Today there are several generations who have grown up watching Disney’s films. Disney has become a central storyteller in our society with children and their families as their main audience. Disney's storytelling is often with the children from an early age and they get to learn about right and wrong, good and evil through the films. A picture of how the world looks and how you should and should not behave is presented in Disney's films. Our aim with this study is to analyze the villains in Disney's animated films, how the female and male villains are presented in relation to each other from a gender perspective. The study's goal is to understand if the gender roles and stereotypes are enhanced or weakened by how male and female villains communicates through Disney’s films. With support from the theories of Giddens, Foucault and Jung, as well as theories of gender and stereotypes we have through a qualitative narrative and semiotic analysis studied twelve animated Disney-films. This has led to the discovery that female and male villains are produced in a gender-stereotypical way, the female villains are presented as more passive, emotional and nurturing, and that the male villains are presented as more active, ambitious and confident. We also found that there were similarities between the two genders, especially when it comes to how the antagonists exert his or her power and the atmosphere that is presented around the antagonists.

This study is about gender stereotypes that occur in the magazines of ELLE and KING's advertisements in 2014. The purpose of this inquisition is by using a gender perspective to examine the interpretation of women and men, compare how they relate to the traditional gender stereotypes. To answer our purpose of this study, a selection of 400 advertisements were analyzed based on it's content and visual expression. Through a content analysis, we could measure the frequency of 18 variables and put them in relation to each other to grasp the differences that exist between the genders. The results are presented in bar charts based on the variables that proved most interesting outcome between the genders. Our result indicated that ELLE and KING's advertisements relates to many of the traditional gender stereotypes even today.

Through the years, stereotypical representation of others has been present in video games. There exist numerous games which consist of characters that are being represented stereotypical in a negative way. The aim of this thesis is to discuss how stereotypes occur ingame animation and to see if an understanding of the culture represented will help inavoiding negative stereotypes. Possessing knowledge of the represented culture, I proposethat a negative stereotypical representation of others can be kept to a minimum in theanimations of the game Crest. This was tested on ten participants from Sweden and tenparticipants from South Africa with a qualitative questionnaire. Based on the questionnaire results, it can be seen that the majority of the participants think the animations was stereotypical. However, the participants also think the animations were not represented in a negative way, meaning that they find the animations stereotypical in a positive way. Thus, it indicates that with the knowledge of the culture represented, negative stereotypes in game animation can be minimized. This study shall serve as a small part of a solution to a worldwide and larger problem of stereotypical representations in game animation and games in general. With a larger and broader research on the subject, an answer to how to avoid negative stereotypes in games might be found.

This thesis works towards deconstructing stereotypical images of Indigenous women that frequent the pages of popular literature. It calls attention to the ideological foundation of Euro-Canadian literature, which is informed by a White-christian-patriarchy. That literature, as an institution of the Euro-Canadian nation, propagates images of Indigenous women as Indian princesses, squaw drudges, suffering helpless victims, tawny temptresses, and loose squaws. Consequently, Euro-Canadian literature imprisons us in images that foster both racist and sexist stereotypes and that encourage violence against us. Margaret Laurence's short story "The Loons" and William Patrick Kinsella's "Linda Star" provide illuminating examples of some of those images. While these writers do not represent all non-Indigenous people who write about Indigenous women, both of these writers are extremely popular Canadian writers whose stories are often read in elementary schools, high schools, and universities. At the centre of this thesis is Maria Campbell's semi-autobiographical Halfbreed. Campbell's Halfbreed significantly challenges Euro-Canadian literature's White-christian-patriarchal ideology by contextualizing the narrative in an Indigenous-gynocratic ideology. Her book destabilized White-Euro-Canadian liberals' complacency when, as an indigenous woman, Campbell named Euro-Canadians oppressors and identified Euro-Canadian power structures that illegally, unjustly, and intolerably imposed on her people's way of life. This thesis concludes that Campbell's Halfbreed encouraged many Indigenous people to appropriate the White-Euro-Canadian colonizer's English language to write ourselves out of oppression by re-claiming our self--which is ideologically rooted in autochthonous and gynocratic cultures.

Patriotism is an important value in American culture. Patriotism has obvious benefits such as increasing civic unity; however, researchers have acknowledged that it can take both positive and negative forms. Schatz (1994) developed the concepts of blind and constructive patriotism to characterize this difference. The current study, based on previous research linking blind patriotism and stereotyping to RWA and threat, predicted that blind patriotism would be related to increased stereotyping of African Americans, gay men, and lesbians while constructive patriotism would not. It was also predicted this relationship would be mediated by RWA, SDO, and threat. Results generally supported these predictions; blind patriotism was related to increased stereotyping and this relationship was largely mediated by RWA, SDO, and threat. Interestingly, constructive patriotism was also found to be related to increased stereotyping although this relationship was not mediated by RWA, SDO, and threat. / Department of Psychological Science

The linguistic intergroup bias is a phenomenon where people use more abstract language to talk positively about in-groups and negatively about out-groups (Maass, Salvi, Arcuri, & Semin, 1989). This has been established for many in-groups, but has not been extended to age-related stereotypes. This study extended the linguistic intergroup bias to attitudes towards older adults. It was predicted that statements about what participants liked about their peers and disliked about older adults would be more abstract than statements about what participants disliked about their peers and liked about older adults. Results supported these predictions. Also, a new measure of linguistic abstractness was tested, but was found not to be useful in this context. / Department of Psychological Science

Background: Reinforcing gender stereotypes still occurs in toy advertisements even though it is stated that gender stereotyping in marketing is a public concern. Parents perception of gender stereotyping will further influence how children act according to gender, which is why it is of importance to explore how parents perceive gender stereotyped advertising towards their children and how this is linked to socially responsible marketing. Research questions: RQ: What are the perceptions of Swedish parents on gender stereotypes in advertisements targeted at children, and how can this be linked to socially responsible marketing? SQ1: What are the perceptions of parents on advertisements towards children where stereotyped gender roles are being reinforced? SQ2: What are the perceptions of parents on advertisements towards children where stereotyped gender roles are being challenged? Purpose: The purpose of this research is to link the idea of socially responsible marketing with gender stereotyping and advertising targeting children. Methodology: Using visual materials as stimuli in semi-structured focused interviews. Conclusion: The empirical investigation revealed that parents perceived gender stereotypes in advertising as harmful to society, particularly to children. Socially responsible marketing should therefore reflect more on this subject and portray both girls and boys sharing colors, attributes and toys.

The overall purpose of this study was to uncover, from among a sample of university students, naturally occurring, salient and less potentially harmful group categories and stereotype content. The reason for this was to learn more about which group categories and associated stereotype content ordinary South Africans naturally consider to be salient or important, rather than those group categories and stereotype content that South Africa’s academic establishment may unduly focus on. This was done because of a suspicion, which itself was based on an extensive review of the history of South African stereotype research, that the group categories and associated stereotype content of race and gender may be the subject of an undue focus on the part of South African academia. The results generated by this study were to be used to supply future stereotype threat studies in South Africa with accurate, relevant and specifically less potentially harmful group categorisations and associated stereotype content. The research questions of this study were posed at two hierarchical levels, the ‘higher’, more abstract “groups of people in South Africa” and the ‘lower’, more local, “groups of people on campus”. The reason for this was to learn how the manipulation of hierarchical group salience conditions would affect the group categories generated by the participants and the stereotype contents about those groups. The results of the study suggest that while the category of race seems to be the most salient or important among the participants, the category of gender was not salient at all. This occurred at both the national and campus hierarchical levels. The broad categories of economic status and social class were the second most salient, but only at the national level. There was some evidence of the effects that manipulating hierarchical group salience conditions had on group category and stereotype content generation. Certain group categories and stereotype content were generated exclusively at either the national or campus levels, and when they were generated at both levels, there was evidence to suggest that they were generated in slightly different ways. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2013.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between stereotype confirmation concerns (SCC) and fear of negative evaluation (FNE). It is hypothesized that SCC will predict FNE, and that this effect will be moderated by race, such that SCC and FNE will be stronger among African Americans than among European Americans. A sample of 53 Caucasians and 41 African Americans were diagnosed with social anxiety. A hierarchical multiple regression was run to predict FNE with SCC, race, and the product of the two. The final model explained 27.9% of the variance in participants’ FNE. Race significantly moderated the effects of SCC on FNE; SCC had a stronger effect on FNE for Caucasian (b = .380, p < .01) than for African Americans (b = .140, p < .05). This study shows that it may be helpful in treatment of social anxiety to address stereotype confirmation concerns and to discuss social situations during which negative stereotypes become salient.

This study is based on a comparative qualitative analysis of religion textbooks in elementary schools. The aim is to investigate how Muslim women have been represented in religion textbooks used as educational material in Swedish schools, between the 1970s and the 2000s. This study rests on the social constructivist theory which implies that reality is what we make it. In order to do a comparative qualitative analysis, three deductive stereotypes have been applied: the oppressed, the submissive and the uneducated. However, an additional, inductive stereotype was identified during the analysis of the material: the independent. The text analysis showed that Muslim women were mostly represented as oppressed and submissive, having no right to their own opinions, lives or bodies and simply needing to be covered to get accepted by the Muslim society. However, it was also possible to conclude that similar representations of Muslim women could be found in textbooks from the 1970s and 2000s.