Results of Laboratory Research
Leading social scientists like Dr. Albert Bandura, professor of psychology at Stanford, Dr. Leonard Berkowitz, professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin, and others, have conducted laboratory experiments specifically for the purpose of evaluating the impact of televised aggression on children.
For instance, Dr. Bandura designed a series of experiments using nursery school children averaging 2 years and 3 months of age.
The children were divided into four different groups. One group witnessed a real-life adult model kick, punch and beat on the head with a mallet a five-foot Bobo doll.
A second group witnessed an adult model beat up the Bobo doll on film. The third group watched a movie, projected through a television console, that also showed an adult model beating up the Bobo doll, but this time the adult was costumed as a cartoon cat. The fourth group (the control group) didn't see any aggressive models.
After this viewing, each child was individually taken to a room which contained a Bobo doll, aggressive toys — dart guns and a mallet like the one used by the adult model, and nonaggressive toys — tea sets, crayons, coloring paper, dolls, cars, trucks and plastic farm animals.
The children witnessing the adult model attack the Bobo doll — live, on film and on television — showed almost twice as much aggression as the control group. The group seeing the model attack the doll tended to IMITATE the same type of violent aggression. The difference in arousing aggression of the various viewing conditions — live, film, or TV — was negligible.
From this experiment two basic conclusions were reached. The experience of seeing violence tended to reduce the child's inhibitions against acting in a violent manner. Secondly, the experience helped shape the form of the child's aggressive behavior.
Dr. Leonard Berkowitz and other leading social scientists have reached similar conclusions through their laboratory research.
After careful study of all such available research, the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence was moved to warn: "We believe it is reasonable to conclude that a constant diet of violent behavior on television has an adverse effect on human character and attitudes. Violence on television encourages violent forms of behavior, and fosters moral and social values about violence in daily life which are unacceptable in a civilized society."
Yet even after all of these test results controversy still rages. A high-level group, the Surgeon General's Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior, had to be appointed to further investigate the impact of television violence on the behavior of children.
The majority of researchers assigned by the Surgeon General's Advisory Committee to investigate the effects of television violence are tentatively reaching the same conclusions — that TV violence encourages violent forms of behavior.
Noted researchers J.R. Dominick and Bradely S. Greenberg report in their research, Girls' Attitudes toward Violence as Related to TV Exposure, Family Attitudes, and Social Class (1971), said that: "The greater the level of exposure to TV violence, the more the child was willing to use violence, to suggest it as a solution to conflict, and to perceive it as effective."
Said researchers McLeod, Atkin and Chaffee in Adolescents, Parents, and Television Use (1971), ". . . the more the child watches violent television fare, the more aggressive he is likely to be as measured by a variety of self-report measures."
Dr. Robert M. Liebert, Department of Psychology, State University of New York at Stony Brook, and Dr. Robert A. Baron, Department of Psychology, Purdue University, in a report to the 1971 American Psychological Association Convention, mentioned that sixteen out of eighteen experimental studies from "seven of the eight research teams, present evidence which supports the hypothesis that viewing aggression can instigate subsequent aggression among observers."
TV Violence Is Harmful
But let us ask ourselves some commonsense questions. Do we want our children to murder someone? Or even to learn how to murder someone? Of course not. No normal parent would. Then why allow your child to watch someone else get murdered? Why let your child experience the vicarious participation in a murder on television? Why fill a child's mind — and yours for that matter — with killing and all manner of violence?
Said Dr. Frederick Wertham, a psychiatrist who is reputed to be the world's leading authority on human violence, in the October 1962, American Journal of Psychiatry, "The relentless commercialism and the surfeit of brutality, violence and sadism has made a profound impression on susceptible young people. The result is a distortion of natural attitudes in the direction of cynicism, greed, hostility, callousness and insensitivity."
Over fifteen years ago Dr. Wertham warned that young people were going to commit more and more serious and violent crimes.
He was right. Today there is a spiraling rise of violent crimes committed by young people. There has been a 300% increase in robbery arrests among 10 to 14-year-olds between 1958 and 1970. And more than 50% of all FBI-indexed crime is committed by teenagers under 18.
Is there any connection between these facts and our TV viewing habits?
The reader can form his own conclusions. It is, however, very dangerous to assume that such a powerful medium as television would have no effect on a very impressionable entity — the human mind.
Does all this mean a person should yank the television cord out of the wall socket or take an axe to the TV set? No, not necessarily.
The television set of itself is not the problem. It only receives what broadcasters choose to sell and audiences choose to watch. Nor is television the only media source for violence. But it is unquestionably the largest and most influential source.
The TV industry cannot be held solely responsible for television violence either. The television industry is very attuned to audience ratings. After all, there does have to be a certain amount of demand for it by the TV audience. Witness those who got so vehemently angry when parts of their favorite shoot-em-up western was pre-empted by an important announcement concerning the American nation. They veritably stormed the network by phone because of it.
What You Can Do
The way to protect your children from watching so much violence on television is to be more selective in the programs YOU watch.
Programs that glamorize crime and emphasize illicit sex, cruelty and violence, should obviously be eliminated from your home viewing. Crime and violence should never be accepted as a major theme of a program for children, or even adults for that matter.
Along with being selective about what you and your household watch on TV, be sure to watch programs together. Scientific studies show it's actually best if parents watch TV with their children, especially small children. When parents watch television with their children and comment on fallacies or wrong actions which sometimes creep into "good" programs, the effect of these fallacies and wrong actions on children is minimized. Remember, many so-called "family" programs are filled with various forms of rebellion, disrespect for authority, and lying. Children should not be allowed to assume that this sort of conduct is acceptable.
Another important television viewing guideline is to limit the amount of television you watch and the amount you allow your children to watch. And most important, don't allow the television set to become your child's baby-sitter, even if it's not violence and wrong programming that he will be watching.
Any child who spends two, three or four hours a day sitting passively in front of the TV tube, gawking at a world of make-believe and fantasy is losing vital hours that should be spent learning how to relate and talk to brothers, sisters, playmates, parents, relatives and neighbors.
Replace much of TV viewing with family interests. What happened, for example, to the good "old-fashioned" family get-together where family members simply talked — sharing interests, ideas, needs, desires, thoughts on current world events, happenings at school, work or the neighborhood? Don't let television stifle your family conversation.
Rather than permit the television set to absorb all your leisure time, develop an interest in some constructive hobby. Children need to be encouraged to take up constructive hobbies rather than spend all their time in front of the TV. The more a parent sets the example of having outside interests such as hobbies, the more apt his children will be to develop other interests besides watching TV.
Take the necessary first step by turning the television set off earlier and utilizing the needed initiative and thought to develop more interests for you and your children.