Concealed TV Violence

Proved effect op aggression not accepted by society

Hendrik Spiering, 
Translated from: NRC 6 April 2002 

Violence on TV leads to aggression, Science wrote last week.
Psychologists already knew this. 
The question is: What to do against it?
Involvement of the parents will help.

Indeed, she explains, do not allow young children to watch violence. Too much watching TV is always wrong. Nevertheless, there is a nuance: 

"For young children, one half hour a day is not wrong. There are beautiful and nice TV shows for children. Also, there is nothing wrong if twelve-year-old children watch one hour. The crucial point is the involvement of the parents, particularly because in our days some shows are such a hype that you cannot avoid them."

Watching one hour, OK. But actually, children between six and twelve watch two hours a day. Since 1989, the time children watch TV has been doubled. Valkenburg:

"As long as they have enough other experiences in their daily life, no problem. Variance is a good principle. But watching TV violence is wrong. It has been proved that many children become more fearful and aggressive by that."

Then she says:

"If you think a while about it, this is quite logically, isn't it? Do you rally need a professor to know this?"

Valkenburg wants to express her opinion that it is quite remarkably that this kind of practical questions still are asked so probing by parents and journalists.

"The media do not mention that TV violence can cause aggression. Thus, again and again people ask me if it really might be wrong."

In the media, the influence of TV violence on aggression is nearly always said to be an unresolved question, or as a very small effect, says Valkenburg.

Two American psychologists, Anderson and Bushman, concluded last year that, since the 70s, the scientific proof of the correlation between TV violence and aggression has become stronger. Nevertheless, the [North-]American media reported that the same correlation has become lower ('Media violence and the American public', in American Psychologist June/July 2001).

Both psychologists suppose that the media industry has a clear interest in concealing the negative effect of TV violence on children. The great media concerns earn milliards of dollars by that kind of TV films. Now and then, someone proposes to summon these concerns, just as the tobacco concerns have been summoned to the court. 

Valkenburg supposes that in the Netherlands the aversion of journalists against censorship and ruling plays a role. After all, because those negative effects of TV violence, a lot of restricting rules are introduced, for example a ban on particular programs in the early hours of the evening.

The media cannot find support for their policy in the social sciences, but they may find support in the cultural studies. Only amongst psychologists and communication scientists, there is consensus that there is a medium-sized effect of TV violence on aggression. In the so-called cultural studies, critical culture scientists, especially in the U.K., react against the negative effects of TV violence on children. 

"They react against each empirical study and they don't belief experiments."

If these scientists publish their opinion, the media will say that the scientists still have different opinions about those effects. Remarkably, the same critical cultural scientists agree that TV shows strengthen patriarchal and racist thinking of children.

"They base these conclusions on an analysis of the content of the TV shows, not on empirical research in a laboratory or in real life with real children."

A good example of the counterweight of the cultural studies is the bundle Ill Effects; The Media / Violence Debate,  of Martin Barker and Julian Petley, The UK, 1997. They argue with a comparison: in the 19th century the elite protested against the cheap novels, because the lower classes would become rebellious. So, they sneeringly wrote:

"Those who are mostly influenced by TV violence are the juveniles, especially the lower class ones. [...] They are viewed as victims of a mythical 'lawlessness', which would lead to the break-down of families who would be affected by violent video films and then would leave their houses and, as a direct effect, would commit awful misdeeds."

The crucial argument against the influence of TV on children is that kids are not passive receivers of the messages on TV, but that they construe this messages themselves. 

Otherwise, David Buckenham, a leading cultural studies scientist, wrote in the same bundle that the ability of children to construct their own messages from TV images has clear limits, depending on their education.

"We cannot prove that TV has no effects. Thus, we better should be careful with children and media."

The extremes of this debate seem to come near each other. Also Valkenburg approves those cultural studies. She wrote in her book:

"Both sides acknowledge that the social context plays an important role in the way children handle with the media and which messages they construct from the images."

The bundle Ill Effects reads:

"The problem is not on the TV screen, but in our homes and class rooms."

Valkenburg agrees:

"Indeed, with good social strategies we may be able to protect children against harmful influence.  We may point to the unreality of TV violence and ask attention to the victim. We also may react against the dominant norm on TV that violence is OK as long it services a good goal."

Strengthening aggression

It is not amazing that these kind of strategies may have effect. The correlation between TV violence and aggression is not very strong. Valkenburg refers to a meta-analysis in Communication Research 21, 516-546, 1994.

"The convincing conclusion was that TV violence strengthens aggression. But the effect is medium-sized: the correlation is 0.30. You may translate this by saying that children who watch TV more than average have a chance of 65% to become more violent."

There are performed several experiments that prove the negative effect of TV violence. In laboratory experiments, groups of children are exposed to violent films and to normal films, and afterwards observed. There are also performed field experiments. In the 80s, in Canada children from a remote village in which it was not possible to watch TV are compared with children in the same kind of villages with TV. Then, the remote village was again studied after TV was possible there. The children appeared to have become more aggressive, whereas the children in the TV receiving villages had the same level of aggression as earlier. 

There is a lot of research about the correlation between TV violence and aggressive behavior.  Recently, Science published a long article which again confirmed that correlation. The magazine reports data from a longitudinal medical research project, in which TV-watching behavior of 14-year-olds was compared with aggressive behavior in the years thereafter, whereas factors such as education and income were controlled. Some Dutch newspapers have reported about the article.

"For insiders, the Science article and its publicity is amazing. I suppose that leading magazines of communication science or psychology would have refused it. The article is very simple and also very theoretical. Its conclusions are not amazing.

In a leading psychological journal, one should explain how TV violence influences behavior.

These are the issues of the debates in the empirical social sciences."