Can violence on Television cause aggression in children?

[homer]

I have not been posting for all that long so if this is a redundant issue, I apologize. It was actually brought up in on of the other recent posts about the teen poisoning his friend.

The following is from a paper I wrote concerning this issue: (please excuse the grammatical errors).

An individual by the name of George Gerbner, Ph. D. has done numerous studies into violence in children’s programs. These studies “have shown that children’s TV shows contain about 20 violent acts each hour”. Gerbner also believes that this is likely to cause children to have a negative view on society and the world around them. There was also a study conducted at Harvard University concerning this issue.

The Research done at Harvard, consisted of viewing seventy-four feature length cartoon movies. Movies are not necessarily television programs, however it is very easy for today’s children to see these movies on their televisions. Devices such as cable television, satellite dishes, VCRs, and DVD players make them very accessible. The research revealed some disturbing facts. Every movie watched contained at least one act of violence and in close to half of the movies shown, the main characters are seen celebrating an act of violence by cheering or laughing. This study also showed that these violent scenes, at least in movies made in 1990 and later, tend to last close to eleven minutes.

I decided a good way to look into this was to watch a few cartoons.
One of the programs that I watch was a cartoon by the name of Tom and Jerry. In a five-minuet skit the cat and mouse are shown using guns and swords on each other and inventing various ways of blowing each other up; dynamite, bombs, and cannons. Of course, after each scene they are ok and ready to go at it again. I also viewed the some of the more popular programs. Shows named Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Dragon Ball Z, Pokiemon, and Digimon. The main point in most of these half hour programs is to fight and destroy anyone who does not see things the way the main characters do. These are the children’s programs, the ones that most parents allow their children to watch. However, cartoons are not the only programs our children are watching.

In television news programs, children “see more than thirty dead bodies a week. Other studies show that most children by the age of six have seen, on television, approximately six thousand people destroyed or blown up. Likewise, by the age of fifteen most individuals have, “witnessed some thirteen thousand violent TV deaths” . The American Psychological Association conducted a survey that concluded, “American children witness eight thousand murders on television and one hundred thousand other violent acts before they reach junior high school” . Some psychologists believe that all this violence is not negatively affecting our children.

There are those that theorize, “If violence in television causes people to be more aggressive, than shouldn’t the good-hearted qualities in television cause its audience to be kinder to others?”. There is also a theory, called the Catharsis effect, that states viewing violence might actually cause someone to act less aggressive. There has been very little research done on this theory and most Psychologists find it questionable.

Professor Felton Earls, of the Harvard school of Public heath, also believes that viewing violence does not cause aggression. He suggests:
Only some children, particularly those with attention deficit disorder or information processing disorders may be affected by television violence. Most children do not have these disorders therefore most children do not act aggressively when they see violence on television.

A Psychologist, by the name of Albert Bandura, has done extensive research in observational learning; his conclusions contradict Earls Theory.
Bandura did a number of studies on observed aggression and its effect on children. One of his experiments consisted of groups of children who were given various examples of violence to watch. These children were then compared to a group that had been given no examples of violence. They concluded that, “exposure to humans on film portraying aggression was the most influential in eliciting and shaping aggressive behavior”. Bandura believes that violence in the media, besides causing aggression, may actually teach children new ways to commit violent acts. Bandura was one of the first to do this kind of study; consequently there have been more.

Working at the University of Pennsylvania, Aletha Huston, Ph.D., performed many studies involving violence and television. In one such study 100 preschool children were used. One group was given violent cartoons to watch and the other group given non-violent cartoons to watch. Huston concluded that, “Children who watch the violent shows, even ‘just funny’ cartoons, were more likely to hit out at their playmates” . In another study a Psychologist by the name of, Leonard Eron, Ph.D, found that children who watch a lot of violent television in elementary school are more aggressive teenagers. Likewise, many other institutions and individuals have researched the effects of television violence on children.

Stanford University conducted a study involving more than one thousand school children. They concluded, “seeing real-life violence on television news programs may have just as powerful an effect on young children as experiencing an actual terrifying incident themselves . William Belson conducted a study that consisted of 1,565 teenage boys who had watched an excessive amount of television as children. The study concluded that these individuals committed rapes and assaults, “at a rate 49% higher than teenage boys who had watched below average quantities of television violence”; this study was funded by CBS.

The American Psychological Association’s research has concluded that there are three major effects of violence on television. They conclude, “Children may become less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others. Children may be more fearful of the world around them” and “children may be more likely to behave in aggressive or harmful ways toward others”. In another study, conducted over a twenty-two year time period, 875 children were observed. It was discovered that children who did not show signs of aggression at a young age, but were allowed to watch violent television, grew into violent-prone teenagers .

Furthermore, The American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry indicates:
Children who view shows in which violence is very realistic, frequently repeated or unpunished, are more likely to imitate what they see. The impact of TV violence may be immediately evident in the child’s behavior or may surface years later, and young people can even be affected when the family atmosphere shows no tendency toward violence.

I have observed this type of behavior in my own child.
I have watched Quinn viewing cartoon characters punching each other and then in turn hitting his mother in the same fashion. It is not evident that he is trying to hurt his mother, however it is also obvious he dose not know he is hurting her. He is still to young to understand the consequences of his actions, but he is very capable of emulating observed behavior.

I decided to ask my sister, who is a mother of two, if she had seen similar behavior in her children.

When I asked her if her six-year-old son is able to differentiate between TV violence and real world violence she responded with:
I do not think so, not really anyway. I mean if I ask him about why he is doing something that hurts his sister and dose he understand that she is in pain and dose not want him to do it, he will tell me something like, “well they do that in the cartoon and they don’t cry”

Likewise, she expressed that her son believes it is ok to use violence to solve a problem. He is not able to understand why he gets in trouble for doing something, when the characters on the television are praised for the same type of behavior.

Does all of this evidence prove that television violence causes aggression in children?
The studies and research have irrefutably proven that children emulate what they see on television. Also, there can be no doubt that there is violence on television. Violence in children’s programs and in movies aimed at childhood audiences. The research also shows that television violence can definitely contribute to aggression in a child.

Please keep in mind that, unless otherwise quoted, these are my opinions. I welcome anyone else’s opinions or facts on the subject. As may have already been made obvious, I have children and am very interested in what people think about this subject.

[Harkoliar]

i agree,
i have a little brother right now. we let him watch tv most of the time (like teletubbies or barney) but sometimes when i watch tv, (like the fighting stuff), my little bro (only 2 yrs old), when he gets violent or when he is angry, tries to imitate those characters in the movie by making chopping swings and kicks.. sigh.

[jabidas]

Well partially it depends on the kind of violence. If it means smashing your siblings toes with a hammer and putting the bits that fall off into his mouth ok there is a real problem.

However if you mean play fighting that doesn't count. Every male child in the world play fights at some stage. It is one of the only consistent things in development. Most people would recognize this as kids wrestling and that it is not violent. We should not try to deny that our race is aggressive but we must limit the destructive tendencies.

About Bandura, his research is flawed on a number of levels. First of all it was done in a lab. Not a natural environment so he cannot assume it will be the same reaction for the real world. This is especially true for children, adults are awkward when in a strange enviorment but reactions from children can be off the wall. If you have ever had a child drink the water from one of the containers out of Piaget's classic conservation of quantity experiment you will know what I mean. Next there might have been confusion about what they were supposed to do. The children were put into groups randomly which would have caused anxiety. Since when do Kid ever organize themselves randomly? They were all white from middle class backgrounds so it was hardly what you might deem a cross cultural study. I could go but there plenty of textbooks willing to do it for me.

Gerbner is quite correct to bring up the priming affect. It is an interesting one today because of the spiraling effects involved. However you must consider context. If a child has a violent dream will he be inclined to be violent? No just a bit moody in the morning. Basically dreams and television are not part of what you might refer to as the stream of reality. They are disconnected viewings and separate from the logical world that the child lives in. The child can know that the violence is not real because it does not make any logical sense for it to be real. They do not make sense in context to everyday. However violent news reports are another matter. These can scare children because violence becomes real. A lot of children grow up thinking most people die from gangland murders or from drugs with the real numbers are tiny. If you grow believing the world is like a news report[ort it is a scary place indeed. Obviously this applies to realistic violence as well. There is another issue here in that kids are not legally supposed to be shown this but that is ground to cover another day.

Catharsis theory has been around for about 2500 hundred years and we have Aristotle to thank for it. Him and possibly Freud and if you are studying psychology you will know he is not exactly held in the most positive of lights. Anyways it can work sometimes as in punch a pillow, or play quake but does it come to I am angry so I attack somebody. Catharsis is a funny one so no direct judgments.

About attention deficit children, well there is a lot of pain there anyway so it might be hard to attribute violence on tv as one of the main causes. Consider how stressed the parents must be with the kids, that frustration will lead to aggression in the child. The hypothesis does not work for adults obviosly but it could be real for children. All kinds of problems there so it is hard to pin down. Experiments with these kids are really hard to do as well.

About the violence of superheroes being praised, I think B.F. Skinner would refer to that as positive reinforcement. A very dangerous thing to give a child.

The main thing is that many laws are not enforced properly. Apparently nobody takes them seriously but possibly they are the most important. Psychologists don't get to decide the law so we cannot argue about how it should be done. It is sort of irrelevant, all that can be done is send recommendations. Seems like a curse but perhaps it is best psychologists don't get to decide because someone like the afore mentioned Skinner might be the one deciding. He raised his daughter in a sealed air cot. She turned out fine but it seems a bit monstrous.

What causes violence in children? I think mostly it is our ineptitude. Good report though. Nice references and you have something for both sides.Anything I haven't moaned about I think is pretty accurate. You are completley right about showing real violence to children and its effects anyway.

[Sir Krustin]

Originally posted by jabidas: However if you mean play fighting that doesn't count. Every male child in the world play fights at some stage. It is one of the only consistent things in development. Most people would recognize this as kids wrestling and that it is not violent. We should not try to deny that our race is aggressive but we must limit the destructive tendencies.

Considering that studies show that there is a negative correlation between violent play and violent behaviour later in life, I'd say it's nothing to worry about.

(That is to say, if a kid plays army or cops and robbers as a kid, he tends to grow up less violent as a rule)

[jabidas]

My point exactly. When do we say violent and what do we mean by it? And is what might be apparentley violent as bad as it appears.

[Animal]

I see no direct link between the two, but I would think that the child should be aware that what's on the TV is not real, only fiction (goes for news also )
Much like Sir Krustin said playing cops and robbers, army men etc... is just as violent as TV, just not as graphic. You need to know when to draw the line as to what is acceptable and what is not. as pretty much every show including cartoons are violent, some cartoons excessively.
Daffy Duck teaches us you CAN get shot in the face with a shotgun and be perfectly, okay.

[johnny]

Well, i remember when my friends and i watched Bruce Lee movies when we were little, we kicked the crap out of eachother when it was over. Everyone wanted to be Bruce.

[ 01-11-2003, 10:12 PM: Message edited by: johnny ]

[Animal]

Originally posted by johnny: Well, i remember when my fiends and i watched Bruce Lee movies when we were little, we kicked the crap out of eachother when it was over. Everyone wanted to be Bruce.

That sure explains a lot.

[johnny]

Originally posted by Animal: quote: Originally posted by johnny: Well, i remember when my fiends and i watched Bruce Lee movies when we were little, we kicked the crap out of eachother when it was over. Everyone wanted to be Bruce.

That sure explains a lot. [/QUOTE]Later i went with Jacky Chan. Remember his earlier movies ? In one of them, he came up with a style called "drunken master". I think i did that better than Jacky. [img]graemlins/showoff.gif[/img]

[Animal]

I remember trying to re-create pro wrestling with my brothers back in the early 80's. Hulk Hogan was soooo cool back then. Whatcha gonna do, brother?