Television and Media Violence - Is Aggressive Behavior Linked to TV Vio

Is Aggressive Behavior Linked to Television Violence?      Ã‚   According the Centerwall (1992), the average child aged 2-5 in 1990 watched 27 hours of television per day, or almost 4 hours per day. When much of what is on television, including cartoons and television shows targeted at children, contains violence, it becomes important to know whether watching televised violence can lead to or increase aggressive behavior. Social learning theory tells us that children model their behavior after those they see. It is reasonable, then, to infer that watching violence on television will lead to behaving violently, due to the modeling effect. The present study reviews some relevant prior research, and then investigates the hypothesis that children who view violent television behave more aggressively than children who view less violent television do.    Centerwall (1992) performed an intriguing study that strongly suggests a positive correlation with television viewing and aggressive, violent behavior. This study looks at the effect that the introduction of television had on the populations of three countries: the United States, Canada, and South Africa. Centerwall compared the homicide rates in these three countries during the years of 1945, 1974, and 1987. In 1945, the US and Canada were blessed with television, so the homicide statistics from 1945 were the last statistics that did not have the influence of television. South Africa, in contrast, did not receive television until 1975. Before 1975, South Africa had introduced other media   radio and cinema for example   so these statistics isolate the effect of television as a cause of increased homicide rates. Center... ...on cartoons on emotionally disturbed children. Journal of Pediatric Psychology 12:413-427 Huston-Stein, A., Fox, S., Greer, D., Watkins, B. A., & Whitaker, J. (1981). The effects of TV action and violence on children's social behavior. Journal of Genetic Psychology 138:183-191 Wiegman, O., Kuttschreuter, M., & Baarda, B. (1992). A longitudinal study of the effects of television viewing on aggressive and prosocial behaviors. British Journal of Social Psychology 31:147-164 Centerwall, B. S. (1992). Television and violence: the scale of the problem and where to go from here. The Journal of the American Medical Association 267:3059-3063 Singer, M. I., Miller, D. B., Guo, S., Flannery, D. J., Frierson, T., Slovak, K. (1999). Contributors to violent behavior among elementary and middle school children. Pediatrics 104:878