With Great Power Comes… What? Superheroes, Aggressiveness and Prosocial Behavior in Teenagers

Abstract

Superheroes are part of contemporary culture, being very popular among teenagers. Understanding the influence of this type of character is necessary for the social and educational context. Thus, the purpose of this study was to understand the relationship between contact with superheroes, aggressiveness and pro-sociability, considering the impact participants personality and gender. A total of 240 students from a public school between 12 and 18 years old participated in the study, answering the following instruments: Contact with Superheroes Scale, Aggression Questionnaire, Pro-sociability Scale, Big Five Inventory-10 and sociodemographic questions. Factorial analysis, descriptive analyzes, bivariate and partial correlations and multiple linear regression were used to analyze the information. The results indicated differences in the relation between the constructs in female respondents (where contact with superheroes was positively associated with pro-sociability) and male (with this contact being negatively associated with pro-sociability and positively with anger), although no predictive relations were observed in any of the cases. Thus, possibilities can be proposed for the design of interventions that use superheroes to discuss what makes someone have aggressive or prosocial behavior.

Keywords

• psicologia do adolescente
• traços de personalidade
• interação social
• gênero.