Psychology Addict #4 | Children & TV – Learning from watching.

The role that television plays on kid’s development is not a new theme. Particularly, when the matter is the violence displayed in programs, movies and games. Oftentimes this topic is brought up when a gruesome crime takes place. In the horrific case of James Bulger, a two – year old toddler brutally injured and murdered by two 10 year-old-boys in Liverpool, the judge partially blamed the horror movies found in one of the boy’s home, which allegedly inspired them. While in Utah, two teenagers aged 14 and 15 were turned in by one of the boy’s mother who overheard them planning a kidnapping, torture and killing based on the murderers they watched in the movie Saw.

At the same times it is too simplistic to blame solely the movies for these events, psychological research has gathered overwhelming evidence which demonstrated that subsequently to watching violent acts children will indeed imitate them in certain conditions.

What Psychology Shows Us

A major, classical study is the one carried out by Bandura and his colleagues back in the early 60’s – The bobo doll experiment. Bandura selected 48 boys together with 48 girls and divided them in 4 groups of 24 children each.

The study consisted of exposing children to a live or filmed model playing aggressively with a Bobo doll. The children in the 4 different groups were presented with the following:

Group 1 - watched a live adult playing aggressively with the Bobo doll.
Group 2 - watched the same performance in a film.
Group 3 - also watched a film, but of the aggressive behaviour being conducted by someone in a black cat disguise located in a colourful fairyland.
Group 4 - The kids in group 4 were not exposed to any aggressive play.

Afterwards, each child was individually taken to a room containing various attractive toys which, they were soon informed, they could not touch (the intention of this was to raise some level of frustration in them).

Finally, in a third room, to where the child was taken and where his/her behaviour was filmed, he or she encountered less exciting toys as well as a Bobo doll and a mallet, the toy also used by the model while acting the aggressive play.

The Results

The results revealed that the children in groups 1, 2 and 3 exhibited more aggressive behaviour than those in group 4. They played with the bobo doll in the same fashion as the live and filmed model; imitating the sounds the model made as well as partially or fully copying the model’s aggressive actions (sitting on the toy, kicking it, hitting etc..).

Interestingly, it made no difference whether the behaviour was displayed, by the live, filmed or disguised model - the level of violence displayed among the boys and girls in those 3 groups were similar. Demonstrating, therefore, that violent behaviour might arise and be sustained after this kind of exposure.

It is important to mention, however, that Bandura, through his experiment, concluded that violent acts increases aggressive play in children a short while after they are exposed to the behaviour and does not say much about the long term effects of it.

Still, in Bandura’s day, children did not use to spend hours in front of a screen, day-in, day-out as it is often the case at present.

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Thank you for taking the time to read my article :-)