Abstract
Drawing upon social cognitive theory and social learning theory, we introduce an engaging classroom activity that encourages students to critically address the enduring influence of early childhood narratives, such as fairy tales, on self-concept formation and workplace behavior. Using stories such as Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and The Little Mermaid as symbolic and analytic lenses, students engage in guided reflection to engage in guided reflection to surface the master narratives they have internalized and how these scripts can normalize passivity, dependence, obedience, and rigid gender roles. Anchored in experiential learning, the activity builds self-awareness, challenges ingrained assumptions, and fosters more adaptive, agentic, and inclusive workplace behaviors.
Keywords
Introduction
Identity is continuously constructed through the interplay of personal, master, and alternative narratives: each shaped by sociocultural forces and developmentally embedded over time (McLean & Syed, 2015). As the earliest and most influential master narratives, fairy tales operate as developmental scripts, offering simplified but deeply resonant portrayals of power, gender, virtue, and destiny (Ahn, 2011; Wright et al., 2013). They subtly shape internalized values, emotional expectations, and behavioral norms that often persist into adolescence and adulthood (Bandura, 2001; McLean & Syed, 2015; Rosenberg, 1965). Through repetition and cultural ubiquity, fairy tales transmit gendered master narratives that valorize passivity, reward physical beauty, and naturalize emotional dependency, particularly for women.
This paper stresses the prominent role of early childhood narratives in forming enduring cognitive schemas that can affect adult workplace values and behaviors such as confidence, autonomy, leadership, and career aspirations (Bandura, 2001; McLean & Syed, 2015; Rosenberg, 1965). We use the symbolic lens of the “princess problem” to examine how some early childhood narratives containing repetitive, binary, and often rigid traditional gender scripts can constrain identity development. While the examples explored in this activity are drawn from familiar Western fairy tales (e.g., Disney adaptations), such gendered archetypes are far from culturally isolated. Variants of this binary model appear across global storytelling traditions, including the Grimm tales of Europe, Viking sagas, Greek mythology, and Asian folktales.
This teaching project employs an experiential learning framework to guide students in critically reflecting on the implicit messages conveyed through fairy tales, which emphasize themes of rescue, virtue, obedience, and gendered power dynamics (England et al., 2011). By connecting psychological theory to cultural storytelling, the classroom activity challenges students to identify, deconstruct, and reframe internalized narratives that may unconsciously influence their self-concept, leadership style, and career aspirations. In doing so, it encourages a deeper investigation of how early identity scripts shape adult behavior and how they might be revised for greater personal and professional agency. Instructors are strongly encouraged to adapt the early childhood narrative stories using culturally relevant legends from diverse contexts to spark more inclusive dialogue.
Theoretical Foundation
By re-examining familiar fairy tales through a psychological and symbolic lens, students engage in meaning-making processes that promote self-awareness and cognitive reframing, two essential components for personal and professional growth. The design of this experiential activity also draws on two seminal psychological theories of personality and learning: Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) and Rotter’s Social Learning Theory (SLT).
Bandura’s SCT (1977, 1986, 1997) explains behavior as the result of dynamic interactions among personal factors, behavior, and environmental influences. A central component of SCT is vicarious learning, where individuals learn by observing others and experiencing the consequences of those actions. Children absorb behavioral norms and values through exposure to role models, both real and fictional. Fairy tales often suggest that a woman’s value lies in appearance, virtue, selfless sacrifice, and relational dependence rather than in competence, initiative, or autonomy. This symbolic communication links individuals to social networks and community settings, significantly shaping children’s internalized understandings of gender roles and social expectations (Bandura, 2001).
Self-efficacy, a key construct in SCT, refers to one’s belief in their capacity to execute behaviors necessary to achieve desired outcomes. Symbolic models in mass communication, such as princess narratives, transmit gendered scripts which can guide gender-linked conduct throughout the life course through motivational and self-regulatory mechanisms (Bandura, 2001; Bussey & Bandura, 1999). When young audiences cannot identify with narrowly portrayed protagonists or observe competence linked to restrictive traits, vicarious learning may depress domain-specific self-efficacy and self-esteem, dampening voice, aspirations, and persistence in stereotyped domains.
Complementing Bandura’s emphasis on agency and reciprocal determinism, Rotter’s SLT (1954, 1966) underscores behavior as a joint function of expectancy (the subjective belief of an outcome) and the reinforcement value (the importance of that outcome) within a defined psychological situation. Princess narratives frequently pair high-value reinforcers (status, love, rescue) with non-instrumental compliant responses, while agentic problem solving is ignored. Repeated exposure, via discriminative cues (e.g., beauty, obedience) and vicarious reinforcement, raises expectancies for compliant responses and lowers expectancies for agentic ones, and through generalization cultivates a generalized expectancy of external control (a prince, fate, or magic) rather than one’s own actions. Our intervention counteracts these contingencies by (a) presenting counter-stereotypic role models, (b) guiding reattribution from external to internal control (“my actions influence outcomes”), and (c) structuring mastery-oriented problem-solving with credible reinforcement. These design features reweight expectancies, increase freedom of movement, strengthen an internal locus of control, and restore perceived agency in academic, leadership, and workplace contexts.
Mass-mediated symbolic models disseminate and normalize these scripts; princess-themed content is a salient, widely consumed component of early-childhood media (Ahn, 2011; Wright et al., 2013). Repeated exposure is associated with stronger endorsement of gender-stereotyped traits and behaviors, with longitudinal evidence showing that greater engagement with princess culture predicts increases in traditionally feminine, appearance-focused, and domestic play for girls (Bussey & Bandura, 1999; Coyne et al., 2016; England et al., 2011). Our instructional design leverages experiential learning to interrupt these pathways: students surface, analyze, and “re-script” internalized media messages through guided reflection, feedback, and mastery-oriented practice (D. A. Kolb, 1984; A. Y. Kolb & Kolb, 2018), aligning with management-education best practices for cultivating agency and critical perspective (Doh, 2003).
Learning Objectives
After completing this highly interactive exercise, students will be able to do the following:
Explain and apply seminal psychological theories to understand how identity and behavior are formed and expressed in organizational contexts.
Critically examine how childhood fairy tales function as master narratives that shape individuals’ self-concepts and their subsequent workplace behaviors.
Draw parallels between literary archetypes and real-world workplace behaviors, including emotional labor, stereotype-based performance expectation, relational dynamics, etc.
Develop critical thinking skills to identify outdated, idealized, or exclusionary values embedded in stories, and evaluate their relevance, impact, and resonance with present-day cultural and organizational ideas.
Discuss strategies to recognize, mitigate, and reframe limiting identity scripts or inherited assumptions that may hinder leadership development, workplace engagement, or self-advocacy.
Experiential Learning Activity Instructions
This experiential learning activity provides undergraduates across all majors with an interactive and engaging opportunity to critically explore how early childhood narratives affect their development of core self-concepts, personality traits, values, and subsequent workplace behaviors. The exercise serves as a valuable self-assessment and professional empowerment tool, making it highly relevant and insightful for undergraduates from diverse academic backgrounds. The session described typically lasts between 40 and 60 minutes.
Step 1: Introduction and Engagement (10 minutes)
The instructor begins the session by introducing several foundational psychological concepts (e.g., communal and agentic personality traits, self-efficacy, self-esteem, and locus of control) relevant to identity formation and workplace attitudes and behaviors.
Pre-discussion self-reflection prompt: What is your favorite childhood story? Was it a fairy tale, cartoon, myth, or movie? What lessons or ideas have you learned from it? What behaviors or values did it reward? How might it still influence how you see yourself at work or school to this day?
Play some selected YouTube videos on gender archetypes and critiques to prompt ideas and thoughts (see Appendix E).
Step 2: Group Activity Setup (5 minutes)
After the initial discussion, the instructor can divide students into groups (3–5 per group), assigning each a princess story: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, The Little Mermaid, or culturally relevant alternatives. For each group, the instructor will provide the following materials:
Appendix A includes a set of princess stories to be assigned to each group, but the instructors are encouraged to replace them with culturally relevant legends from diverse contexts.
Appendix B includes a self-guided discovery to evaluate how the princess stories influence the development of individuals’ communal versus agentic personality and self-concepts if the audience is deep into the princess stories.
Appendix C contains an evaluation form to assess the core values derived from the assigned princess stories. The students are expected to list a few core values that are rewarded or punished in the princess stories, assess how relevant they are, and how they will influence their audiences’ workplace behaviors (see Appendix D).
To scaffold master narrative analysis, we curated short YouTube clips that showcase gender-archetype portrayals alongside critical commentary (see Appendix E).
Step 3: Guided Reflections and Group Discussion (30 minutes)
Each group will read their assigned story, then collaboratively answer the following reflection questions: self-efficacy, self-esteem, locus of control, communal and agentic personality traits, value assessment, and implications for workplace behaviors (in Appendices B, C, and D). Some tips to guide reflections and group discussions are presented in Appendix F.
Step 4: Debrief (10–15 minutes)
This debriefing phase is essential for facilitating higher-order reflection, personal insight, and professional application. Following the experiential learning cycle (D. A. Kolb, 1984; A. Y. Kolb & Kolb, 2018), the debrief encourages students to move beyond surface-level reactions to deep reasoning and transformative learning. The instructor will guide the discussion with thought-provoking prompts (Appendix G) that stimulate analytical, emotional, and creative responses.
These conversations aim to draw parallels between students’ insights and contemporary leadership challenges, workplace expectations, and evolving professional identity norms. The instructors will encourage students to reexamine their assumptions about self-concepts, power, success, gender, agency, and voice in organizational life. The instructor can enhance the debrief using visual aids or slides to highlight recurring values and archetypes from the stories and relate them to workplace issues such as gendered expectations in leadership, workforce participation gap, implicit bias and emotional labor, and glass ceiling and cliff (see Appendix D).
Variations
This class activity can be modified in various ways to facilitate additional explorations in management, psychology, and sociology education. One could change the discussion to self-assessment of personal attitudes and behaviors triggered by specific childhood stories or events. Another example includes adding a comparison of princess stories with “boy” stories to explore how narratives shape implicit biases and stereotype formation within diverse organizational contexts.
Importantly, this activity is not designed solely to empower women. Rather, it serves as a reflective exercise for all gender types and social identities, inviting participants to critically examine the social norms, traditions, societal scripts, and conventional beliefs they may have unconsciously internalized or conformed to over time. This activity can be reframed as a narrative flip exercise (e.g., gender-swapping the main characters or shifting the cultural context), then analyzing how those changes affect the story’s message, character dynamics, and professional relevance.
In facilitating this activity, instructors should be aware of potential emotional distress. Some students may deeply resonate with the narratives being analyzed and may exhibit signs of discomfort, such as avoiding eye contact or remaining quiet during discussion. These reactions may stem from unresolved insecurities or identity conflicts. In such cases, it is helpful to incorporate practices that foster self-appreciation and self-compassion, creating a psychologically safe space that encourages honest reflection and personal growth.
Conclusion
This experiential teaching method offers a psychologically grounded and pedagogically robust framework for critical identity work in the classroom. By re-engaging with familiar childhood narratives through a symbolic reflective lens, students are invited to surface, question, and reconstruct internalized scripts that may unconsciously shape their self-concept, leadership potential, and workplace behavior.
The activity targets core social-learning processes (e.g., observational learning, vicarious reinforcement, and narrative framing) to link early exposure to symbolic models with present professional norms, aspirations, and role behavior. Structured small-group analysis and staged reflection (e.g., prompted journaling, peer dialogue, and plenary debrief) support theory-to-practice integration, strengthening identity flexibility, perspective taking, and values-based decision making. Students learn to decode cultural narratives, surface and challenge limiting attributions, and “re-script” personal stories to align with equity-oriented leadership goals. Consistent with course evaluations and post-activity reflection memos, students report clearer connections between childhood media and workplace dynamics and a greater sense of agency in shaping their leadership style and career trajectories.
Footnotes
Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C
Appendix D
Appendix E
Appendix F
Appendix G
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
