Tv Violence and Aggressive Behaviour in Children

There are many influences on the developing child which originate from the outside the immediate family structure (Murray, 1985). One of these influences is television. Since the 1960’s there has been much debate focusing on the impact of violence on television on the aggressive behaviour in children. It will be shown in this essay that a relationship exists between television violence and aggressive behaviour in children. Evidence from Bandura’s “Bobo Doll” experiment and from an experiment conducted by Stein and Friedrich will be examined and subsequently reviewed in this essay. This will be followed by discussion of some important issues related to the experiment findings and opinions on how one should manage this potential problem will be considered.


Bandura, Ross and Ross (1963) conducted an experiment to determine the cause and effect relationship between television/film violence and aggressive behaviour in children. The experiment used ninety-six subjects consisting of forty-eight boys and forty-eight girls with a mean age of 52 months. The subjects were divided into three experimental groups and one control group consisting of twenty-four subjects in each. The first experiment group observed real-life models portraying aggression. The second group observed these models portraying aggression on a film, while a third group viewed a cartoon depicting a character acting aggressively. The fourth group served as the control group for the experiment and they had no exposure to any of the aggressive models. Prior to the experiment, all subjects both experimental and control, were subjected to mild aggression arousal to insure that they were under some degree of instigation to aggression.
The subjects in the three experiment groups viewed either a real-life model, a film depicting a real like model or a character in a cartoon acting aggressively towards the “Bobo” doll. The aggressive acts directed to the doll included kicking, punching, using a mallet to... [continues]

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