes on important social issues.

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Design and Procedure I produced a thirteen-minute, color, conservation film called "It's Just One Piece" which I used for my study. The film is short, concise, and it explicitly communicates the following attitudes:

• Our environmental problems are caused by everyone's combined actions.

• Our environmental problems are steadily growing, and if not stopped, will become over­whelming and unbearable.

• If every one stopped his own pollution, our larger pollution problems would be solved.

• Every one has a responsibility to act to help conserve our natural resources and to limit his own environmental pollution.

Before doing this study, a number of teachers were shown the film . They felt it was very effective in communicating important concepts and was easy for their students to understand. (Further information concerning this film may be obtained by writing to Sensory Perceptions, P.O. Box 121 , Berkeley, California 94701.)

The children in this study were taken from two third-grade classes at an Oakland, California, elementary school. One class was used as the experimental group while the other served as a control group. The students had been assigned to their respective classes so they were relatively evenly matched as far as IQ, reading ability, and general educational background. The experimental group, consisting of thirty students, was shown "It's Just One Piece," and then asked to answer ten questions . These questions were designed to see if the children had adopted any of the four attitudes presented in the film. The control group of twenty-four children was shown an eleven­minute, color film called "African Craftsmen: The Ashanti," and was then asked to answer the same questions administered to the experimental group. "African Craftsmen: The Ashanti" was chosen because it is approximately the same length as "It's Just One Piece" and it has nothing to do with conservation. The responses to the ten questions which the children in the control group gave were compared with those given by the children in the experimental group. Since the

children in both groups were randomly assigned to their respective groups and, therefore, could be assumed to be equally matched, a comparison of the responses of the two groups would indicate attitude changes caused by the conservation film. The film shown to the control group compensates for any attitude changes which might have occurred in the experimental group as a result of viewing a film. Considering that each group saw a film, and since the conditions for the two groups were identical, the only explanation for any attitudinal changes in the experimental group would have to be exposure to the conservation film.

I was introduced to the children in both groups as a student from the University of California at Berkeley. University students frequently work in many of the classrooms at this Oakland elementary school as teacher's aides, so my presence was not considered by the children to be out of the ordinary. The children at the school have a generally favorable attitude toward the teacher's aides. The aides are viewed more as friends than as authoritarian figures, so I felt that it was to my advantage to be identified with them. My non­authoritarian identification reduced the chance of the children feeling that they had to give the "right" or socially desirable answers to the items on the questionnaire. Before administering the questions, I discussed with the children the fact that a lot of people have been talking about ecology and conservation lately. I said that people have a lot of different ideas and opinions about the subject, and that [wanted to know what each of the children in the class thought. [ emphasized that the questionnaire was not a test and that there were no "right" or "wrong" answers. The title on each questionnaire, "What Do You Think," emphasized that it was not a test. I read each question aloud to the students to assure that their reading ability would not handicap any of them. I showed "It's Just One Piece" to the experimental group and administered the ques­tionnaire and then went to the second classroom and showed "African Craftsmen: The Ashanti" to the control group and administered the ques­tionnaire. I did this all within an hour so the children in the two groups would not have a chance

to communicate with each other about the films or the questions during their hourly recesses.

All ten items on the questionnaire were state­ments with which the children were asked to " agree" or "disagree" by checking either the word "true" or "false". This format was chosen because it is the simplest and least confusing for young children, and it is a format with which they are familiar. Each item was d~igned to test one of the four attitudes advocated in the film.

Results Below are the four attitudes advocated in the film, the questions used to test each of them, and the results. The number before each question indicates the position which the item held on the question­naire. The experimental group was made up of thirty students while the control group consisted of twenty-four. The percentages listed have been rounded off to the nearest whole number.

Attitude 1. Our environmental problems are caused by everyone's actions.

1. Most pollution is caused by just a few people. Control Group True-50% False-50% Experimental Group True-17% False-83%

7. Since eaclr car only makes a little air pollution, people don't /rave to worry about air pollution from cars. Control Group True-13% False-87% Experimental Group True-17% False-83%

10. Even if you only make a little pollution, it adds a lot to our pollution problems. Control Group True-96% False-4% Experimental Group True-100% False-0%

Attitude 2. Our environmental problems are steadily growing, and if not stopped, will become overwhelming and unbearable.

2. Pretty soon we won't have room for all tire trash people throw away. Control Group True-33% False-67% Experimental Group True-100% False-0%

B. There will always be lots of room in the garbage dumps for the trash people throw away. Control Group True-78% False-22% Experimental Group True-13% False-87%

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Attitude J. If everyone stopped his own pollution, our larger pollution problems would be solved.

J. There is so much pollution now that there isn ·1 really anything we can do lo slop it. Control Group True-70% False-30% Experimental Group True-67% False-33%

5. Evm if everyone slopped his own pollution, we would still have pollution problems. Control Group True-65% False-35% Experimental Group True-87% False-13%

9. There are thitigs that third-graders can do lo help end our pollution problems. Control Group True-96% False-4% Experimental Group True-90% False-10%

Attitude 4. Everyone has a responsibility to act to help conserve our natural resources and to limit his own environmental pollution.

4.11 dom1't really matter if you waste one or two pieces of paper. Control Group True-30% False-70% Experimental Group True-23% False-77%

6. If someone were writing on n pieet of paper and made n mistake, he should throw the paper away. Control Group True-42% False-58% Experimental Group True-13% False-87%

Analysis of Results The results may be analyzed in terms of the four attitudes presented in the film. A significant attitude change occurred on the Attitude 1, "Our environmental problems are caused by everyone's combined actions." This change is indicated mainly in the responses to question #1, "Most pollution is caused by just a few people." In the Control Group, 50% of the children answered "true," while 50% answered "false." In the Experimental Group, only 17% answered "true," while 83% gave the desired "false" response. This 33% change is quite significant. The responses to question #7 indicate that the children had a positive attitude before exposure to the conservation film. The responses of the Control Group were: 13% "true" and 87% "false." After seeing the film, the children in the Experimental Group answered 17% "true" and 83% "false." This at first seems to indicate a slight negative change in the positive attitude.

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The 4% change is not significant, however, be­cause of the small size of the groups. The responses to question #10 again indicate that the children had a very positive attitude before they saw "It's Just One Piece." The Control Group answered 96% "true" and 4% "false." The Experimental Group showed a slight positive change with 100% responding "true" and 0% responding "false." This question, along with question nine, "There are things that third graders can do to help end our pollution problems," should probably be disre­garded. Because of the near unanimous agreement in both groups, I suspect that both of these ques­tions elicited a "yea-saying" response in the children. That is, because of the wording of the questions, the students in both groups probably tended to agree regardless of their attitudes.

The responses to the Attitude 2 indicate a very substantial positive change in attitude. The re­sponses to both questions designed to measure this attitude indicate this change. On question #2, "Pretty soon we won't have room for all the trash people throw away," the results of the Control Group were: "true," 33% and "false," 67%. In contrast, the Experimental Group responded 100% "true," the desired response, and 0% "false." Question #8 shows the Control Group responding 78% "true" and 22% "false." Again, in contrast, the Experimental Group answered 13% "true" and 87% "false" (the desired response). The 67% positive change shown by the responses to ques­tion #2 and the 65% positive change shown by the responses to question #8 indicate that "It's Just One Piece" was extremely successful in changing this attitude.

There was a substantial negative change in Attitude 3, "If everyone stopped their own pollu­tion, our larger pollution problems would be solved." On question #3, "There is so much pollution now that there isn't really anything we can do to stop it," the Control Group indicated a negative attitude: 70% responded "true," while only 30% responded "false." After viewing the conservation film, the Experimental Group showed a slight, though insignificant, positive change: 67% "true" and 33% "false." The film seemed to have no effect on this item. On question #5, "If

everyone stopped his own pollution, we would still have pollution problems," a substantial nega­tive change occurred. The Control Group responded 65% ''true" and 35% "false." The Experimental Group answered 87% "true" and 13% "false." The responses to question #9 indicate a very strong positive attitude in the Control Group: 96% "true" and 4% "false." The Experimental Group responded 90% " true" and 10% "false," still a strong positive attitude. As I indicated before, however, this question is poorly-worded and should be eliminated from this analysis. The strong negative change on the attitude: "If everyone stopped his own pollution, our larger pollution problems would be solved," indicates not that the film was ineffective, but rather, that it presented environmental prob­lems so forcefully that the audience was, in a sense, overwhelmed, believing that such a large problem could not be completely eliminated. However, the children did not feel helpless in the face of this overwhelming problem. On the contrary, as indicated by the responses to questions four and six, they felt that people should act to help alleviate our environmental problems.

The last attitude "It's Just One Piece" presented was that everyone has a responsibility to act to help conserve our natural resources and to limit their own environmental pollution. The children showed strong support for this attitude. On ques­tion four, "It doesn't really matter if you waste one or two pieces of paper," the Control Group answered 30% "true" and 70% "false." The Experimental Group showed a positive change in the children's already strongly supportive attitude: 23% checked "true" while 77% checked "false." The responses to question six show a very strong positive change of attitude. The Control Group answered 42% "true" and 58% "false" while the Experimental Group responded 13% "true" and 87% "false." This 29% positive change indicates strong support for the individual responsibility attitude.

Discussion The results of this study dearly indicate that "It's Just One Piece" was a very powerful influence on children's attitudes. They support Peterson and Thurstone's hypothesis that educational films are

an effective means of changing children's attitudes. Any one study cannot, of course, prove or disprove an hypothesis, especially in the case of a small­scale study such as this one. Much more work will have to be done before Peterson and Thurstone's hypothesis can be accepted as fact.

The study presented here brings up some inter­esting questions. First of all, are the attitude changes seen in this study long-term, or are they just temporary? The work done by Peterson and Thurstone, along with that done by Hovland, Lums­daine and Sheffield, indicates that attitude changes brought about by films are, indeed, long-term. Again, this is a hypothesis wnich will require further testing.

A second question brought up by this study is that of the relationship between attitude change and behavior change.tJ Will the children who saw "It's Just One Piece" change their behavior in accordance with their changed attitudes? Although I did not conduct a study, some comments given to me by teachers of elementary school classes that have seen "It's Just One Piece" support the hypothesis that the children will change their behavior. One teacher told me that the children in her class suggested starting an "ecology club" after they saw the film. Another teacher said that several days after seeing "It's Just One Piece," a child pulled a piece of paper out of the waste­basket, unfolded it, and said it was a good piece of paper and that he was going to use it again. A third teacher told me that the film related well to "waste" in her classroom, and that she noticed a decline in the amount of paper her students threw away. Because of a lack of time, I was not able to formally test the hypothesis suggested by these teachers' comments, however, a relatively simple experiment could be performed to do so. Two matched groups of second-, third- or fourth­grade students could be formed. The experimental group would be shown the conservation film and the control group would be shown another non­conservation related film. Shortly thereafter, both groups would be instructed to begin working on an art project. The project would involve some sort of work with construction paper, perhaps a

27

paper sculpture project. The children would be given access to all of the paper they wanted, and after the project was completed, the amount of construction paper in each group's wastebasket would be measured and compared. Similar art projects could be done at several intervals during the school year so any long-term effects could be measured. This experiment would provide an opportunity to unobtrusively measure the children's behavior in a very objective way.

Studies which have been done thus far have indicated that films are a powerful tool for changing attitudes. Evidence suggests that they can affect long-term attitudinal changes in children and that those effects may be cumulative. Further re­search, however, will be necessary before we can fully accept these hypotheses as facts. Until this research is done, we must view films and other educational media as potentially powerful tools of attitudinal change, and must therefore, be extremely cautious about how they are used to influence children and who is allowed to make the decisions concerning that use.

Footnotes

ITtehnrral Photography, Vol. 6, No. 3, March 1974, p 1. Z/bid., p 15 JHov!and, Lumsdaine and Sheffield. &prrimrnls on Mass

Communirnllor1 pp. 254-255. ~Ibid .. pp. 255-256.

'Hovland, Lumsdaine and Sheffield. "Short-Time and Long­Time Effects on an Orientation Film," in Berelson and Janowitz, Public Opinion and Communication, pp. 440-441.

•Charters, WW. "Motion Pictures and Youth," Publrr Opinion and Communication. p. 404.

"/btd., p 403. •Ibi1I., p. 404 . •/bid., pp. 397-398. IO/bid., PP· 398-399. 11/bid .. p. 400 Also in Gardner, Lindzey and Elliot Aranson,

Tlrt Handbool. of Social Psychology, Vol. 5, p. 102. ucharters, op di., p. 400. IJRichard LaPiere did one of the first major studies on this

relationship (in Social Form, Vol. 13, 1934) and since his study, o ther psychologists have done furth er work in this field. There seems to be growing evidence that behavior does not necessarily follow attitudes, but the question requires further study.

Ntil R. Tulltr is a formtr studtnl in lht Honors Program, Univrrsily of Califomia at Btrktlty. lntmsltrl in rxamining thr t{ftrls of rduralronal films on lht allilu1lts and bthavior of childrtn, Mr. Tulltr undtrloolc lo rroitw rmarrh wh1rh ht1d bttn 1ionr on lht subjtrl and drsign an.I ltsl vt1rious hypolhtm; his rrsulls strvrd as his honors thms.

THE CHILDREN OF KAUAI: REFERENCES

The bibliographical section below is part of an article, "The Children of Kauai: A Book Review," which appeared in the March 1975 issue of Educaliorrnl Perspectives. Written by Dr. Stanley M. Tsuzaki, Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics, University of Hawaii, this Journal apologizes for its previous omission.

References

Forman, Michael L .. Marsha H. Kakalia, Edgar Y.C. Lau and Gail F. Tomita. Schooltluldrtn of Kauai Failurts or Rtsisltrs? Hawaii Council of Teachers of English, Paper 22, 1973. Supplement to HCTE l..tafltl, April 1974 .

Kaser, Tom "Do Standardized Tests Really Meas ure One's Intelligence?" Thr Hp,,olulu Adlllrlisrr, December 5, 1974.

Labov, William. UFinding Out About Children's Language."

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Worhng P~pm iri Communi(a/ion. Department of English as a Second Language, University of Hawaii, 1970, 1(1):1-29.

Nunes, Shiho S. "The Hawaii English Project." EduCtllional Pmptrlirrs. College of Education, University of Hawaii, 1967, 6{3 ):14-16, 32.

Petersen, Robert 0. H. "The Hilo Language Development Project. ~ Elrmtrrlary E.nglislr, 1967, 44(7):753-55, 774.

Sledd, James. " Bi-Dialectalism: The Linguistics of White Supremacy." E.riglish Journal, 1969, 58(9):1307-15, 1329.