Sons are taking their cue from dads when it comes to milking their injuries to get maximum attention, says supporting research for Sudocrem’s new TV ad.
The research is conclusive; boys exaggerate more than girls and take longer to recover from playground tumbles. It also showed that they take their cue from dads. Here’s the lowdown from a study of children aged 8 years:
*Boys report twice as many injuries as girls. Over half said they received 2 injuries per week compared to the same number of girls who said they were hurt in the playground just once a week.
*A quarter describe an injury as ‘serious’ compared with just 10% of girls.
*60% of girls report that boys use their injuries to attract attention from playmates and teachers and *40% said boys keep their plasters on for longer than necessary to create a talking point.
*In contrast, boys report that girls may cry more easily but recover quicker.
What can we take from this
It’s all about boys’ needing to create a story that will earn them respect, says Nick Lang of Sudocrem. "Boys may hold back on the tears but they're much better at the little dramas, the fanfare that goes with a football injury or running into their best mate”.
The stories that go with the injuries vary between boys and girls. For boys, a scar takes on mythical proportions. "Think Harry Potter," says Nick Lang "where would he be without his lightening bolt? It's something to wear with pride whereas Hermione would have hidden it under her hair." A view sustained by the research which showed that 70% of girls worry that they may get a scar compared to 80% of boys who would like one! “A scar gives you an opportunity to tell a story." says Nick.
The psychology
And if you want to know where boys get their tendency to exaggerate, look no further than their fathers. 50% of boys say their dads do ‘dangerous’ jobs around the house and a third reckon their fathers have a lot of scars.
Consultant Psychologist Simon Moore explains, “There are two psychological reasons that might explain these findings: social learning styles and gender conditioning. In terms of social learning styles boys and girls learn and explore their world in different ways. While girls network and build up social reference groups, boys learn predominantly by competing with one another and are still influenced by the evolutionary tendency to be the ‘alpha male’. The second factor that might explain boys tendency to exaggerate lies in gender conditioning, the way we learn to be male and female in our societies. Men exaggerate at work more, during the early stages of dating, about illnesses’ and to their male friends about things that have happened. This technique is then passed down or learned from their fathers/grandfathers.”
I was given a small gift for sharing this information of behalf of sudocrem.
