There was a time in the United States of America when a family sat down at night in front of the television and watched various misadventures of wholesome loveable characters. These were shows like I Love Lucy, The Andy Griffith Show, and Leave it to Beaver. There were only three television stations and generally there was only one television set in the household. Today, one can watch television from anywhere and there seems to be an infinite amount of television shows and stations that one can indulge in. Moreover, people now have the ability to watch movies in the theater, on television, their tablets, and phones, etc. With the increased opportunity to view television and movies, people can now view violence at a higher rate. With the increased chance to view violence coming from our media, it is important to look back on how viewing media violence has affected people in the past.
According to Schneider, Gruman, and Coutts (2012), 58% of television programming had intentional violence in the 1994-1995 television season. I personally remember cartoons (I was six years-old at the time) such as Ren and Stimpy and Power Rangers having many violent scenes that my parents were not happy with. As kids, we shrugged them off our parents concern with the violence when we were that age. Even worse than the cartoons on Nickelodeon was WWE’s rise in popularity. The wrestlers were being punched, hit with chairs, knocked off of ladders, and many more violent acts. It was glorious to watch as a child. My friends and I would often pretend to be our favorite wrestlers and wrestle until one of us was hurt.
As I read chapter 7 of Applying Social Psychology to the Media I was reminded of the young boy that imitated the wrestling moves that he saw on WWE and killed a young girl. I was reminded that somebody could have been seriously injured or killed. Schneider et al., (2012) linked this to the classic bobo doll study in which children watched people play with toys. Some kids saw the people hit the bobo doll while others did not. Those that viewed people hitting the bobo doll imitated the behavior. I believe that as kids, we would have been right in the middle of the bell curve for that study.
So, it has been well established that people, especially children will emulate behavior that they see in the media. The question becomes, how can one curb that behavior so that children understand that the violence that they are seeing is not real and if duplicated could injure or kill somebody? According to Schneider et. al., (2012), children are more likely to start or continue the behavior that they see if said behavior is rewarded. Conversely, children are more likely to not act aggressively if the behavior is punished. For instance, if a child sees a wrestler slam and then pin somebody and then given a championship belt, they may copy that behavior. The reader of this blog may wonder if my parents were able to put a stop to my aggressive behavior. The answer is yes. WWE was strictly banned from our household and the punishment for watching it was loss of television privileges.
References
Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., and Coutts, L. M. (Eds.) (2012). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications