Media Violence

 Chapter 12 from The Competence Approach to Parenting

Copyright Joseph Strayhorn, M.D., 2001

Chapter Overview:

     The positive models you can present through stories, plays, and songs are a drop in the bucket compared to the negative models the average child gets from the entertainment our culture creates and purchases. In the United States children see an average of at least 10 violent acts per hour of television watching. The rate of violent models they not only see, but enact, in the average videogame dwarfs that number. Young children are born imitators; they don’t need to be taught to imitate. They naturally practice in their imaginations the patterns they see modeled on television and in movies. By repeated practice, they get desensitized to the normal revulsion to violence we’d like for people to feel. And when “heroes” get rewards for their violence—rewards such as being loved by the opposite sex, fame, money, or simply staying alive—your child is getting “vicarious” reward for hurting people. All these principles tell us that entertainment violence should increase real life violence. And in fact, hundreds of studies have found that it does so. One group is “laboratory studies.” Experimenters have randomly assigned subjects to watch violent or nonviolent entertainment, and have then studied their behavior shortly afterward. Many studies find that people who watch people hurt each other for even a short time act more hurtfully than those who watch something more neutral or positive. A second group of studies has taken advantage of “natural experiments.” Television came to different regions at different times. Studies have found that increases in violence have corresponded to the time at which television came to the region: the sooner television came, the sooner there was an increase in violence. In a  third group of studies, experimenters have measured both how much violence children have watched, and how violence those children have used in real life, on two occasions several years apart. Children who watch more violent entertainment early on are more violent in real life later on, even if you statistically adjust for the real-life violence at the first measurement. Another study found that a group of youth were less violent in real life if they had helped make a videotape that argued against consuming violent entertainment. The evidence for the harmfulness of violent entertainment is quite impressive.

     How then should parents respond to a culture that entertains itself in harmful ways? I recommend that all family members boycott entertainment violence. I recommend that you try to get your family members to view this boycott as part of your contribution to the world. I recommend that like-minded families bond together to support one another in boycotting violent entertainment. I go so far as to advise removing televisions and videogame machines from households. Some people’s natural response to this is, “If we do that, what would there be to do?” If we try hard enough, we can recapture the skills of doing fun things together without relying on electronic entertainment. I provide here a list of “mutually gratifying activities” other than television and videogames. See if people in your family can cultivate ways of having fun together rather than plugging in to their separate forms of electronic entertainment. If they can, your children will experience much fewer negative models, and will practice getting along with other people.

************

     Medicine and psychiatry traditionally have viewed behavioral problems as located within an individual, and have seen the individual as the unit where cure is to take place. Increasingly, however, we have begun to see that many of the problems of violence and hostility and inhumanity that plague our society have causes not just in individuals, not not just in family systems, but in a whole culture. By the word “culture” we can refer to the set of influences that come toward a growing child other than from parents: e.g. from peers, the nature of schools, and other institutions, the economic system, and the mass media. One of the most pernicious aspects of American culture is that our favorite mode of entertainment seems to be watching people hurt one another.

     Entertainment violence is conveyed by all of our methods of mass communication:  television, movies, video games, mass produced toys, comic books, books, in-person performances, sports contests. The most of the evidence that has accumulated has to do with television.

     In this chapter we are not just talking about the most extreme forms of violent media presentations, such as “slasher” horror movies, where there is lots of gore and blood. We are talking about the full range of portrayals of violence in the media, including the type of violence your child has been exposed to if your family is at all typical of families in general. We are including movies and television shows marketed for children, advertised as though they are extremely good for children. We are talking about the degrees of violence portrayed even in animated Disney Movies. 

     It could possibly be that the milder forms of violence, couched in comfortable and child-centered media, may be harmful partly because they insert violence in such a pleasant background. There have been several studies of cartoon violence, and the conclusion is that this sort of humorous, non-gory violence is harmful.

     Some of these studies have involved cartoons such as Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker that actually contain a great deal of violence, both verbal and physical. Peter Pan, a children’s classic, contains 30 violent acts, including bombings, much sword fighting, characters forced to walk the plank, and characters thrown overboard. In The Little Mermaid,  the good characters win over the evil when the prince drives a ship into the sea witch, probably killing her. In Oliver and Company, the good characters win over the evil when Mr. Sykes and his dogs are killed in a long fight and chase scene ending the film. Even in a relatively nonviolent film with many prosocial elements such as The Wizard of Oz, good wins by the (inadvertent) killing of the evil witch. (Actually two evil witches.)   Many widely acclaimed and almost universally loved children’s movies deliver a repetitive message about how human conflict is resolved. It is resolved

 

     not by persuading or gradually winning over your adversary to your point of view;

     not by coming to tolerate your adversary;

     not by separating from or avoiding him or her;

     not by appealing to a rule of law to resolve the conflict;

     not by changing your own point of view;

     but by the violent killing or hurting of your adversary.

 

     Other movies marketed toward children are far more violent. In the 1990s a fad revolved around the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The full length film constructed around this fad contained some 194 acts of violence, of which 104 were committed by the heroes. The violent acts included much kicking, many concussion-dealing blows, and the portrayal of characters delighting in the infliction of violence. In this movie good triumphs over evil when a good guy makes the bad guy fall off a building into a garbage truck and be crushed by another good guy’s pulling the garbage-crushing mechanism. Such movies make it seem almost priggish for someone to raise questions about the much smaller level of violence in children’s classics.

     And the fact that millions of children in the U.S. have seen such abominations as the Friday the 13th series, the Nightmare on Elm Street series, and the Halloween series, with graphic and gory and sometimes sexualized violence and sadism being the main attraction  of the movies, makes it seem almost priggish to object to the violence in the Ninja Turtles!

     But such objections are not priggish. They are based on a large body of research evidence. Many parents feel untroubled when their very young children repetitively view shows where good triumphs over evil through violence, as long as there is not a lot of blood and gore. This, however, is a symptom of how desensitized and jaded our society has become to violence.

     The age and developmental level of the child makes a difference in deciding what sorts of fictional models are appropriate. As children grow older, their powers of reasoning and thinking obviously grow tremendously. They become capable of using the concept of not. When they become teenagers, if all has gone well they will be able to have anti-violence strengthened, not weakened, by seeing violence depicted in anti-violence works such as Born on the Fourth of July or All Quiet on the Western Front or Galipoli. They will be able to appreciate the fact that in works like Hamlet and Oedipus Rex the violent acts are tragic and horrible, with terrible consequences, and perhaps have their repulsion for violence increased rather than decreased. The teenager should have the maturity of thought processes to identify with certain characters in a work of fiction, and to want to become more like them, and to want to become less like other characters. The teen-ager is at least capable of seeing characters try non-imitation-worthy actions, have those actions produce bad consequences, and learn not to do those things. Again, there is discrimination involved—picking and choosing what is imitation-worthy and what is not.

     I should emphasize the phrase “if all has gone well” when speaking about the capacity of teen-agers to discriminate what is imitation-worthy and what isn’t. There are countless anecdotes accumulated wherein teen-agers or adults have imitated violent acts portrayed on the media. The case of John Hinckley, who tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan after repetitively viewing the movie Taxi Driver is one example. (The main character in Taxi Driver wins the attention of the beautiful woman, by positive effects he happens to produce by going on a totally irrational and gory shooting rampage resulting from a  senseless attempt to assassinate a political figure.)  The some fifty people who over several years killed themselves playing Russian roulette in imitation of  a scene from the movie The Deer Hunter are more examples of cases where the capacity to make wise discriminations obviously had not developed enough. The violent movie Boyz n the Hood was obviously intended by the author to have an antiviolence message; however this message seemed to go over the heads of many audience members who cheered, rather than felt sadness, at the death of one of the adversaries, and who engaged in violence at or near the site of the movie.

     For society as a whole, the research does not provide evidence as to whether violent movies with an anti-violence message are successful in reducing violence or actually increase it. All the evidence seems to point in the direction that the more violence people see, the more they carry out, period.

     But for preschool children, the case against presenting any violence at all, even that which is embedded in an anti-violence message, is more clear-cut. The preschool child is very rapidly learning how to speak and act. The preschool child tends to indiscriminately imitate all that he sees and hears, whether the characters are good guys or bad guys, and whether the long-run consequences of the actions are positive or negative. There is very little power to pick and choose what is imitation-worthy and what isn’t.

     For this reason, in fashioning works of fiction for young children, we want as many imitation-worthy acts as possible, and we also want as few non-imitation-worthy acts as possible, regardless of who does them and whether good wins out over evil. Children do need to learn to deal with tragedy of life and to deal with bad people eventually, but the more their preschool years, particularly the early preschool years, can be filled with positive models, the better off they will be.

     In thinking about how harmful a violent model is, it probably matters how easily imitated the violent act is. We particularly would like to avoid exposing young children to acts of violence that are very easy to imitate. In the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy’s killing the witch by accidentally getting water on her is not an aggressive act that seems to inspire much real-life imitation in young children. The kicks and karate chops of the Ninja turtles, by contrast, are very much imitatable by young children.

     What about the Motion Picture Association of America’s ratings—the G, PG, and so forth?  Is choosing a movie for a child just as simple as avoiding anything over PG?  In my observation, these ratings are not a very good guide. The MPAA ratings do not seem to give much weight to violence. For example, The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles obtained a PG rating. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, another PG, is an extremely violent movie, with one scene for example where a man has his beating heart pulled out of his chest, and then (the man remains alive for a while—anything can happen in the movies) he is lowered screaming into a pit of flames and is burned to death while a triumphant priest holds the now-flaming heart in his hands. (Footnote: a child was admitted to an inpatient psychiatric unit where I worked after the child had engaged in dangerous behavior in imitation of dangerous acts in this movie—fortunately not the heart-removing act.) 

     In other words, I have the audacity to suggest that people in positions of great responsibility who decide what is marketed to children, do not always have children’s best interests in mind. Of course, that’s putting it far too politely. One of the biggest mistakes a parent can make is to assume that all entertainments marketed to children are  good for children. The marketers of children’s entertainment get rewarded for producing revenue, not for producing psychologically healthy people.

     As another example of this cynical but true point: Here’s some copy that appeared on a box holding a toy called the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Footski Brain Sucking Sewer Machine.”  The box states that the toy is for children “Ages 4 and up.”

     The print on the box says,

     “Cast off on the Footski, the Foot Clan’s high-tech futuristic jetski!  You’re on the high-sewers as you patrol for brain-rich turtles. Yes, you’re dredging for fuel!  Because this mutant machine processes Turtle brains into Sewer Gas, making it the first self-contained jetski in the world!  If you’re running low on Sewer Gas, simply run over a Turtle and suck his mutant brains out. Not easy, you say?  Well, think again. Simply sail through the sewers at top speed, and when you spot a Turtle—go for it!  Capture and stun the Turtle with Electrifying Vinyl Leeches and the mutant brain intake valve does the rest!  Pretty easy, huh? .... So the next time your Footski’s low on gas, cruise by a Turtle... and just say, ‘fill ‘er up!’” 

     A picture on the box shows a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle figure (sold separately) being hurt by the leeches, with the following caption: “Electrifying Vinyl Leeches suck Turtle brains and cause migraine pain!”  Another caption on another picture reads, “Detachable Turtle-seeking Torpedoes for those hard-to-get heroes!  Sewer Side Scrapers to give you Turtle-peeling pleasure!”

     One would think that most parents would not want children being given the message that inflicting migraine pain on someone and destroying their brains is great fun. Yet toys like this made huge amounts of money.

Evidence That Media Violence Is Harmful

     Sometimes people ask me, with an attitude of some skepticism, does anybody really know whether the things that children see on TV and in the movies really make a difference in their real-life behavior?  Has there really been any good research on this question?  The answer is yes. There has been a tremendous amount of good research on this question. Literally millions of dollars of research money have been devoted to this question, by very competent social scientists. The was a surgeon general’s report, with a follow-up report from the National Institutes of Mental Health, that have had as their main task simply the summarizing of all the work that has gone on. There is good evidence that media violence is harmful, and that it promotes real-life violent behavior. The next few pages will go over some of that evidence.

     How do we know about the causal relation between media violence and real-life violence?  What possible ways are there for us to get knowledge about this? There are two basic ways of knowing: deductive reasoning from prior principles, and inductive reasoning from a set of specific observations. To use deductive reasoning on the media violence-real life behavior question, we think about basic principles of human learning, and see if any of them predict a causal relation. To use inductive reasoning, we look at studies that have directly looked at the real-life behavior of people depending upon how much entertainment violence they have been exposed to.

     Let’s start with the fundamental principles, the fundamental methods of influence so central to this entire book. One is the principle of modeling. Psychologists have studied this principle in great detail in recent years, but it’s one that has been known since antiquity. For centuries parents have known that children follow the examples that are set for them, not only in real life, but also in literature; Aesop’s fables and biblical parables are examples of teaching tales adult society has used to help children learn how to live. Recently experiments have shown that shy and withdrawn children can learn to socialize better with their peers if they are shown a video of a child gradually overcoming inhibition about starting to make friends. Modeling through video presentations has been used to reduce dental phobias in children: when they see someone having a relaxed and pleasant time in the dentist’s chair, they are not so scared. Modeling has helped children get over fears of swimming. (For a review of some studies of modeling, see Strayhorn, 1988, p. 87-92.)

      Recent research has demonstrated that there is something innate in children that makes them imitate, even from the moment of birth. Meltzoff, who experimented with infants in their first day of life, made distinctive faces at the infants, and found that the infants made those faces back at the experimenter. There’s something poignant to me about the innate trusting quality built into our brains, that makes us somehow know that we need to take our cues from older people and imitate what they do if we want to learn to handle a totally unknown world. Thought of in this way, it is an obscene violation of this trust to present children with models of violent and aggressive behavior. Aggression and other forms of hostility are the number one presenting complaint in child mental health clinics, and those in the business of presenting violent models to children are simply feeding the rosters of children with such problems.

     A second basic principle of human learning is that the more one practices a behavior pattern, the more ingrained it becomes. Again people have known this since antiquity. One twist on this which has been studied in recent years is that practice in imagination, or fantasy rehearsal, is an effective way of ingraining a pattern. Experiments with piano players, ski racers, and people learning assertiveness skills have revealed that imagining a certain action makes the skill more easy to carry out in real life. (For a review of some of this research, see Strayhorn, 1988, p. 93-95.)   For young children, dramatic play is the prototypical fantasy rehearsal method. The shameful counterpart to this is the inevitable production and marketing of toys for children based on violent characters in movies: Rambo dolls, Freddy Krueger dolls, and so forth, that enable fantasy practice to take place as a follow-up on the initial modeling.

     The third basic principle is that behavior that gets rewarded is that which gets repeated: the principle of reinforcement. A twist on this one is that vicarious reinforcement also works. Characters in action and adventure movies are rewarded for their proficiency in violence, with sickening regularity. One could easily come to the conclusion that violence skills are the most important skills for our society. Often the reward for a male is the admiration of a sexy woman. Vicarious reinforcement also works in real life, when children perceive that the most admired characters in society, the Sylvester Stallones and the Clint Eastwoods and the Arnold Schwarzeneggers, are admired because of their presenting a persona of total proficiency in violence.

     To summarize, if you think about the power of modeling, practice, and reinforcement in human learning, you would certainly predict that media violence should increase the likelihood of real-life violence. But prediction from first principles is not good enough evidence in and of itself. We have to go out and see if the predicted phenomenon is really happening.

     Now let’s look at some of the inductive evidence that entertainment violence is harmful.

     One type of evidence is from “laboratory studies” in which children or adults are brought in to a researcher’s offices, are usually randomly assigned to two groups, and are then shown either a violent or a nonviolent video or film. Then the people are put into some sort of setting where they have the opportunity to be aggressive or not to be, and their behavior is observed.  In some studies, the measure of aggressiveness was how much a person was willing to deliver electric shock to another person as a punishment in what was presented to be a learning experiment. Other studies have looked at the real-life behavior of children, and have counted their episodes of imitation of the violent or nonviolent behavior. A pioneer in the study of imitation learning in children is Albert Bandura. Bandura showed children various models of either positive or negative behavior, and observed in various different ways that the children imitated the models.

     In general, these laboratory studies have demonstrated very impressively that children do tend to imitate what they see. Study after study has demonstrated that when you present to children a filmed model of someone’s doing something, children are in general more likely to do that something after having seen the film.

     Another type of evidence comes from the “natural experiment.” Rather than getting a small number of people into a laboratory and randomly assigning one group of them to one condition and one group to another, the natural experiment takes advantage of the fact that some real-life happenstance assigns people to different conditions, and measures the effects.

     One recent important “natural experiment” study was conducted by Brandon Centerwall of the University of Washington. It was found that in the United States and Canada, there was a doubling of the murder rate some 10 to 15 years after television was introduced. Presumably the time lag occurred because children are most vulnerable to being influenced by television violence during early life, but most prone to commit murder when they are in adolescence to young adulthood. The doubling of murder rates in and of itself does not tell us too much—lots changed in society other than the introduction of television, to account for the increase in the murder rate. But there was much more to the study than this finding alone. The white population of South Africa had no television available until 1973, because of political reasons having nothing to do with the wish to avoid television violence. This population did not experience the doubling of the murder rate at the same time that the white population of the U.S. and Canada did. The white South African population did, however, experience a doubling of the murder rate 10 to 15 years after introduction of television there.

     Centerwall also looked at the timing of the increase in the murder rate of various regions of the U.S. according to when television was introduced in that region. The time of introduction of television predicted a rise in the murder rate 10 to 15 years later with remarkable accuracy. The white population of the U.S. got televisions sooner than the black population, and the murder rates of whites rose correspondingly sooner than those of blacks. The conclusion of Centerwall’s research is that of the approximately 20,000 murders that take place in the U.S. each year, some 10,000 of them would not occur without the influence of television!

     Centerwall looked at murder rates because murder is something that our society very carefully records and documents. One would expect that if television had such an effect on the murder rate, it would also have a large effect on the rate of less serious violence, the type classified as disciplinary problems in school. And another important “natural experiment” documented just this.

     A research team headed by Tannis MacBeth Williams heard of a certain town in Canada that they immediately realized held out great research opportunity. This town, because of being in a “geographical blind spot” (mountains blocked it from existing television transmitters) had very poor to nonexistent television reception. The researchers heard that a television transmitter was about to be put up in the town, so that suddenly television would be available. (They refer to this town as “Notel.”)  The researchers mounted a massive effort to study the people in this town and two other comparison towns that had had television for many years. For each of these three towns, the researchers measured the aggressiveness of children, children’s reading ability, and other variables both before television was introduced into Notel, and two years afterward.

     One of the most expensive, but also most valid, ways of measuring children’s aggression is by having research assistants directly watch children and keep very careful counts of any time that they do something physically hurtful to another person or say something verbally hostile. This study used this method, as well as using teacher-ratings and peer-ratings of children’s aggression.

     The study found that both physical and verbal aggression increased much more in the children in the town receiving television for the first time than did the aggression in the children in the other two towns. The introduction of television into Notel was associated with a little more than a doubling of the rate of physically aggressive acts per minute.

     What happened to reading ability?  To paraphrase from this study: Before television was introduced into Notel, the second graders there were better readers than the children in the other two towns. But after television had been in Notel for 2 or 4 years, Notel second graders read no better than children who had grown up with TV. Notel children who had been in grade 1 when television arrived were poorer readers on the follow-up than the other two towns’ children.

     How can television reduce reading ability?  One obvious hypothesis is that a child spends many hours watching television when he could be reading, looking at picture books, being read to, having a conversation, or doing something else that would increase his verbal ability more than sitting passively.

     The results on reading ability are relevant to the general question of violence, since low reading ability is significantly correlated with violent behavior. Children who read poorly tend to have more minor problems with aggression, and among children and teen-agers who have very serious problems with aggression, there is a very high incidence of reading problems.

     In another line of research, investigators have enrolled children in a study and have measured their aggressiveness and the amount of violence they view. One way investigators have measured aggressiveness is by asking school children which of their classmates punch other children. One finding that is almost universally agreed upon in the research community is that children who watch more violent television tend to be more aggressive. Freedman (1984) stated, “The research has involved many thousands of subjects, of both sexes, ranging in age from young children to older teenagers, from a wide range of socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds, and from several countries. The relation between viewing television and aggressiveness is thus extremely well documented.”   Just to find a positive relation, however, doesn’t prove that the television violence causes the aggression. Perhaps a certain type of personality both makes people more aggressive and also causes them to like violence on television. How do we make the jump from the agreed-upon correlation, to the conclusion of a causal connection? 

     One way that researchers have attempted to do this is to measure both aggression and viewing of violence at two points in time. When the researchers have two time points to look at, they can use a statistical technique called the analysis of partial variance to try to tell whether viewing causes violence or whether the violent tendencies cause the viewing. To do a study like this, you get a bunch of children and measure their viewing of violence and their aggressive behavior at a certain time—such as for example when they’re eight years old. Then maybe ten years later, you find the same children, and measure both their viewing of violence and their aggressive behavior at that time. Then you see how much the early viewing of violence predicts the later aggressive behavior, while correcting for the early aggressive behavior. Another way of thinking about this statistical technique is that you are seeing how much the early violent viewing predicts an increase in violent behavior from time 1 to time 2. Finding this would suggest that the time 1 viewing is a cause of the time 2 behavior, not just a consequence of already existing violent tendencies. Several studies have found just this. Violent viewing predicts an increase in violent behavior over time. Several important studies that have used these methods, one of which was done by Huesmann and his colleagues. These studies in general have come out supporting the causal role of media violence.

     Another set of evidence has come from experiments, based upon the principle of a wise professor who used to say, “If you want to understand something, try to change it.”  A group of researchers decided they would try to convince a bunch of children that television violence was unrealistic and not good to imitate, and to see what effect this had. They had the children make up an argument against television violence, and read it while being videotaped for other children to see. This intervention seemed to work in changing children’s attitudes; what did it do to their behavior?  If liking violent TV has nothing to do with behavior, you wouldn’t expect this intervention to do much. On the other hand, if attitudes toward the violence on TV is connected with real-life behavior, you would expect the result that actually did occur: The children who underwent this intervention experienced positive effects on their own aggressiveness, as rated by their peers, relative to the group who underwent a comparison intervention in which they talked about hobbies. Thus successfully teaching children to disapprove of violent television seemed to be an influence toward less violence in real life.

     The notion that media violence causes real-life violence has become less and less controversial over time. It has now been decades since the research has confirmed this conclusion. In 1972 and 1982 there were in the United States, Surgeon General’s Reports on television and behavior, similar to the reports on smoking and health. To quote from the 1982 report: “Most of the researchers look at the totality of evidence and conclude, as did the Surgeon General’s advisory committee, that the convergence of findings supports the conclusion of a causal relationship between televised violence and later aggressive behavior.” 

     The American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Association for the Education of Young Children, and other organizations have issued policy statements condemning violence in the media.

     There have been similar sorts of research on violent toys and video games as there have been with TV. To give an example with video games, a study by Shutte and other investigators randomly assigned two groups of children to play with either a karate video game or a nonviolent jungle vine swinging video game. The children were then observed during free play. To quote: “The children who had played the jungle swing video game later played more with a jungle swing toy and ... the children who played the violent video game later showed more aggression.  The authors interpreted the findings as an indication that young children who play video games later tend to act similarly to how their video game character acted.” 

     The notion that children imitate the acts of their video game characters is especially frightening if you have recently observed a typical video arcade. A high fraction of the “heroes” in video games are engaged in killing or knocking out large numbers of enemies, without even needing to discriminate whether they are enemies or friends. The means of killing enemies in these games seem to be getting more and more realistic.

     When makers of violent toys and movies are challenged about the ethics of their productions, the response seems to come like clockwork: these are just a harmless way for people to get their aggression “out of their system.”

     As I mentioned at the beginning of this book, this “catharsis” theory is one of the major blind alleys in the mental health field. The notion that you get anger “out” by expressing it has undergone much research in recent years. When people act in symbolically aggressive ways they are more likely to be rehearsing aggressive acts and reducing their inhibition to aggression than to be getting the aggression out.

     The notion that you get aggression “out” by performing aggressive acts either in real life or in symbolic activities is an interesting idea. We seem not to have this notion to such a degree about emotions other than anger. Do we get our shyness “out” by acting very shy, or do we only rehearse shyness?  Do we get our friendliness “out” by acting friendly to people, or do we rehearse acting friendly? 

     There is much that can be said about the “catharsis theory” of anger versus the rehearsal theory and the disinhibition theory. The books by Bandura and by Tavris in the reference list discuss the catharsis notion thoroughly, and mention many studies that tend to weaken its credibility.  But suffice it to say that  watching people do or say hostile things, or for the child to do or say them himself, usually makes the child more likely to be aggressive, not less likely. “Practice makes perfect” and the concept of imitation are much more relevant than the notion of getting anything out of one’s system.

     Does this mean that a child should not be encouraged to beat on a pillow or do something else harmless to let his aggression out?  Yes, it does mean that!  Beating on pillows and screaming into pillows and other such remedies are almost never useful, in the long run, and may be harmful. Advising a child to beat on a pillow gives the child the message that he needs to “let out his anger” or else something bad will happen. This is in contrast to the notion that acting angry is something that we can choose whether or not to do, just as we choose our other actions. At times the most workable thing to do, in order to bring about the results we want, is to act angry. At other times, that does not bring about the best results. At times it works best to work ourselves up into feeling angry, and at (more numerous) times it works best to do just the opposite. But the child should get the message that he can choose what to do on the basis of what will produce the best results, not on the basis of having to rid his psyche of some poison that has accumulated in it.

What Is Obscene?  The Facts on Closed Head Injury

     Closed head injury is a blow to the head that doesn’t cause an “open” wound. The notion that the public seems to have is that scenes of violence are not harmful unless blood is spurting everywhere, and that scenes of people giving each other terrific blows to the head are as American as apple pie and twice as harmless.

     I believe a more realistic viewpoint is that the act of one person’s hitting another person in the head is one of the most obscene acts that we can conjure up. The brain is the seat of the personality, and it is a delicate organ. It is easily injured by blows to the skull. One hard blow to the head can result in seizures for the rest of the life, or in permanent damage to the basic processes of thinking and feeling and behaving. Brain injury is a very prevalent horror in our society. Dorothy Lewis has looked at very violent delinquents, and has found a very high prevalence of brain abnormalities in them, the type that are often caused by blows to the head. Many of these delinquents gave histories compatible with the idea that their brains were injured by child abuse, specifically blows to the head. Studies of boxers reveal that brain damage is very frequently a consequence of the blows these men receive from other men’s fists. Yet in movies like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles we see almost continuous blows delivered to heads, and we give the movie a PG rating.

     If someone proposed to show movies to preschool children of rape scenes, and to sell them toys that showed characters in the act of rape, we would (I hope) have an outcry of horror and outrage. Yet the act of hitting the other person with full force in the head with a stick or chair or even sometimes a fist is an act capable of killing the person, giving him seizures for life, destroying his language ability, and totally depriving him of the most precious parts of his personality. It is an act as harmful as rape, and, I submit, as obscene.

Ways of Responding to the Media Violence Situation

     Parents ask, how can I prohibit my child from doing what all the other children are doing?  I don’t want my child to think that I’m worried about his becoming a murderer, more than other children.

     I think that one good way to explain the reason for boycotting violent entertainment is to tell children that watching a television show is like voting for more like it to be produced; buying a certain toy is like voting for more like it to be produced, and so forth.  The more our money and attention and the example we set go toward patronizing violent entertainment, the more we encourage people to produce more symbolic violence. And the more of it is made, the more violent the world is. Therefore even if our own family value system is so nonviolent that there is no worry about any of our own behavior, a boycott of violent entertainment helps the world to become a better place. There is one certain way for violent entertainment to stop being produced, and that is for people to stop purchasing it.

     In other words, I’m advocating that families enlist their children in a cause of social activism about the media violence issue. The thrust is to make the world better, not just to make ourselves better.

     Some people, most of them not parents, raise the question as to whether parents have a right to take control of children’s television diets. I think that it is not only the right, but the duty of the parent to take control of the child’s television and movie diet. Suppose a parent learned that one of the child’s babysitters regularly was visited by a boyfriend or girlfriend, and these two regularly yelled at each other, physically hit each other, and tried to stab each other in the child’s presence. Most parents (I hope) would be horrified, and would quickly fire the baby-sitter. Nonetheless the “electronic baby-sitter” often models far worse behaviors than these. Parents have every right to decree to a child that certain shows should not be watched. The issue of freedom of speech and censorship in society at large is a totally different issue than the issue of what is best for a young, developing child. Just as you would want to be very selective in choosing a real-life baby sitter, it is important to be very selective in choosing media images to be your child’s companions.

     There is one practical step that will be very useful to parents in influencing children’s television diets. I recommend not having multiple televisions throughout the house, and for a child never to have a private television set that stays in his own room. I would also recommend trading in large television sets for a set small enough that it can be picked up by a parent and removed from sight and put into a closet on a shelf. In other words, I recommend rigging the physical presence of televisions in the house in such a way that a parent can easily block or promote television-watching.

     I would like to go one step further, and advocate the elimination of television from households, and using carefully selected recordings as the only video medium. I believe that the effect of this step in my own household has been extremely positive.

     If children end up watching violent television and movies, despite all of parents’ efforts to the contrary, how can parents minimize the harmful effects? Some research indicates that it may be helpful for you to explain to your children such things as that television is not like real life in many ways, that the violence on television is not a good way for people to solve their problems, that most people that they will encounter in real life are not totally bad like so many of the people on the television are, and that television violence is not good for our society. It may be useful for children to learn, if they don’t already know it, that television shows are paid for by the commercials, and that the reason companies pay for television shows is to get people to buy their advertised products. It is probably useful for you to hear a description of the show from your child. Then the parent can react with hopefully genuine negative feelings (directed at the show, not at the child) to violent acts depicted on the shows. The parent can point it out if no one on the show seems to grieve or mourn persons hurt or killed. If the show manipulates your emotions such that you cheer and feel happy when the “bad guy” gets killed, it’s good to look at this. How did the authors of the show bring it about that the image of a fellow human being’s death produces pleasure? Are you glad they did that to you?

     Is it a lie to tell children that life is not as violent as TV?  Real life does contain violence, but television contains many times much more. This has also been the subject of research. The amount of shooting, killing, and hitting carried out by the average police officer in a year, or even in an entire career, does not begin to approach the number carried out for example by the heroes of a typical television cop show in a few episodes.

     How does it alter the situation if a young child has a real problem with hitting or kicking or scratching or being verbally hostile?  In that case, the parent should be even more comfortable with simply ending the child’s opportunities to watch violence on the media.

     If the child complains about this, then I would recommend that the parent take exactly the same attitude that he or she would if the child complained about not getting to have a steady diet of marshmallows and soda, or if the child complained about not getting to drink beer. If the child sees that the adult is not persuaded in the slightest by the child’s protests, the protests will diminish in frequency.

     Parents often tell me that they try to control the exposure to violence in their own house, but the child can then watch all the violent TV he wants to when he goes to a friend’s house. What can be done about this?  This is an illustration of the fact that the entertainment violence problem is a problem of the culture, not just of individual families. I think that this is a reason for parents to try to get to know their children’s playmates’ parents as well as possible, and to try to negotiate some high standards that will apply in all the households. This is really the difficult task of establishing a small subculture, superior to the general culture. It may not work, but it is certainly worth a try.

     One would certainly expect that positive, or “prosocial” behavior can be learned through televised models, just as antisocial behavior can be learned. Eron (1986) mentions a number of research studies that have looked at this, and concludes that “prosocial television sequences do indeed lead to subsequent prosocial behavior on the part of the observer.... Moreover, ... antisocial behavior appears inhibited by prosocial portrayals.” “Children who learn and perform prosocial behaviors are not likely to engage in aggressive behavior.” 

     It is not hard for a parent with a camcorder and some good children’s books to make his or her own videos for his or her own children!  Your children will be very likely to greatly enjoy hearing your own voice coming over the video. I highly recommend this procedure. I have made a video of some of the “modeling plays” mentioned elsewhere in this book.

     A good number of nonfiction videos are available for children—music videos, science instruction videos, and others. They may not grab attention as well as Tom and Jerry do. But that’s OK. Because if a child does not want to watch prosocial or educational videos, the child gets some free time to find the fun things to do other than watching television.

     Other arguments have been advanced, having nothing to do with violence, about reducing children’s exposure to video media. One argument is that video media productions tend to be very “attention-capturing”: with much action and rapidly shifting scenes, they capture young children’s attention without their having to work much to concentrate. The child’s habits, and some have argued, even their neuronal structures, may never accomodate themselves to the hard work of concentrating on less attention-grabbing media, such as textbooks, manuals, novels, or the process of writing their own thoughts. As a result, the argument goes, successive generations are becoming progressively less capable of sustained attention to less attention-capturing media.

     The thought of eliminating television from a household sounds to some people so extreme and radical—it must be hard to believe that until the 1950’s most households survived and found ways to occupy themselves without television. What can people do other than watch the tube? Let’s remind ourselves of some, in the following table. 

Menu for “Mutually Gratifying Activities” Between Family Members

 

Reading silently in one another’s presence; reading aloud to one another, making up stories together; audiotaping stories; listening to audiotaped stories; putting on plays with each other; improvising plays with each other; conversation; debating current events, telling jokes, listening to or trying to solve each other’s problems, singing songs together, playing music together, dancing, acting, taking walks together

exploring objects: big things such as playground equipment; little things such as stopwatches, tape recorders, clocks, scales, boxes, pots and pans, toys

 

Doing Work Together: Cleaning and organizing, cooking, yard work, shopping, fixing things, paperwork, gardening

 

Academic activities: Doing homework together, reading nonfiction books to each other, doing tutoring activities or games, composing writings together; solving brain-teasers together 

 

Playing Games: Games for infants and toddlers (repetitive sequences with suspense and celebration: e.g. peek-a-boo), board games, including psychological growth board games, card games, cooperative games: e.g. the shaping game, two-person solitaires, puzzles, thinking games such as Quarto, password, twenty questions, Scrabble, Boggle, Mastermind, chess, checkers, charades.

 

Computer activities: Edutainment games, using other programs, programming

 

Athletic Activities: Throwing back and forth, trying to make the target (basketball, darts, archery, horseshoes), traveling sports: skating, skiing, cycling, swimming, track, traditional sports contests 

 

Outdoor Life: hiking, camping, canoeing, observing the natural world: stars, animals, plants

 

Pets: Taking care of them, playing with them

 

Arts and Crafts: Drawing, Painting, etc., making stuff that’s useful, fun, or pretty

 

Religious worship as a family

 

Psychological skill games and activities: The classification of psychological skills exercise, The moral dilemma stories, discussing other moral dilemmas,  the shaping game, the positive behavior diary, the Journey Exercise, social conversation role-play, the brainstorming game, joint decision role-plays, composing and enacting modeling stories and plays, readings on how to live well, affirmations for growth in psychological skills, the guess the feelings game, the celebrations activity, fantasy rehearsals, singing modeling songs, dance and freeze with modeling songs, biofeedback (heart rate, temperature are cheap), prisoner’s dilemma game

 

Here are the sources for the research mentioned in this chapter.

Bandura, A. (1973). Aggression: a social learning analysis. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Centerwall, B. S. (1989). Exposure to television as a risk factor for violence. American Journal of Epidemiology, 129, 643-652.

Centerwall, B.S. (1989). Exposure to television as a cause of violence. PP. 1-58 In G. Comstock (Ed.), Public Communication and Behavior, Volume 2. New York: Academic Press.

Eron, L.D. (1986). Interventions to mitigate the psychological effects of media violence on aggressive behavior. Journal of Social Issues, 42, 155-169.

Freedman, J.L. (1984). Effect of television violence on aggressiveness. Psychological Bulletin 96, 227-246.

Huesmann, L.R., Eron, L.D., Klein, R., Brice, P., & Fischer, P. (1983). Mitigating the imitation of aggressive behaviors by changing children’s attitudes about media violence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, 899-910.

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.

Meltzoff, A.N., &  Moore, M.K. (1977). Imitation of facial and manual gestures by human neonates. Science, 198, 74-78.

Meltzoff, A.N., &  Moore, M.K. (1983). Newborn infants imitate adult facial gestures. Child Development 54, 702-709.

Meltzoff, A.N. (1988). Imitation of televised models by infants. Child Development, ;59, 1221-1229.

National Association for the Education of Young Children (1990). Naeyc position statement on media violence in children’s lives. Young Children, July 1990, 18-21.

Pearl, D., Bouthilet, L, & Lazar, J. (1982). Television and behavior: ten years of scientific progress and implications for the eighties. Rockville, Maryland: National Institute of Mental Health.

Schutte, N.S., Malouff, J.M., Post-Gorden, J.C., & Rodast, A.L. (1988) Effects of playing videogames on children’s aggressive and other behaviors. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 18, 454-460.

Strayhorn, J.M. (1988). The competent child: An approach to psychotherapy and preventive mental health.  New York: Guilford Press.

Tavris, C. (1982). Anger: the misunderstood emotion. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Williams, T.M. (1986). The impact of television: a natural experiment in three communities. Orlando: Academic Press.