Kid’s Attitudes Toward Superheroes – Indicator of Their Moral Understanding.

Abstract. This research focuses on superheroes movies, and on how these movies can influence kids’ moral values. Different sides of the problem, both positive and negative are discussed in the paper, opinions of view of different famous writers, journalists and organizations support these points. Although all the sides are discussed, from the results of survey conducted it can be seen, that 42 sample students from International School of Almaty are more likely to be influenced positively than negatively by movies about superheroes. The paper consists of six main parts: Introduction, Literature review, Methodology, Results, Discussion and Conclusion.

Table of contents.

Abstract. 1 Table of contents. 2 Introduction 2 Literature review. 4 Definition/ Features of superheroes. 4 Purpose of hero mythology. 6 Results of past surveys. 7 Methodology. 9 Results. 10 Discussion. 17 Conclusion. 19 References. 20 Appendix. 23

Introduction. According to Justin F. Martin, member of Human Development and Education, “Regardless of the culture or the environment in which children develop, key aspects of their development include their curiosity and imagination”, (Martin, 2007). Possibly it explains the fact that a lot of cartoons, movies, books about superheroes were created. Superheroes help little kids understand what is good and what is bad around them. Reading or watching stories about superheroes children feel badly when others are in pain, feel responsible for helping those in need, they learn how to forgive those who hurt them, do what they think is right even if others disagree. In most cases kids learn positive things from superhero’s behavior, but there are cases when they borrow bad qualities of anti-heroes, which also exist in Superhero’s stories. Kids sometimes can cheat to win or get ahead, physically assault another