Ironworks Gaming Forum - View Single Post - Can violence on Television cause aggression in children?

jabidas · 01-11-2003, 08:00 PM

Well partially it depends on the kind of violence. If it means smashing your siblings toes with a hammer and putting the bits that fall off into his mouth ok there is a real problem.

However if you mean play fighting that doesn't count. Every male child in the world play fights at some stage. It is one of the only consistent things in development. Most people would recognize this as kids wrestling and that it is not violent. We should not try to deny that our race is aggressive but we must limit the destructive tendencies.

About Bandura, his research is flawed on a number of levels. First of all it was done in a lab. Not a natural environment so he cannot assume it will be the same reaction for the real world. This is especially true for children, adults are awkward when in a strange enviorment but reactions from children can be off the wall. If you have ever had a child drink the water from one of the containers out of Piaget's classic conservation of quantity experiment you will know what I mean. Next there might have been confusion about what they were supposed to do. The children were put into groups randomly which would have caused anxiety. Since when do Kid ever organize themselves randomly? They were all white from middle class backgrounds so it was hardly what you might deem a cross cultural study. I could go but there plenty of textbooks willing to do it for me.

Gerbner is quite correct to bring up the priming affect. It is an interesting one today because of the spiraling effects involved. However you must consider context. If a child has a violent dream will he be inclined to be violent? No just a bit moody in the morning. Basically dreams and television are not part of what you might refer to as the stream of reality. They are disconnected viewings and separate from the logical world that the child lives in. The child can know that the violence is not real because it does not make any logical sense for it to be real. They do not make sense in context to everyday. However violent news reports are another matter. These can scare children because violence becomes real. A lot of children grow up thinking most people die from gangland murders or from drugs with the real numbers are tiny. If you grow believing the world is like a news report[ort it is a scary place indeed. Obviously this applies to realistic violence as well. There is another issue here in that kids are not legally supposed to be shown this but that is ground to cover another day.

Catharsis theory has been around for about 2500 hundred years and we have Aristotle to thank for it. Him and possibly Freud and if you are studying psychology you will know he is not exactly held in the most positive of lights. Anyways it can work sometimes as in punch a pillow, or play quake but does it come to I am angry so I attack somebody. Catharsis is a funny one so no direct judgments.

About attention deficit children, well there is a lot of pain there anyway so it might be hard to attribute violence on tv as one of the main causes. Consider how stressed the parents must be with the kids, that frustration will lead to aggression in the child. The hypothesis does not work for adults obviosly but it could be real for children. All kinds of problems there so it is hard to pin down. Experiments with these kids are really hard to do as well.

About the violence of superheroes being praised, I think B.F. Skinner would refer to that as positive reinforcement. A very dangerous thing to give a child.

The main thing is that many laws are not enforced properly. Apparently nobody takes them seriously but possibly they are the most important. Psychologists don't get to decide the law so we cannot argue about how it should be done. It is sort of irrelevant, all that can be done is send recommendations. Seems like a curse but perhaps it is best psychologists don't get to decide because someone like the afore mentioned Skinner might be the one deciding. He raised his daughter in a sealed air cot. She turned out fine but it seems a bit monstrous.

What causes violence in children? I think mostly it is our ineptitude. Good report though. Nice references and you have something for both sides.Anything I haven't moaned about I think is pretty accurate. You are completley right about showing real violence to children and its effects anyway.

01-11-2003, 08:00 PM	#3
jabidas Silver Dragon Join Date: March 14, 2001 Location: Agharti. Mountains of Madness Posts: 1,673	Well partially it depends on the kind of violence. If it means smashing your siblings toes with a hammer and putting the bits that fall off into his mouth ok there is a real problem. However if you mean play fighting that doesn't count. Every male child in the world play fights at some stage. It is one of the only consistent things in development. Most people would recognize this as kids wrestling and that it is not violent. We should not try to deny that our race is aggressive but we must limit the destructive tendencies. About Bandura, his research is flawed on a number of levels. First of all it was done in a lab. Not a natural environment so he cannot assume it will be the same reaction for the real world. This is especially true for children, adults are awkward when in a strange enviorment but reactions from children can be off the wall. If you have ever had a child drink the water from one of the containers out of Piaget's classic conservation of quantity experiment you will know what I mean. Next there might have been confusion about what they were supposed to do. The children were put into groups randomly which would have caused anxiety. Since when do Kid ever organize themselves randomly? They were all white from middle class backgrounds so it was hardly what you might deem a cross cultural study. I could go but there plenty of textbooks willing to do it for me. Gerbner is quite correct to bring up the priming affect. It is an interesting one today because of the spiraling effects involved. However you must consider context. If a child has a violent dream will he be inclined to be violent? No just a bit moody in the morning. Basically dreams and television are not part of what you might refer to as the stream of reality. They are disconnected viewings and separate from the logical world that the child lives in. The child can know that the violence is not real because it does not make any logical sense for it to be real. They do not make sense in context to everyday. However violent news reports are another matter. These can scare children because violence becomes real. A lot of children grow up thinking most people die from gangland murders or from drugs with the real numbers are tiny. If you grow believing the world is like a news report[ort it is a scary place indeed. Obviously this applies to realistic violence as well. There is another issue here in that kids are not legally supposed to be shown this but that is ground to cover another day. Catharsis theory has been around for about 2500 hundred years and we have Aristotle to thank for it. Him and possibly Freud and if you are studying psychology you will know he is not exactly held in the most positive of lights. Anyways it can work sometimes as in punch a pillow, or play quake but does it come to I am angry so I attack somebody. Catharsis is a funny one so no direct judgments. About attention deficit children, well there is a lot of pain there anyway so it might be hard to attribute violence on tv as one of the main causes. Consider how stressed the parents must be with the kids, that frustration will lead to aggression in the child. The hypothesis does not work for adults obviosly but it could be real for children. All kinds of problems there so it is hard to pin down. Experiments with these kids are really hard to do as well. About the violence of superheroes being praised, I think B.F. Skinner would refer to that as positive reinforcement. A very dangerous thing to give a child. The main thing is that many laws are not enforced properly. Apparently nobody takes them seriously but possibly they are the most important. Psychologists don't get to decide the law so we cannot argue about how it should be done. It is sort of irrelevant, all that can be done is send recommendations. Seems like a curse but perhaps it is best psychologists don't get to decide because someone like the afore mentioned Skinner might be the one deciding. He raised his daughter in a sealed air cot. She turned out fine but it seems a bit monstrous. What causes violence in children? I think mostly it is our ineptitude. Good report though. Nice references and you have something for both sides.Anything I haven't moaned about I think is pretty accurate. You are completley right about showing real violence to children and its effects anyway. __________________ <br /><br />Non Serviam.