Violent Media and Aggressive

Behavior in Children
Does watching violence on TV, in movies, or video games
promote aggression?

With recent worry about mass shootings and gun violence in the United
States, one of the questions that always comes up is whether violent
media promotes violent or aggressive behavior. This is something that is
especially important to think about for parents, as violent content is
common on television and in movies, on the internet, and in some of the
most popular children’s video games.

Although the issue is often presented as controversial in the media, we

have pretty good evidence that exposure to violent media does make
children more aggressive. And we’ve known it for decades. In one of the
most well-known studies on this topic (published all the way back in the
1960s), researchers showed preschoolers a video of an adult playing
with an inflatable doll. In the video, the children watched as the adult sat
on the doll, punched it in the nose, hit the doll on the head with a mallet,
and kicked it repeatedly. After watching the video, the children were
brought into a playroom with the same doll and lots of other toys. As
predicted, the kids who watched the aggressive video imitated what they
saw—they beat the doll with a mallet, and they punched and kicked it.
What was most surprising was that the children found new and creative
ways to beat up the doll, and they played more aggressively with the
other toys in the room as well. In other words, children didn’t just imitate
the aggressive behaviors they saw; seeing aggressive behaviors caused
these kids to play more aggressively in general (Bandura, Ross, & Ross,
1963).

Very recent research suggests that these effects can become

particularly problematic when guns are involved. Researchers from Ohio
State University brought pairs of 8- to 12-year-old children into a lab and
showed them a 20-minute version of a popular PG-rated movie—either
the Rocketeer (1991) or National Treasure (2004). In the edited movie,
the children either saw that actual movie footage, which contained
characters using guns, or they watched a version where the guns were
edited out. They were then presented with a large room that contained
various toys including Legos, nerf guns, and games. Not surprisingly, the
children who watched the movie with the guns played more aggressively
than children who watched the movie with the guns edited out,
consistent with previous research.

Source: jarmoluk/Pixabay

But that wasn’t all; the study had a bit of a twist. The playroom also
contained a closed cabinet, where in one of the drawers was a real 0.38-
caliber handgun. The gun was not loaded, and it was modified so that it
couldn’t fire bullets. It was also modified so that it kept track of the
number of times the trigger was pulled hard enough that the gun would
have gone off. The children weren’t told that there was a gun in the
room, the researchers were simply interested in whether the children
would find the gun on their own, and if they did, what they’d do with it.

About 83 percent of the kids in the study found the gun, and most of
them played with it. Of the kids who found it, 27 percent immediately
gave it to the experimenter and the experimenter took it out of the room.
Of the remaining 58 percent of kids who found the gun, 42 percent
played with it in various ways. Importantly, almost none of the kids who
watched the movie clip without guns ever pulled the trigger. The kids
who watched the movie that contained gun footage were more likely to
pull the trigger of the real gun; on average, they pulled it about 2 to 3
times, and spent 4 to 5 times longer holding it when compared to kids
who watched the movie with no gun footage. What’s scarier is that some
of these kids pulled the trigger more than a few times; in fact, they pulled
it quite a lot. Some pulled the trigger over 20 times; one child pointed the
gun out the window at people walking down the street; and another child
pressed the gun to another child’s temple and pulled the trigger (Dillon,
& Bushman, 2017).

This research suggests that violent media can cause aggressive

behavior in children, and that this behavior can be incredibly problematic
if the violent media includes guns. Indeed, children are incredibly curious
about guns, and they can have difficulty understanding the difference
between real and toy guns (Benjamin, Kepes, & Bushman, 2017). In
fact, there is research suggesting that guns don’t need to be featured in
the media to cause aggression; the mere presence of a gun is enough to
elicit aggressive behavior. For example, having a gun sitting on a table
makes people behave more aggressively (Berkowitz & LePage, 1967),
and recent work shows that having a gun in the car makes people (even
non-gun owners) more aggressive drivers (Bushman, Kerwin, Whitlock,
& Weisenberger, 2017). These effects even exist in children, whether or
not the gun is real or is just a toy (Benjamin Kepes, & Bushman, 2017).

So can viewing violent media cause more aggression in children? The

answer based on this research is a very clear yes. And it’s worth pointing
out that the videos children saw in the studies I described were pretty
mild; they either saw a homemade video of someone playing roughly
with a doll, or 20-minute clips of movies that were rated PG. The
violence in these videos pales in comparison to the violence in other full-
length movies and in video games, which have also been linked to
increases in aggressive behavior (Anderson & Bushman, 2001). The
clear implication from here is that if you don’t want your children to be
aggressive or violent, keep them away from violent media, and even
away from toy weapons that might encourage aggressive behavior all on
their own. That doesn’t mean you won’t end up with an aggressive
child—some children are just naturally more aggressive than others—but
it’s certainly a start.
References

Anderson, C. A., & Bushman, B. J. (2001). Effects of violent video games on aggressive
behavior, aggressive cognition, aggressive affect, physiological arousal, and prosocial
behavior: A meta-analytic review of the scientific literature. Psychological Science, 12,
353-359.

Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S. A. (1963). Imitation of film-mediated aggressive
models. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 66, 3-11.

Berkowitz, L., & LePage, A. (1967). Weapons as aggression-eliciting stimuli. Journal of

Personality and Social Psychology, 7(2p1), 202-207.