I get that impression from the number and subject matter of studies that emerge from such sources on a wide range of topics, many downright obvious or blatantly ridiculous. These have included the optimal way to dunk a biscuit, on the collapse of public toilets in Glasgow, whether the wagging tails of catfish cause Japanese earthquakes and the conclusion that people who claim to have been kidnapped by aliens probably were.
Very much in the same field was a scientific paper that was published some time in 2013 by researchers in New Zealand.
It looked into the evolution of the facial expressions printed on Lego mini people—those one and half-inch toy figurines that come with Lego sets.
The time and effort put into the study demonstrated that Lego faces have become much more diverse in the past 35 years. Perhaps even more alarming was the finding that Lego is making more angry-looking mini-figures than ever before, to a point where the proportion of angry faces rivals that of happy ones.
The motivation behind the research is not, at first, clear.
We all know from our childhoods and even in later adult life about the therapeutic importance of old fashioned playing with Lego. Whether aged 10 or 50 I have spent many hours just swilling about in a carpet-dumped mound of the multi-coloured bricks with no particular final structure in mind but just perfectly happy messing about with different sizes and shapes. The tiny lego people are the finishing accessories to populate that town house, drive the fantastical off road vehicle, pilot the spaceship or sail the oceans in a sort of hybrid house/vehicle/ufo ship.
Unfortunately those purporting to have read and subjected the Lego expression report to close scrutiny did appear to be very much conspiracy theorists in that they came to the conclusion that the transition in facial expressions from vacant to demonic could have a damaging affect on children and their emotional development.
Typical media headlines following the publication of the report included
“Are angry Legos harming our children?,”
“Lego study Reveals angry faces on toys could influence your child’s negative behaviour,” and
“Lego creating more angry faces and it could harm children’s development.”
Those behind the study were astounded by this media interpretation of the research.
It was never intended, they stated, to be a definitive psychological, sociological or behavioural treatise. Rather it was just a bit of an eccentric, quirky LEGO study, part of the team's larger research effort to simply categorise LEGO people.
In fact, the study did not involve children in any capacity, either playing or giving that uniquely honest opinion that only children can.
What is more worrying is that the sensationalist headlines that subsequently alarmed parents and responsible adults about Denmark's greatest gift to humanity were obviously a consequence of those in the media not being bothered about even reading the study.
In fact the Lego study proved more valuable as an ollustration of the lackadaisical and complacent attitude of the media.
The New Zealand researchers seem to have conducted another study in that they claimed that only 20 percent of reporters read the study beforehand and then the bad ones just copied what everybody else was writing.
This is unfortunate, because the findings of the study were interesting in their own right. Here are some of the main findings;
i)The imaginary LEGO world has become increasingly more complex.
ii)LEGO minifigures no longer fall squarely in classic “good” and “evil” categories as children can now interact with scared-looking heroes or villains with “superior smiles.”
iii)LEGO is now producing more faces with different facial expressions than ever before. This might actually be a cost-cutting measure, the scientists say, where creating different face prints is likely less expensive than creating new torso prints.
Finally a group of adults were asked to analyse the facial expressions printed on LEGO people manufactured between 1975 and 2010, The scientists found that adults interpreted LEGO emotions differently when the heads where placed on a body—giving the facial expressions more context—than when viewed unattached. Adding a body decreased the frequency of how often adults categorised a face as disgusted, sad or surprised.
If parents are truly worried about the impact of angry-faced LEGO on their children they can opt to follow the wisdom of a LEGO communications manager who summed up the simplicity and innocence of the toy in advising “just switch heads with another figure.”
Sources; Scientific American 2013, My children's Lego collection
No comments:
Post a Comment