Television Violence Causes Aggressive Behaviour

This research was I did on Television Violence Causes Aggressive Behaviour

Children are estimated to watch approximately 15,000 hours of television and witness about 180,000 murders, rapes, armed robberies, and assaults in one year, whilst spending 11,000 hours at school (Comstock & Strasburger, 1990). Some children start watching TV at the age of six month (Murray, no date), and TV is used all to often as an electronic baby sitter giving the care giver time to do other things (Comstock & Strasburger, 1990; Latline, 2001).

Social learning theory:
Children model their behaviour after adults, when a child sees an adult being rewarded for a certain behaviour, the child is more likely to imitate that behaviour.

Field studies:
Preschool TV Experiment: Consisted of 2 condition, a before and after study. Aggression levels were measured in the playground before the children watched a low level aggression TV show, and again after watching the TV show. Results – The children displayed more aggression after the watching TV. The same experiment was conducted again but children were given a choice of 2 toys to play with, 1: was a toy that when a lever was pulled on doll would hit the other doll over the head. 2: a ball in a maze type game. Results were the same (Comstock & Strasburger, 1990).
Primary school attitudinal change: Two versions of a story was shown to children, 1 Rock successfully takes Johnny's toy away and is rewarded. 2 Johnny successfully defends himself and thrashes Rocky. Results: 60% wanted to emulate Rocky when he got the toy, 20% wanted to be Johnny when he thrashed Rocky (Comstock & Strasburger, 1990). Also children that identify with a aggressive TV character predict latter aggression, in both males and females (N=450) (Huesmann, Moise-Titus, Podolski, & Eron, 2003)
Study on inmates: DR Susan Villani was interviewed on Lateline in 2001, she describes and MTV experiment in a jail, which showed that violent acts decreased when the inmates were deprived form watching MTV and then increased again when MTV was reintroduced. Dr. Villani emphatically stated that violent TV shows do increase violent behaviour, and that with the evidence of other studies that there is a causal link.
Superman Batman experiment: Prosocial and antisocial behaviour was measured for 4 week on 97 preschool children. Then the children watched 12 half hour episodes of batman and superman cartoons over a 4-week period. Antisocial behaviour (pushing, arguing breaking toys) increased. Another group of preschool children given a diet of Prosocial TV viewing (Mister Roger's Neighborhood) displayed less aggression, more cooperative and more willing to share with other children (Murray, no date).

Laboratory studies:
Bobo doll experiment: A Bobo doll is a plastic blow up doll that has sand in its base, and used as a punching bag, so when hit the doll will stand right back up again. The experiment consisted of 4 conditions. Condition 1: The control condition that measured the base line, observed children in a room of toys with the Bobo doll present. Condition 2: viewed a TV with an adult abusing the doll, both verbally and physically. Then placed back in the playroom. Condition 3: watch a real adult abusing the doll, both verbally and physically. Then placed back in the playroom. Condition 4: Used both condition 2 and 3 then replaced the Bobo boll with an adult in a clown suit. Results: There was a substantial increase in aggression in condition 2, 3, and 4 (Comstock & Strasburger, 1990).
TV perception experiment: Children at the age of 3-4 are more likely to try to clean up a broken egg that was seen on the TV screen, and also believed that if the TV were tilted the popcorn would spill out of a bowl. By the age of 5 over generalized the fiction on TV believing that even the news was not real. And by the age of 11 understood that the news was real (Comstock & Strasburger, 1990).
Commercial message memory experiment: Bushman (1998) found that people watching violent TV shows experience a drastically impaired memory, and recall for TV commercials that were imbedded in the ad breaks during the TV show.

Social Contagion Theory:
Social Contagion Theory explains how followers influence each other, involving the spontaneous spread of emotional and behavioral reactions. (Yukl, 2002. p.247) This theory was developed by Meindl (1990) to account for an unexplained motivation to act as a group with a single goal, or values in an organizational setting with out having a direct instruction to do so. People with a low social identity are more vulnerable to emulate a charismatic leader “at a distance or on television and is most likely to occur in a social crisis where self-esteem or survival is threatened (Yukl, 2002. p.247).
Island study: As TV is prevalent throughout the world, and many of the studies conducted were implemented in the western world how could we draw a conclusion that all this information is correct? St. Helena is an island in the South Atlantic 3,200km of the cost of South America and was without TV until March 1995, with a population of 5,500. Before TV came to the island it had the lowest incidences of behavioural problems in the world, besides Japan. Problems in preschool children [increased] - problems such as soiling or wetting their clothing, poor concentration, temper tantrums, lack of sociability with their peers, and fighting or destructive behaviour. It seems as though there has been an increase in behavioural problems, beginning with the arrival of television (Kruszelnicki, 1998).
Desensitization: What is this manifest in society? As research on a large population is financially impossible studies show that children that watch medium to high level violence a lot, are more likely to ignore others in the playground inflicting violence on other children (Comstock & Strasburger, 1990).
Views of consequences: Heroes use violence to achieve their goals, and are never seen as doing the wrong thing. Victims recover fast, or never seen in recovery. Antagonist is either killed or never seen suffering the consequences (Comstock & Strasburger, 1990).
Forbidden Fruit Theory: Experiments have shown that any authorized warning of violent content in a TV show increases the desire to watch those programs (Bushman & Stack, 1996).