Cause Of Aggressive Behaviour In Children example essay topic

"There is much public interest in the debate about the effects of violence in the media in the behavior of young children; but why don't people focus more on the potentially pro-social influences?" Discuss the above quotation in relation to pro and anti-social The effects of media violence on reality have been studied for years. The common thing in this they are controlled in some way and this doesn't exactly mirror real life where anyone can see just about anything. Aggressive media gets a lot of interest from the public. An explanation of media being an influence on children comes from the social learning theory, Bandura suggests that observational learning takes place as children see behaviours that are reinforced on television; children admire particular characters and in turn, imitate certain behaviours. This theory can be explained for pro and anti-social behaviours. Firstly, there have been many laboratory experiments; a main psychologist within this area of research is Bandura.

He showed children a series of films with adults behaving aggressively towards a bobo doll. The children were then walked to a room, which contained a bobo doll and a hammer. Bandura found that the children who had seen the violent behaviour imitated the exact actions. This showing that observation can lead to direct imitation of aggressive behaviour. Liebert and Baron experimented with participants whom watched television programmes either of violent nature or of neutral genre and gave the participants the chance to attack a real victim (rather than a toy). Liebert and Baron found that both adults and children, who witnessed media containing violence, demonstrated high levels of aggression compared to those who had watched neutral television programmes.

All Bandura's experiments are useful as they can establish the cause of aggressive behaviour in children when concerned with the media, the studies are reliable-they are able to be repeated and the outcomes will be consistent. However, the problems with Bandura's studies is that they lack ecological validity, the situation is artificial and children wouldn't come across bobo dolls, hammers and the videotapes of adults hitting bobo dolls in the same day, if at all. Laboratory experiments can create a problem of demand characteristics, and in Bandura's case, he certainly created demand characteristics, providing the children with a bobo doll (designed to be hit) and a hammer in an empty room. The children may have thought they were supposed to hit the doll, however, it cannot be established whether the children were actually performing play aggression rather than intentional aggression. Children are surrounded by the media all the time and real-life research has shown that role models are important when developing anti-social behaviour. In laboratory experiments, the experimenter could be seen as to encourage aggressive behaviour.

There has been field research into media influence on children's aggressive behaviour. Le yens et al exposed two groups of boys from private schools to set of films. One group saw five violent movies (one each day) whilst the other group saw non-violent films. The boys' behaviour was then observed.

Ley en found that the group exposed to violent movies showed an increase in aggressive behaviour. This study is a lot more realistic than the laboratory experiments, however the sample is limited as they were all boys and from a private school. Field research can cause some problems as the experimenter has a lack of control over the actual experiment. The following studies focus on the long-term effects of violence in the media.

Eron et al have produced findings from a longitudinal study. They studied children and the effects of violence in the media. Eron asked parents the names of their children's favourite television programmes at 9. The children's peers were asked to rate the programmes for aggressiveness. After 10 years they took the ratings again and also the amount of television watched. Eron found that watching TV violence does lead to aggression, however it is not the same for girls.

Eron offered an alternative explanation that being aggressive can lead people to seek to seek violent TV, but this was not supported by his findings. The next study is a natural experiment and comes from Williams. Williams measured the physical and verbal aggression in 6-11 year olds by observing them, and teacher and peer ratings. There were 3 'towns'; Notel (which had no TV), United (1 government ran channel) and Multi tel (4 channels) the measures were repeated after 2 years when Notel of the three towns being studied was supplied with TV. Williams found that on the first measure, there was no difference in the levels of aggression, but after the 2 years, Notel's aggressive behaviour had increased significantly. Even though these two longitudinal studies are more true to life than the laboratory experiments, it we are unable to establish if there are other factors that may have affected the participant's behaviour.

There is countless number of research into the effects of violence in the media on the behaviour of young children, but it is questionable why there are not any debates into the violence shown in the news, which is more available to young children. It is difficult to study aggressive behaviour because experimenters need to be careful when showing programmes of a violent nature to children. Even though it the effects of TV can be positive, there have been few studies that have investigated the effects of pro-social in the media. Firstly, Bryan and Bryan conducted a laboratory experiment. They had participants aged between 6-9 and they showed them films of a character winning gifts. There were two conditions; In one condition he gave some of his winnings to charity.

In the second condition the character kept all winnings for himself. The participants were then put in a similar situation and were observed to see if they would give their winnings to charity. Bryan and Bryan found that those whom watched the generous version were more likely to be more generous themselves compared to keeping the winnings to themselves. Even though this supports the idea of the media having an effect on children's pro-social behaviour, it only studied short-term effects.

Also, it was based in a laboratory, which means the situation around them was artificial-increasing demand characteristics and not actually reflecting their behaviour in the real world. Real-life evidence which supports Bryan and Bryan's experiment is from children watching episodes of 'The Waltons'. There has been evidence from Sprafkin and Rubinstein which is a correlation study. They classified programmes on the basis of the amount of pro-social and anti-social material contained. They gained the ratings from the children participating and also their teachers. In their results, they found a positive correlation between watching programmes with a high pro-social content and children's pro-social behaviour.

They found a negative relationship between the amount of television watched and pro-social behaviour. These results showing that the kinds of programmes watched are related to pro-social behaviour. The problems with correlation studies are that they only establish relationships, not necessarily the cause. Just because there is a connection between the two variables, does not necessarily mean that one variable causes the other to change. In the media, there are many pro-social programmes like 'Sesame Street' which do seem to have positive effects on children's behaviour, with things like social skills and help in their learning skills. Coates carried out research into the influence of programmes that aimed to teach a variety of positive cognitive and social skills.

He found that children did benefit within their numeric and literacy skills as well as their behaviour. Also, that the children who benefited most were those from poor and deprived backgrounds. Programmes such as Sesame Street have proven to increase co-operative, helping, sharing and affectionate behaviour. It is not just educational based programmes that can influence children's pro-social behaviour.

Popular drama's are known to portray pro-social behaviour in programmes such as 'Lassie' and 'The Waltons's sprafkin carried out some research on these types of programmes, showing them to children then testing them. He tests them by having the choice of helping or gaining prizes, Sprafkin found that the children who had watched Lassie helped puppies that were in distress. The evidence for the media having a positive outcome on children's behaviour seems to be less looked into; however, the research seems to be more genuine. There is strong evidence of the media encouraging pro-social behaviour through charity events such as; 'children in need' and 'comic relief'. However, all signs of positive behaviour seem to be a short term result. A considerable amount of pro-social behaviour investigated seems to be situation specific, i.e. helping a dog.

A big problem in psychological research is that most is conducted in the West and then the results are applied to all cultures. The problem as to why people don't focus on the positive effects is mainly due to the fact that these problems don't cause concern and is not widely noticed when a child is being well-behaved, but when children at out of the norm, they need something to blame. The minority of cases in real-life in which children have been influenced by violent behaviour-the media, again, is there to tell viewers about it and it will more than likely get more coverage to sell media products.