A study examined whether television's stereotypical portrayals of men and women affected children's sex role preferences. The subjects, 105 fifth and 70 eighth grade students from a predominately black urban school in the southern United States, were assigned to see one of three versions of a videotape of a family drama in which male and female characters took on various occupational, familial, and socioemotional roles. The sex-typed and sex-reversed (nontraditional) tapes were exact replicas with the male and female characters simply switching lines and roles. Some lines in the androgynous version were modified slightly to allow the characters to each take half of the feminine and half of the masculine lines and roles. The results showed that, in general, children could be influenced by short term exposure to alternative sex role portrayals. The influence was mediated, however, by age and sex of the viewer and the dimension of sex role being studied. Specifically, children who saw the sex-typed version increased the most in "sex-typedness," while those who saw the nontraditional versions increased the least or moved to a nonsex-typed preference direction. Girls of both ages showed less sex typing than did boys, especially eighth grade boys. Eighth grade girls also showed greater change than the younger girls on the socioemotional sex role dimension after exposure to the nontraditional version of the tape. (FL)