Blog 9

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Anna-Maria Purpura
Professor: Louis Lucca
HUC 130
March 24th, 2011

Television has a large influence on society. It affects almost everyone in every aspect of their life, with everything that they do. However there is not enough evidence to prove that television makes a person violent. For someone to say that people will become criminals from watching too much violent television is like saying all smokers will get lung cancer. It is not a fact but it is a possibility. Television itself does not make a person become violent. I believe TV does have a contribution in some of the violence that has gone on in the world, as well as today. When it comes to television and violence, the repercussion of watching too much television especially when it’s violent can make one more violent but not create the violent person.

Many children watch television. A child can easily be influenced and tend to imitate things that they see. Children are like sponges, they absorb everything that is in their environment. I found a few aspects of a study called “The Bobo Doll” experiment. In an article called “Reel to Real?” written by Hugh Westrup, and in a YouTube video called “Albert Bandura, Social Learning and his Bobo Doll experiment”. A psychologist named, Albert Bandura from Stanford University did a study (in the 1960’s) called the

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“Bobo Doll” experiment. He conducted his study with two groups of children. One group was experimental – where they did certain tasks with the children to get the children’s natural reactions towards each task. The other group is controlled – where they control what the children see in order to see how they react without any influence.

The experimental group watched a short film of a woman being abusive to a blow-up doll called “Bobo”. In this short video they showed a woman and the Bobo doll in a room together where the woman started to punch and kick the doll around while yelling at it, for no reason. The women than picked up a toy hammer and started striking the inflatable doll with it. The kids from the experimental group were then put in a room with a doll that looks similar to the one in the video that they had just seen along with an assortment of toys. When the kids entered the room they started to punch, kick and scream at the doll, imitating the woman in the video. They again repeated her behavior by picking up the toy hammer and striking the doll. Not only did they mimic the woman but they also picked up a toy gun and began to use it on the doll, which wasn’t even shown in the video.

In this study Bandura even brought in a live clown to see what the children in the experimental group would do, and they even started to hit and abuse the clown. These children felt no difference in abusing an inflatable doll and a living person. He called it the “monkey see, monkey do”. (Albert Bandura, Social Learning and his Bobo Doll Experiment”) While the children from the controlled group who didn’t watch the video.

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Were put into a similar room and didn’t do anything to the doll. They just left the doll alone. A child will do almost anything it sees and finds interesting. If a kid grows up watching a lot of violent television they may just grow up being violent. If a child watches many horrific scenes in different TV shows, they can become terrified of something completely fictional. According to the website “Abelard” children who watch violence on television there are three major effects violence can have on a child. A child “may become less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others. Children may be more fearful of the world around them. Children may [also] be more likely to behave in aggressive ways toward others.” ("Abelard Teaching") Some children may even grow older still believing in mythical monsters. It depends on what kind of personality the child obtains and part of its upbringing.

If the child has a family the mother may curse, the father may throw objects, and the sibling may even smoke – that child might grow up and do those exact things as well. Just because a child might want to do certain things doesn’t mean it will grow up doing those things. Television can be very addicting for anyone of any age. With all the kinds of shows available to our viewing capacity, it has endless entertainment such as shows with reality, or fantasy, games, shopping, work-outs, psychics, anything you can think of. Growing into a world of fiction through a TV set can affect a child, but just because it’s a factor doesn’t mean it’s the real problem that causes crime.

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A child grows up with many different people in its life, people with different backgrounds and ways of life. If that child is brought up around a person who believes in something when another person doesn’t, the child will then have to decide which it wants to do and which it doesn’t. When kids get older they try out different things in order to see if it’s something they like or dislike doing. Along with knowing what’s right or wrong, accordingly to how the parents bring them up.

In the same article another man by the name of Brandon Centerwall came to a similar conclusion in the 1990’s. Centerwall believes that since the television was invented, the violent acts have gotten worse. He stated, “The murder rate in the United States rose sharply ten years after TV became popular.” (Westrup 10) I am sure that television wasn’t the only evil during those times. There have been a lot of things that are bad in the world. I don’t see how television could be on the top of that list of things that influenced people to commit violent acts.

“Reel to Real?” also talks against television being the factor to violence. Jonathan Freedman (a psychologist) says, “The rise in U.S. murders ten years after the introduction of television can be interpreted differently.” (Westrup 10) Which I agree with, nobody knows what was going on through the lives of the ones committing the crimes. Everybody has hardships and people deal with things differently, I just can’t see how TV is to blame for someone’s criminal acts. For the majority a person who commits a crime knows right from wrong. They should also know that television is not a reality and that they should not repeat what is on it. Freedman explains that the population was

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exploding due to the baby boom. He states, “The boom produced a large amount of young men, and young men are [known] to carry out most violent crimes.” (Westrup 10) Now if Centerwall’s and Freedman’s studies are accurate that would mean woman don’t watch as much violence as men.

On the Ripon College website there is a link to a page titled, “Media Violence and Media Influence” where it gives us statistics of television and the violence on it. An “average child sees approximately 1000 murders, rapes, or assaults on TV per year” (Petersik) with that statistic it would be common sense that near half of those children are female. If a child sees that much violence on television, an adult must have seen even more. That would mean an adult has watched more than 1,000 violent acts and at least half of them would be female, if not more. “57% of all TV shows contain some violent content”. (Petersik) More than half of the TV shows people watch have some act of violence in it. Men, children and woman are all watching a large amount of violence. If the crime was really because of television, woman would do more crimes. This does not need a statistic because even when we look at the news and they are talking about criminals, the majorities are men.

With children these days being brought up by television, who knows how the TV will influence a child. That is why parents should be with them, especially when they watch TV to tell them what is good or bad. Because statistics say, “54% of children have TV in their bedroom “, (Petersik) and that “46% of violence takes place in cartoons”. (Petersik) If children are watching these shows, they can start to believe that it’s more

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reality than fiction. If they start to believe that it is something that really happens, they might think they can get away with some of those acts. When kids are young, it is the time they have to learn to distinguish the different between real and fake. When they take in what they see and learn, to put it to use. Cartoons are what almost all children watch. In television shows statistics say, “Perpetrators not punished 73% of the time”. (Petersik) That is what they view on their own television sets! When children are brought up by television sets they tend to imitate what they see in cartoons and other shows. If a child grows up watching that much violence, of course there may be a chance that child will become violent. I believe it takes more than just a television show or multiple shows they grow up on to make them commit such acts of violence.

These men might have gotten some kind of result, but neither of them did a deeper research on the children. Until Leonard Eron and Rowell Huesmann, both psychologists, teamed up and followed viewing habits of 800 children who were 6-10 year-olds in the Chicago area. This information that I have gotten is from the websites; Abelard and American Psychology Association (APA), where they found out that the children who watched violent TV acted aggressive. Out of the 800 kids they viewed, they only went back to 329 of them. They went back all of those students 11 and 22 years later.

In the beginning of the study, they found out which violent television shows the children watched most. Eron and Rowell also wanted to see if their behavior was as aggressive as the characters in their favorite TV show. They even found out if the

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children thought these violent acts were real or fictional. When the psychologists returned to those same children now in their 20’s, they asked them about their favorite television shows now and how their behavior was and if they were still aggressive. Not to mention they also obtained their criminal record along with violations they may have received. They had found that the ones who had watched more violent television had grown up and were even more aggressive, especially compared to the student who had watched less violent TV. The men and woman who had become more aggressive had admitted to pushing around their spouse or people during the time of growing up, along with committing crimes and getting moving traffic violations. The research subjects, who watched less violent television, did not have as much aggression problems and didn’t commit any crimes.

In the article “Reel to Real?” there was another study conducted. A man named William Belson, who is a researcher, studied the behavior of 1,500 teenage boys. Belson broke the boys into four different groups, out of those groups one group watched each category, ‘very high’, ‘high’, ‘moderate’, and ‘low’ amounts of violent television. He gathered that, “the boys who watched ‘very high’ levels of violent TV were half as aggressive as the boys who watched ‘high’ amounts.” (Westrup 10) With this research you can see that the ones who watch the highest weren’t the highest in violence that it differs by person and how they are, not by the amount of violence they watch.

With the research that has been conducted in all of these studies, it is easy to see that the amount of violence seen on a television set does not determine the amount

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of violent behavior you will show. However there are too many factors that go into a human being and childhood to decipher what causes violence that can go into the studies being conducted. No one (other than the children) can really know why they acted the way they did in such studies. There are both negatives and positives aspects to watching television. Television is like a tool. You can use it to have an awareness of the disasters that are happening around the world, as well as political aspects, nature, senseless entertainment and more. Another thing you can do with television is that you can use it to escape from the realities of the world and to relax and enjoy the comforts of your own home. Another possibility is that you can become obsessed with television. For instance let’s take a knife. A knife is also a tool. You can kill with a knife, or you can use it to help you cut a sandwich. It’s all in how you choose to use it. Anyone can watch a television program, and think it is cool or they may want to try something like it. They may hate someone and by watching a TV show it could persuade them to do something violent towards that person. Yet it doesn’t always mean they will.






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Cited Works:
"Albert Bandura, Social Learning and his Bobo Doll experiment." YouTube. Web. 22 Apr 2011. .

"Childhood Exposure to Media Violence Predicts Young Adult Aggressive Behavior, According to a New 15-Year Study." Press Releases. American Psychology Association, 09 Mar 2003. Web. 24 Apr 2011. .

"Children and Television Violence." Abelard Teaching. Abelard, 1999-2008. Web. 24 Apr 2011. .

Petersik, Timothy. "Ripon College." Media Violence and Media Influence. J. Timothy Petersik, n.d. Web. 22 Apr 2011. .

Westrup, Hugh. “Reel to Real?.” Weekly Reader / Current Science. 17 Mar. 2000: 10. Print.