Children's Moral Reasoning and Their Perceptions of Television Violence

Abstract

This experiment examined the effect of a child's age on his or her interpretation of an act of interpersonal violence on television. One hundred eighty-four children in 2 age groups were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 viewing conditions in which they watched a violent video clip. The clips depicted identical violent acts; however, punishment (yes/no) of the violent act and provocation (yes/no) for the violent act were manipulated to create the 4 conditions. Following the video clip, children were asked to judge whether the act was right or wrong and why. They then engaged in a test of their willingness to choose aggression as a solution to a hypothetical interpersonal conflict. As predicted, younger children thought that unpunished violence was more right than punished violence. Older children thought that provoked violence was more right than unprovoked violence, although this result only approached significance. Children's willingness to choose a violent story ending to a hypothetical interpersonal conflict was related to their experimental condition for older children but not for younger children.