What’s Your Money Story?
One of my first students at Pockets Change told me, “If I don’t have a plan for my money, my money’s gonna have a plan for me.”
It’s a simple statement that also happens to be some of the best financial advice I’ve ever heard.
We start forming relationships with money between 3-7 years old; while we’re listening to Elmo sing about getting new shoes or sneaking to the doorway as our parents watch Succession. Fictional characters’ wants and needs fill more than screens; they shape our financial narratives.
Across storylines, characters exemplify money personalities in action. Every iteration of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles spends their (literally) hard fought loot on pizza, but each member embodies distinct habits & tendencies. That’s why our multigenerational Hip Hop & Finance programs start with finding your money personality. We use a simple, 2 question money personality quiz to determine one of four money personalities. The questions are rooted in financial psychology and behavioral economics.
Through money personalities, Students, teachers, and family members of all ages have been able to forgive themselves and move forward. The 4 personalities are full of relatable tendencies that make sense of the seemingly irrational ways we deal with money. Do you only buy things on sale? You may be a complicator! Do you end up blowing the big check you just got because it was from an Evil Corporation? You might be a money monk.
The money havers and knowers love telling young adults about the necessity and urgency of making a financial plan. Set long term goals, invest for your future, make a vision board, max out your 401k, build generational wealth.
Save, invest, and protect the right percentages of your wages, advocate for raises, stick to your plan, and everybody will be wealthy and we’ll have world peace. Do the right thing? Spike Lee made a film about how easy it is to do that.
It’s why many officials want financial education taught as a part of math class. Hard work + discipline = success… except when it doesn’t.
There’s no mathematical or magical formula for perfecting our finances. Budgets are personal and cash flow projections are literal guesses. If all that seems fake, and made up, good! So is money.
Take a breath. [Editor's note: ‘take a breath’ is the definition of inspiration]
Money is about more than numbers, it’s a tool to create change. As storytellers, content creators, and community builders we have a tremendous power to deconstruct money myths and cultivate empathy for the financial exploitation, discrimination, and oppression young adults are being called to navigate.
Our research partner, Knology, found Pockets Change’s approach highly effective in building financial resilience through hip hop pedagogy. Through shared practices and resources we have meaningful money conversations across mediums.
Storytelling creates a transformative space for real, open, and empowering conversations about money. As our students explore their own relationships with money, multimedia creates paths to overcome obstacles, encourage empathy, engage curiosity, and envision possibilities.
Our shared money stories shift narratives that have held back our communities for generations. We encourage content creators and program leaders to reflect on where financial themes could enrich their next project.
Bring Money Stories to Life with Actionable Insights:
Expand storytelling beyond the “middle–class centric” values and assumptions too often depicted. Explore the breadth and depth of how our relationships with money show up.
Share empowering stories of navigating uncertainty and enhancing financial wellbeing even when money is scarce or employment precarious.
Promote self-acceptance and efficacy with the message that “whatever it is you have; these are the ways that you’re able to save and this is what you’re able to do to grow.” As one individual told us, the program approach was valuable because it taught youth how “not to have money control you.”
Lauren Taylor on “The Good Guys: How Character Strengths Drive Kids’ Entertainment Wins”
This interview with the first author of the Character Strengths Report highlights the findings of the study and further work that can stem from this research.
Every year, as our children grow and change, entertainment media takes on a larger role in their development. With children having more access than ever before to consume television, film, and other alternative media on a daily basis, it has become important to filter developmentally appropriate content from potentially harmful content. Media that teaches positive values and aids with growth and maturity not only has the power to change lives but can have remarkable effects on the entertainment industry itself.
The CSS report “The Good Guys: How Character Strengths Drive Kids’ Entertainment Wins” (Character Strengths Report) explores these concepts through Common Sense Media’s tagging system for content, which focuses on developmental appropriateness across age groups. The report, led by CSS Fellow Lauren Taylor, highlights how the presence or lack of character strengths in media relates to how kids and their parents perceive the content, and ultimately if the film succeeds. By comparing films lacking and presenting character strengths, results show that those displaying traits like teamwork and courage are more successful as measured by box office performance metrics.
Character Strengths Are Universal
Taylor and her team assessed the following character strengths in their research: communication, compassion, self-control, curiosity, empathy, gratitude, humility, integrity, perseverance, courage, and teamwork. The last two were most prevalent and the study reveals that the magnitude of their positive impact can be felt internationally, regardless of culture. Taylor says, “It shows the universality of emotions and that these skills are important no matter what and span across all human beings.”
What About Teen Audiences?
Not only does the report find that media representing character strengths and positive values correlate to higher box office success domestically and internationally, but it also highlights where change needs to happen. “We answered the goal of the project, but I’m also really excited about the fact that we identified where character strengths are lacking in film and that teens are being left behind compared to the child audience,” Taylor says. “I have a passion for teen audiences and helping them, especially with teen mental health problems, and I’m excited to continue to explore that with these findings.”
By looking at the frequency of certain strengths like courage and teamwork, but the infrequency of other equally valuable traits, Taylor discovered where media representation of character strengths needs to improve and why it's so important to do so. “Teenagers want more authentic content. They are rejecting storylines of what used to be popular, but the shift hasn’t been represented yet in film and television.” In an already flooded media landscape, there is a growing importance in listening to teens who speak up about what content is making them feel more accurately represented and understood and reflecting those comments in popular media.
This highlights one of the bigger issues the report uncovered: the communication gap between content creators and teen audiences. Media has issues with misrepresenting teens and their values, something that adds to the failing line of understanding between storytellers and consumers. “Teenagers don't respond to content they feel is trying to send them a message or that is shoved down their throat,” says Taylor. Instead of working through this barrier, “content creators begin to think teenagers don't want to know how to, for example, display humility and integrity and self-control. This means audience members and content creators need to talk more.”
An open line of communication will help better bridge the gap between studios and their audience and lead to the creation of work that is presented as authentic and genuine. Especially as technologies and the kids of this generation grow simultaneously, Taylor thinks these changes are worth the effort it will take to implement them. “There's a big shift between how I grew up and how kids grow up now so it’s important for researchers, content creators, and parents to realize media is not all good and it's not all bad.”
This nuanced approach to media – such as highlighting character strengths for the benefit of consumers and creators – is exactly what the Center for Scholars & Storytellers aims to accomplish. “It’s a tricky balance to strike and nobody is going to get it perfect,” Taylor says. “But understanding the negative consequences that media can have and combatting that with some of the positive uses of it can go a very long way.”
What’s in a Story? How Sociomoral Narratives Can Inform Our Approach to Superhero Media
As someone who has been fascinated with superheroes since elementary school, I am amazed at the explosion of superhero media (cartoons, live-action shows, and films) since the mid-90s. As a scholar, I find myself considering how this boom may be partially related to the core features of superhero narratives—features that have little or nothing to do with superpowers and larger-than-life missions. In particular, I am intrigued by the intersection of children’s development of sociomoral concepts (how youth understand actions that have moral consequences) and the superhero content they consume. Can these stories influence how children develop their sense of morality, particularly when co-viewing sparks family discussions? I will dig deeper into this question. But first, I want to begin with some research into how children process sociomoral concepts through the stories they tell.
Note: Although my scholarly interests lie in superhero narratives, these features are often present in other forms of children’s media. I am also aware that for various reasons, parents and guardians may have different views on the appropriateness of superhero media given the amount of violence.
What are some core features of narratives?
Since 2000, scholars investigating sociomoral development in children and adolescents have turned to narratives – asking children to recall or discuss morally consequential social interactions – to better understand how youth make sense of these experiences. Their findings can be broken down into three key features. These are youth’s ability to use storytelling to: (1) distinguish between different interpersonal acts, (2) attend to varied perspectives, and (3) appreciate the complex nature of certain moral acts.
Comparison of different interpersonal acts. In a study examining children’s stories about times where they have harmed a friend and have helped a friend, researchers found that the participants tended to reference emotions when they had done harm more often than when they had been helpful. In an earlier study involving mother and child relationships, emotional consequences tended to be applied differently. In these instances, the child’s feelings, such as pride, were considered more frequently in the help narratives. In the harm narratives, the discussion focused more on how the others involved might have felt, such as sadness.
Comparison of perspectives within interpersonal acts. In addition to distinguishing between harm and help narratives, research in this area has also compared viewpoints in narratives where someone was harmed or treated unfairly. In these cases, children described situations where they harmed someone (perpetrator) and situations where they were harmed (victim). Researchers found that in stories where the child was the perpetrator, they were more likely to: (1) consider both their own perspective and that of the other person and (2) justify the harm by arguing it was necessary. When narrating experiences related to social exclusion, youth referenced a victim’s hurt feelings and anger when they were the victim more often than when they were the perpetrator.
Comparison of age differences. Although important, evidence pointing to the roles of the nature of the act (harm vs. help) and the person’s vantage point within the situation (perpetrator vs. victim) make up only part of the story. Indeed, evidence suggests that in many ways age also matters. With respect to harm narratives, trust violation as a feature of the social experiences was more common in the narratives of adolescents than those of children. Moreover, in the same study it was found that compared to preschoolers, older children and adolescents were more likely to reference their own attempts to make sense of or construe the harm incidents. In the social exclusion study, older children and adolescents tended to describe themselves as active perpetrators as opposed to passive perpetrators. In both of these studies, older participants more often provided mixed evaluations of the harmful/exclusionary acts (e.g., thinking it was wrong in some ways but not others).
In essence, these studies show that youth can understand and articulate their experiences as perpetrator and victim, and as those who help and those who harm; especially as they get older. However, they sometimes have difficulty considering: (1) emotions associated with and (2) multiple perspectives within those experiences. Such findings present an opportunity for superhero content creators to rethink how they use characterizations and plot points to broach moral concepts for their audience, particularly children and adolescents. Parents may also use these superhero narratives as a potential aid with their youth’s development of these sociomoral concepts.
How might these findings inform content creation and co-viewing?
Given that: (1) social life inevitably includes instances of harming and being harmed by others and (2) superhero media prevalently features harm-related (i.e., violent) events, below are three practical suggestions related to family viewing of superhero media based on the above findings (concerns with the violent content of superhero media notwithstanding). These recommendations apply to both content creators and parents/guardians.
Actionable Insights
Differing motivations of superheroes and supervillains. Since superhero narratives contain conflicts between superheroes and supervillains, one recommendation for content creators is to make the motivations behind characters’ actions salient (e.g., through flashback episodes and origin stories). This would allow parents/guardians to discuss the characters’ differing motivations with their youth, focusing on the potential link between characters’ emotional experiences and their subsequent decisions to harm and/or help others.
Shifts in perspective to explore diverse consequences of harmful actions. Another recommendation for creators is to explore parallel worlds, or the idea that in a different world, the same character lived a very different life. These kinds of events can provide opportunities to engage youth in “what if” discussions focused on the potential relationship between a person’s vantage point or perspective within an event involving harm, and their understanding of that event.
Morally complex or morally gray characters and actions. Lastly, through the use of narratives that include morally complex acts or characters, content creators can provide opportunities for families to consider issues or events that contain both moral (e.g., harm and fairness) and nonmoral (e.g., psychological) elements. How youth attempt to make sense of these events may offer some insight into the extent to which they believe certain social experiences were morally complex, and thus not as “black and white” as the parent/guardian may have initially assumed.
Justin Martin, Ph.D.
Professor at Whitworth University
Multimedia Design with an Eye toward Emotions: Why Emotional Design is Central to Creating Better Learning Environments
Are you ever aware of your emotions while learning new information? Have you ever noticed or wondered why it seems easier to learn new information when you’re in a good mood compared to when you’re in a bad mood?
Emotions are thought to be important for learning in any context, but particularly in the context of multimedia environments. In fact, emotional design of multimedia environments aim to evoke emotions for better learning by tapping into emotional and motivational processes. Specifically, individuals who are highly engaged and motivated to complete an educational activity are also more likely to learn from it. This suggests that that the joy learners experience from interacting with a digital learning environment, likely influences a learner’s feelings about the experience, even outside of the digital environment. Thus, highly emotional contexts may be better support for learning.
One type of learning context that is highly engaging and motivating is game-based learning environments. The research team at the CREATE Lab of New York University examined emotions in game-based digital learning environments. They examined how color, shape, expression, and dimensionality of game characters could be used to induce emotions in a digital game-based learning environment among adolescent learners. After being shown a pair of game characters, participants reported their emotions by selecting the character that best matched the target emotion word (e.g., happy or sad). It was found that the game character’s facial expression (e.g., smiling, neutral, frowning) affected participants’ choices the most. By contrast, dimensionality (e.g., 2D or 3D visual appearance) appeared to affect participants' the most in immersive virtual reality settings. The color of the character (e.g., warm or grayscale pigments) and the shape of the character (e.g., round or square) influenced decisions to a lesser extent. These findings demonstrate how visual features of a game character could influence how a user feels. More importantly, the findings may suggest that in order to make users feel positively and to promote their learning, designers only need to change a very specific and simple aspect of the digital game environment: character expressions.
In another study, researchers at the CREATE Lab examined whether playing a version of game-based training with emotional design was associated with improvements in cognitive flexibility. Cognitive flexibility is defined as the ability to flexibly shift between different mental sets and is often measured by how well an individual can learn a new rule for sorting objects by the object’s shape, color, etc. The results indicated that older adolescents improved most on mental set shifting when they played the emotionally designed version (e.g., expressive game characters, warm colors, responsive features) of the game compared with those who played a neutral-looking version (e.g., non-expressive game characters, neutral and grayscale pigments, non-responsive features) of the same game. Taken together, these findings highlight the possibilities for educators and developers to consciously and strategically integrate foundations of emotional design into digital environments to improve learning outcomes.
There are many possibilities for incorporating elements of emotional design into digital learning environments. While research in this area points to fruitful opportunities, there is evidence that emotional design is associated with increased enjoyment, engagement, and performance. By better applying principles of emotional design to multimedia, we can improve learning outcomes. Both developers and consumers could benefit from understanding emotional design, and how it can be used to sustain engagement for optimal learning through moderate use in digital learning environments that possess educational rigor.
Actionable insights for content creators:
Begin with the user in mind. What appeals to the target audience? Considering what personalization, choice, themes, etc. might appeal to the idealized user is important. Particularly for children and adolescents, consciously designing such that the product is not only attractive but also developmentally appropriate is crucial.
Align emotional design choices with the goals of learning. To understand this recommendation, it may be helpful to understand the distinction between game mechanics and learning mechanics. Game mechanics refer to the methods employed by users that invoke interaction within a game state. Learning mechanics, by contrast, refer to the methods users engage in while performing a learning task within the game. Incorporating emotional design that is not connected with task-specific learning objectives may confuse the user and detract from the effectiveness of task engagement. Ultimately, if integrated properly, emotional design can serve to bypass this confusion and improve associated outcomes.
Test, evaluate, and design. In the course of designing or evaluating a multimedia learning environment, it is important to understand the users’ actual experience with it. Sometimes “idealized users” (i.e., those imagined by game designers or researchers) don’t reflect the interests and needs of the real users or the target population. Thus, determining how a real life user would interact within the learning environment and using this information to re-design and adjust the environment accordingly can help enhance the users’ learning.
Check your emotions when evaluating “educational” learning environments. Not all multimedia digital learning environments are designed for learning, even the ones carrying the label “educational.” These labels are often not applied with any clear or rigorous standards for accountability. A recent developmental science policy report indicated children are spending a considerable amount of time immersed in digital media, and the long-term consequences for development are still not entirely understood. While we may not fully understand the developmental consequences, it should be recognized that emotional design can also lead users down a garden path of intense engagement without substantive learning, even though it contains so many positive applications.
Teresa M. Ober & Maya C. Rose
The Graduate Center CUNY