animals as symbols

This research topic submitted by Lynn Marker (markerlm2miavx1.muohio.edu) on 3/18/98.

sounds like you guys have a pretty interesting subject area.
maybe you can look at how animals are used to represent certain human characteristics in myths and other literary genre. many of these representations have ancient origins ie snakes as cunning trixters date as far back as the story of adam and eve. do these ancient foundations have anything to do with our fears?-are we taught through cultural representation to fear some animals and love others? or is there some kind of inherient fear that would exist regardless of cultural representation?
i think it would be important to look at WHY we would have a biological fear (if infact this is what you believe). what evolutionary or psycological benifit could a fear of snakes possibly give us.

maybe you can test people's ability to be influenced by literature by having people read stories where an otherwise neutral animal or variety of animals is personified (maybe a zebra or goldfish)in either a positive or negative way. have the people rate the animal/animals as favorable or non favorable on some sort of scale (1-10) before the story. then have them rerate the animals after the story, to see if their opinion of the animal was at all changed. you can give 1/3 of a group stories where an animals has neutral human characteristics, 1/3 stories where the animal has positive human characteristics and 1/3 stories where the animal has negative characteristics.

you could even portray animals that are normally bad as good (a super friendly snake) and vise versa and see what kind of results you get

just a thought
lynn
-ps excuse my spelling, i am lost without spellcheck
just a thought.
i hope that everythings goes well


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