The Effect of the Media on Aggression in Children.

Media is of importance to many people for many reasons, including entertainment and escapism. The mass production of televisions in the 1950’s has led to a phenomenon previously unheard of, with statistics showing that as of 2013, 79% of the world has at least one television set per household (TVTechnology, 2013). It therefore stands to reason that children may have easy access to media that may not be age appropriate. Is it accurate to assume, however, that media can cause aggression in children? The Oxford dictionary defines aggression as: “feelings of anger or antipathy resulting in hostile or violent behaviour”. This definition depicts a narrow view of aggression, with the assumption being it will often manifest physically, this view does not take into account varying types of aggression that can be equally as harmful, such as verbal and psychological abuse (persistent abuse to the point of anxiety or stress). It should also be noted that aggression is a form of anti-social behaviour, a concept that varies culturally, for example one study concludes that Western cultures are far more likely to resort to physical violence, whilst Eastern cultures would more readily resort to verbal abuse (Andreu et al, 1998). The most interesting aspect of aggression, particularly in children, comes from the debate of Nature/Nurture. The debate is the belief that all behaviour can be explained in one of two ways. Nature states that biological factors are the most deterministic and behaviour is predetermined by said factors; Nurture implies that environmental factors are the cause of behavioural tendencies.

The argument for Nature is most analogous with the Biological explanation of aggression, postulating that aggression originates from factors such as: hormone imbalance, faulty brain chemistry, genetic defects and chromosomal abnormalities. Evidence showing that the handling of a gun can increase the hormone testosterone, substantiates this view (Klinesmith et al, 2006), with an excess in the hormone often linked with aggressive behaviour.[ Therefore if Nature is correct, men would be seen as more prone to violence and most anecdotal evidence agrees with this sentiment]. The most valid Biological explanation of aggression is the concept of physiological arousal, part of the human stress response via the adrenal system. When you become frightened or excited the heart beats faster, and this subsequently returns to “normal”. If this happens on multiple occasions, desensitisation can occur and a higher amount of adrenaline is required in order to achieve the same “high” as previously. Therefore aggression is [either resultant of adrenaline seeking or] due to the lack of regular exposure to adrenaline. A famous study involving children was conducted in order to assess this hypothesis using the game “Quake 2” (Unsworth et al, 2007) in which appropriate students were selected to play the game and measure aggression before, during and afterwards. Firstly they completed a questionnaire in order to assess base levels of specific personality traits and to address ethical issues, such as the protection of participants and their confidentiality. Participants were then instructed to play the game and freely commentate on their experience. Afterwards they would be re-evaluated using the same tests as beforehand in order to ensure consistency. The results showed that 71.4% of the participant’s aggression did not change. This could be indicative of demand characteristics, as participants were aware of observation and therefore may have based their actions upon what they perceived was expected of them i.e. lack of aggression. These findings would substantiate the Nature hypothesis, as all players had prior experience in gaming, and therefore could have a potentially higher adrenaline tolerance and thus such a small exposure to the game would incite a lower chance of developing aggressive behaviours.

The Nurture aspect of the debate corresponds best to Social Learning Theory, wherein all behavioural tendencies are learned through the environment, often through imitation of a model’s behaviour. In this instance children would choose a role model (for example a celebrity in media), who they admire and wish to emulate. The child must meet four requirements in order to be successful: Attention – they must observe the behaviour of the model (for example a celebrity via media); Retention – they must remember the specifics; Motor Reproduction – they have to be able to copy the skill, for example, watching someone do a backflip on television cannot be copied immediately unless they have the skills to learn to do so; and Motivation – they must want to copy said behaviour. Motivation is usually met in conjunction with vicarious reinforcement, in which seeing the model being rewarded encourages greater incentive to copy the behaviour, an example is status and fortune that comes with fame. A study into this phenomenon was conducted (Bandura et al, 1963) during which children were shown a film of a model behaving both physically and verbally aggressive towards various toys, most famously a Bobo doll. The children were then shown alternate endings depending on the conditional group they had been placed in, with the ending either depicting; the model rewarded, model punished, or no outcome. The children who observed the rewarding scenario showed greater aggressive tendencies than the other groups. This validates the theory, as children clearly imitated behaviour they saw as having a favourable outcome. A flaw in this theory however, is the statement that models are usually admirable figures and the researchers likely did not fit this criterion, throughout the experiment they were instead imposing authority figures, perhaps contributing to the children’s readiness to duplicate behaviour. An apt consideration may therefore be to amend the theory to include authority figures.

Unfortunately there may never be a solid conclusion as to whether Nature or Nurture reigns supreme, with most researchers opting for an amalgamation of the two ideologies. The same ambiguity holds true for studies into aggression. This is especially true with regard to children due to the current rigid ethical constraints in place. Aggressive studies usually run the risk of causing lasting psychological harm; and this is not something that researchers wish to impose upon children, hence the largely outdated research in this area. There is also the matter of aggression as a drive, often believed to be caused by frustration (Dollard et al, 1939). Drives cannot be measured empirically therefore results are often qualitative rather than quantitative and interpretation becomes a deciding factor whilst making conclusions, allowing the development of bias and human error. Individual differences are also an issue, temperaments and responses differ depending on the stressors and/or the individual; therefore when studying aggression these confounding variables may have unintentionally biased the results. Finally, the study of aggression is a male oriented field and most studies are biased towards the male perspective.