TV Violence and Aggressive behavior in Children

Because much of the research on TV violence and aggressive behavior in children is correlational, it is difficult to determine cause and effect. Describe how some researchers have tried to get around this problem. What have they found?

Much research were sought after in finding the relationship between TV violence and aggressive behaviour in children. Bandura’s classical theory of generalised imitation was a landmark study on imitation of aggressive behaviour as immediate effect (Mazur, 1965 as cited in Mazur, 2006).

Huesmann, Lagerspetz and Eron (1984) investigated intervening variables in the TV Violence-Aggression Relation for 758 children in US and 220 children in Finland. By employing an overlapping longitudinal design, they used interviewed and tested for 3 years in the children. The result showed that TV violence viewing was significantly related to concurrent aggression and predicted future changes in aggression. Path analyses showed a bidirectional causal effect in which violence viewing engenders aggression, and aggression engenders violence viewing.

Later on, Huesmann, Moise-Titus, Podolski, and Eron (2003) used partially of the old data to do follow up on longitudinal relation to the TV violence and aggression. The old data, which was from the same participants who took part in the earlier studies conducted by Huesmann et. al. (1984). Follow up archival data (N=450) and interview data (N= 329) showed that childhood exposure to media violence predicts young adult aggressive behaviours in both genders. The relationship between TV violence and aggression remain strongly associated even after controlled other variables of socioeconomic status, intellectual ability and parenting factors.

The impact of watching TV violence of children who behave aggressively can be explained by the pattern of brain activation. Murray et al. (2006) examined brain activation in 8 children, aged 9-13 years old who watched televised violent and nonviolent video sequences. Meanwhile, children’s brain activities were measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI). The result revealed that large number of aggressive scripts kept in long term-memory in the posterior cingulate. It is later recalled and subsequently acted upon when committing violent acts.

It is suggested that future studies may look into other possible variables, which are facilitating to the aggressive behaviour in children and TV violence.

References:

Huesmann, L. R., Lagerspetz, K., & Eron, L. D. (1984). Intervening variables in the tv violence-aggression relation:Evidence from two countries. Developmental Psychology, 20, 746-775.

Huesmann, L. R., Moise-Titus, J., Podolski, C., & Eron, L. D. (2003). Longitudinal relations between children’s exposure to TV violence and their aggressive and violent behavior in young adulthood: 1977-1992. Developmental Psychology, 39 (2), 201-221.

Mazur, J. E. (2006). Learning and Behavior. (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Murray, J. P., Liotti, M., Ingmundson, P. T., Mayberg, H. S., Pu, Y., Zamarripa, F., et al. (2006). Children’s brain activations while viewing televised violence revealed by fMRI. Media Psychology, 8, 25-37.