Television Violence: A Child's-Eye View PDF
Preview Television Violence: A Child's-Eye View
ADVANCES IN PSYCHOLOGY 32 Editors G. E. STELMACH P. A. VROON NORTH-HOLLAND AMSTERDAM. NEW YORK . OXFORD .TOKYO TELEVISION VIOLENCE: A CHILD'S-EYE VIEW T. H.A .V AN DER VOORT Leyden University The Netherlands 1986 NORTH-HOLLAND AMSTERDAM. NEW YORK . OXFORD 'TOKYO ELSEVIEK SCIENCE PUBLISHERS B.V., 1986 @ All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN: 0 444 87978 1 Publishers: ELSEVIER SCIENCE PUBLISHERS B.V. P.O. Box 1991 1000 BZ Amsterdam The Netherlands Sole distributorsf or the U.S.A.a nd Canada: ELSEVIER SCIENCE PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC. 52Vanderbilt Avenue NewYork, N.Y. 10017 U.S.A. Library of Congress Cataloging-inPubliction Data Voort, T. H. A. van der. Television violence. (Advances in psychology ; 32) Bibliography: p. Includes indexes. 1. Television and children--United States. 2. Violence in television--United States. 3. Agressive- ness in children. I. Title. 11. Series: Advances in psychology (Amsterdam, Netherlands) ; 32. HQ784.T4V663 1986 791.45'01'3 86-813 ISBN 0-444-87978-1 PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS xi P R E F A C E Many parents are concerned about how children are affected by violence on television. Ask a parent to name a program category 'unsuitable for young viewers, and violent programs are the first thing he or she thinks of. But parents do not reject all types of televised violence. In particular, objections are raised to the dramatized violence on television. While many parents indeed dislike all kinds of violence, acted or other- wise, real-life violence on television is something that cannot be avoided. Dramatized violence, however, is produced without any intrinsic necessity. It is gratuitous violence, simply made for the viewer's entertainment. Concerning the effects of television violence many questions arise. Does it frighten children? Does it instigate or rein- force aggression? Do children mimic it? Does it incline them to consider violence normal? Does it blunt their feelings? And, how do these programs influence the children's notion of the world around them? Although we shall be examining what research has to say about these and other questions (as a matter of fact, the first chapter is entirely devoted to this subject), the empirical research study expounded in this book is not directly concerned with the effects of television violence. In our own research, we are concerned with what children actually experience when watching violent programs on television, a research area that has received relatively little attention up to now. Of course, we shall never know exactly what children ex- perience while watching television, but the least we can do is ask them. That is what is done in this study. Children between the ages of nine and twelve years were shown a series of vio- lent programs. With the exception of one English film, all programs were American productions. The programs varied from the realistic genre of Starsky and Hutch to such fantasy car- toons as Tom and Jerry. Among other things, it was studied what children's attitudes are to the violence depicted in these programs. Do children experience the violence as such? Which types of programs do they consider violent? Do children enjoy this violence? Do they morally approve of the violent actions displayed in these programs? It was also investigated how children perceive the reality of different kinds of violent programs. Do children believe that what they have seen could happen in real life? And, more xii TV VIOLENCE: A CHILD'S-EYE VIEW specifically, do children believe that it could happen in their own neighborhoods? In addition, it was investigated to what extent children would like to be like different TV characters. The extent of involvement with which different kinds of pro- grams are watched was also investigated. When watching these programs, do children become totally absorbed in them or do they remain detached from what they see? With respect to these and other experiential and perceptual aspects, it was investigated what children have in common. But, as no two children are completely alike, it was also studied to what extent children differ in their perceptions and experien- ces. Do boys and girls differ in their perceptions of violent television programs? To what extent does age account for the perception and experience of these programs? Do heavy viewers perceive the programs differently from light viewers? Does the perception of violent programs depend on the children's social background? And what differences exist between children of parents who are or who are not very worried about television violence? Finally, it was investigated how perceptual and experiential aspects are mutually related, and what dimensions can be dis- tinguished in this regard. In doing so, it was also estimated to what extent children occupying an extreme position on each of these dimensions appear more or less susceptible to the aggression-arousing effect attributed to television violence. In a separate validation study--a follow-up study conducted a year later among the same children--it was investigated to what extent the perception dimensions found earlier correlate predictably with children's aggressiveness. xiii A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S This research project could not have been carried out with- out the assistance and cooperation of a number of individuals and organizations. Although we are not able to mention every- one, we particularly want to thank the following people. A major debt of gratitude is owed to Marcel Vooijs and Paul Bekker. Marcel Vooijs, who began working on the study soon after it received a special grant from the Dutch Foundation for Educational Research, helped in both its design and execution. He also contributed to the development of measurement instru- ments, and undertook a part of the statistical analysis of data. Bekker was primarily responsible for the statistical analysis. His efficient and creative application of multiva- riate techniques of statistical analysis was greatly beneficial to the study. Attie van Roon and Thea Kerkhof took part in the field work of the project, in particular during its initial stage. Dini Bakker, Karin Gortzak and Evelien Schoute participated in the follow-up study. We also want to thank Dolf Kohnstamm, whose social interest led to the initiation of the project, and Leo van der Kamp, who advised us on the statistical analyses of data. Both Dolf and Leo read and commented on earlier drafts. Rien van IJzendoorn and Jan van Lil also provided assistance in this regard. Cora Lucassen-Jongsma converted all our scribbles to co- herent type, and helped greatly to move the manuscript towards its present state. Marc Schoen ably translated the manuscript from Dutch into English, with the assistance on a number of chapters by Ivan Augsburger. The study was primarily carried out through the auspices of the Department of Pedagogics of the University of Leyden. The basic funds for this project were provided through a grant awarded by the Foundation for Educational Research. The Dutch Broadcasting Corporation (NOS) also provided a grant to the project. We are grateful for the support of these grants and the thorough analysis they made possible. Last, but not least, we want to thank the parents, the ele- mentary school teachers, and especially the children. Their cooperation was crucial to the study. 1 I N T R O D U C T I O N One of the startling areas of ignorance in communication research is that nobody knows what children perceive when they look at television (Klapper, 1969). This study is concerned with the question how children perceive and experience violent television programs. Experiments deter- mining the effects of television violence rarely approach the problem from this angle. It might even be said that everything emphasized in this study is generally neglected in the standard effects research studies. But the reverse is also true: what effects studies do investigate are the very things omitted here. This point can be illustrated by means of a discussion of a well-known experiment by Bandura, Ross, and Ross (1963). After this first sketch of the research angle from which tele- vision violence will be approached, a further characterization will be provided of the study discussed in this book. Then, the practical circumstances occasioning this study will be pin- pointed. These circumstances helped in part to determine the kinds of problems to be investigated in the study. Finally, an indication will be provided of what the reader may expect in the chapters to follow. A CURIOUS EXPERIMENT In a now classic experiment, Bandura et al. (1963) confronted children aged three to five with male or female models who were busy bashing and kicking about an almost life-sized inflated Bob0 doll. This unusual behavior was shown to the preschoolers under three different experimental conditions. Some of the children saw the model behavior live. A second group saw the same performance on film. A third group also saw it on film, 2 TV VIOLENCE: A CHILD'S-EYE VIEW but in this case in what the researchers called a cartoon version, In this cartoon, a female model was dressed as a black cat (of the kind often seen in cartoons). In order to further emphasize the fantasy character of this cartoon version the set was decorated with brightly colored imaginary trees, birds and butterflies. Finally, there was a control group that had to make do without a model. After being confronted with the model, the preschoolers from all four groups were first mildly frustrated. After that, they were put in a situation greatly resembling that which they had seen live or on film, allowing them to behave as aggressively or as prosocially as they pleased. In that situation, each of the three experimental groups, that is, the three groups who in one way or another had been confronted with an aggressive model, exhibited significantly and considerably more aggressive behavior than the control group. Not only was the total aggres- sion higher (disinhibition effect), but also the number of actions seen earlier with the model (imitation effect). Ban- dura, Ross and Ross were thus among the first to demonstrate that seeing a film model can have just as great an aggression- arousing effect as a real-life model. With that, the most important prediction was borne out. But a second prediction was not confirmed unequivocally. The re- searchers assumed that the three aforementioned experimental treatments could be classified according to what they called a reality-fiction stimulus dimension. In this continuum, the model seen in real life is presumed to be on the reality side, the cartoon-model on the fictional side, and the film model somewhere in between. The expectation, then, was that the further removed a model is from reality, the less inclined the preschoolers will be to mimic the model's behavior. This pre- diction was not confirmed. Although the preschoolers of the cartoon-group exhibited significantly less aggressive imitative behavior than the children that had seen the live model, the remaining differences between the three experimental groups were not significant. This experiment has been discussed and, in particular, criticized by numerous authors. The three most important points of criticism can be found in Wiegman (1975). Firstly, he won- ders whether punching and kicking a plastic doll can be re- garded as "aggression." Secondly, he questions whether the same experimental effect would be obtained if the treatment and measurement conditions were to be less similar. Finally, he wonders whether the unfamiliarity with the stimulus material might not itself have had a stirnulatory effect. These points of criticism are only mentioned for the sake of completeness, for at this point we are concerned with other INTRODUCTION 3 aspects of this--and many other--effects studies. A first criticism is that the researchers devote no attention whatso- ever to the way the preschoolers experience the experimental treatments. The researchers' point of departure is that of the adult. They assume that filmed models are less realistic than real-life models. In addition, they assume that the cartoon version is less realistic than the filmed version of the live model. In the eyes of an adult, these differences are only too apparent, but it is questionable whether preschoolers also see, or more accurately, experience it that way. It is altogether possible that what an adult sees as varying greatly in realism a preschooler may see as being very similar. Judging from Le- velt's (1981) observations, this is even quite likely. On the basis of his interviews with preschoolers, he came to the conclusion that young children see television programs as very real, so much so that at the time of the broadcast, they may even have the impression that the television characters are actually physically present inside the television set. Such an observation inclines one to believe that there may hardly be any difference between the way a preschooler experiences a live or a filmed performance. In addition, it is doubtful whether preschoolers regard a woman dressed as a cartoon cat as less authentic than an ordi- narily dressed woman. It is even quite possible that as a preschooler experiences it, the very opposite is the case; a cartoon cat may be more appealing than an ordinary woman. In any case, the makers of programs for preschoolers seem to think so. In many of their programs, one will not find any "normally" dressed people at all. Another indication that the researchers devote no attention to the way the preschoolers themselves experience the film is the fact that they neglected to investigate whether the child- ren saw the model's behavior as being aggressive. The doubts expressed about this in the literature appear, by the way, to be unfounded. As Zumkley (1980) demonstrated, preschoolers do regard the behavior exhibited by the model of Bandura et al. as aggressive. When asked about it, the (German) preschoolers respond that they disapprove of the model's behavior (though not in so many words of course), and that they assume that the model had some evil intention. In addition, the preschoolers said that if they could play with such a plastic doll, they would behave differently. It is indeed very doubtful that this last statement is reliable, for parallel groups in Zumkley's study did actually exhibit this "disapproved" behavior. Most experiments, then, are characterized by a neglect of the participants' subjective interpretation of what they have been watching. It is also characteristic of the effects re- 4 TV VIOLENCE: A CHILD'S-EYE VIEW searchers that they are often satisfied if they can demonstrate that on average, the experimental group differs from the con- trol group. Children who exhibit little or no aggressive beha- vior after seeing an aggressive film, are rarely given any attention. In most experiments, then, individual differences between children's reactions have been neglected. In this respect, the study by Bandura, Ross, and Ross does not show up so badly after all. They analyzed the experimental results for boys and girls seperately (not even possible in many experi- ments due to the lack of female participants), and in addition they ascertained whether the effect obtained in the experiment correlated with the children's aggressiveness. Finally, it is striking that in reporting on their experi- ments, researchers usually provide a detailed description of the stimulus material (the films). At the same time a vivid description is given of the instructions children receive in the laboratory, and how they are prepared for what is going to happen. But as soon as the film-projector starts running, the researcher's pen is silent, not to be heard of again until the lights have been turned back on. Then, of course, there is work to be done, for the child must be given the opportunity to behave prosocially or aggressively, whichever the case may be. In short, the descriptions pay a great deal of attention to the film stimuli, as well as to the reactions after it is over, but what happens between the time the film begins and the time it ends remains obscure. Then, apparently, the researcher takes a coffee break. THE NATURE OF THIS STUDY What takes place during the experimental researcher's break is the very quintessence of this study, even though it can only be measured retrospectively, that is, right after it is over. In other repects as well, this study is a "negative" of the photograph researchers usually make of the event. Firstly, while the experimental researcher is usually only interested in the objective features of films, this study i s concerned with the children's subjective perceptions and experiences of them. The objective features of the films are only of interest to the extent that they result in a child's perceiving or experiencing the films differently. An important question dealt with in this study, therefore, is how children perceive and experience different types of films (in this case, television programs) with distinguishable objective features.
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