Timmy is a ten-year-old boy from Arkansas who has been caught multiple times watching violent tv shows. It’s difficult for his parents to catch him in action because they are busy with work-related stressors and don’t have enough time to implement an intervention to get him to stop watching these inappropriate television networks. His parents have also realized that he displays similar actions to what he watches on television. One example of this occurring has been when he was playing with a friend on the weekend and Timmy hit his friend on the arm because he didn’t share a toy. Another example of Timmy displaying violence was at school when he slapped his friend for not giving him a piece of candy. These aggressive behaviors have to be coming from somewhere, but where?
Communication technologies give us more access to information that has never been seen in decades before and these technologies reinforce recent social actions and demeanors of reasoning (Nelson, 2022). One communication technology can be television. Television displays many behaviors and reasonings that could have nudged Timmy to want to hurt his friends. The way that Timmy has been acting can be credited to vicarious learning which states that an individual performs an action likely because they had already observed it in a way that they were rewarded (Gruman, et al., 2016). In one of the tv shows that Timmy had been watching, a little kid hit his parent on the arm repeatedly to get what she wanted, which was attention in this case. This could be a reason why Timmy believes he can resort to violence to get what he wants.
For vicarious learning to happen, there are four steps that occur in agreement with the social cognitive theory including attention, representational process, behavioral production process, and motivational process (Gruman, et al., 2016). The first step of social cognitive theory is attention. This step includes when Timmy pays attention to the actions in a violent tv show. He was clearly interested and attracted as violence is exciting. The second step of social cognitive theory is the representational process. This step includes Timmy remembering the action that was shown in the tv show. At this step he is also rehearsing the action, in turn, being able to think about this action at a later time. The third step of social cognitive theory is the behavioral production process. In this step Timmy thinks about the action he observed and tries learning how to apply it to related actions. For example, in the violent tv show when he viewed the little girl hitting her parent on the arm to get what she wanted, this showed Timmy that when he wants something to hit another individual which he displayed when he hit his classmate and friend. The final step of social cognitive theory is the motivational process. This step explains that the reason why Timmy did the action that he did was because he was motivated to do so.
Overall, Timmy has watched one too many violent tv shows which can be seen in his aggressive behaviors. His parents need to keep a better eye out for what he is watching because it is clearly affecting his schooling and friendships. New technologies open the possibilities for anyone to view inappropriate behaviors and to relay those behaviors in different ways. It’s important to watch as communication technologies bring more information to the table year by year!
References
Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (Eds.). (2016). Applied social psychology : Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. SAGE Publications, Incorporated.
Nelson, A. (2022). Psych 424 – Lesson 9: Media/Communications Technology. The Pennsylvania
State University, World Campus.
Your example of the effects of violent TV shows on children and social cognition theory was very insightful. I agree with the idea that it is critical for parents to understand the impact of such TV programs on their children and to keep an eye on them. According to Wilson’s (2008) research, rather than parents setting rules for their children’s media viewing, it is more important for parents to be involved by watching prosocial TV shows with their children and teaching them that terrible things in the media do not happen in real life.
Parents need to provide educational support rather than just setting viewing times for the day and leaving the media choices up to the child. This parental involvement will help reduce violent behavior like Timmy’s.
References
Wilson, B. J. (2008). Media and children’s aggression, fear, and altruism. The Future of Children, 18(1), 87–118. https://doi.org/10.1353/foc.0.0005