Immunizing children against possible antisocial effects of viewing television violence: a curricular intervention.

Abstract

An experimental curricular module was designed and tested to determine its success in helping children cope with negative influences of viewing violence on television. The instruction was derived from studies by McGuire in building resistance to attirude change. The child's perceived reality of television drama was selected as the concept to be presented in the instructional treatments. It was suggested that when the child perceived the television sequence to reflect reality he would more likely be aroused by the portrayal and also that this state of arousal might be responsible for subsequent aggressive behavior. From Grade 6 103 boys and girls were randomly assigned to either treatment or control groups. The instruction occurred in eight units, two per week, over a 4-wk. period. Measurement occurred in the fifth week after instruction. Two forms of instructional treatments were administered; in concept presentation subjects were shown how various components of production are used to create a dramatic television program; and in concept manipulation, subjects experimented with elements used in producing television drama. Subjects took the dependent measures, paper-and-pencil, self-report items, as responses to their viewing of violent scenes presented on videotape. Perceived reality and arousal measures were developed for the study. The aggression measure was borrowed from a previous study on children's responses to television. Resulm show no significant main effect on arousal was attributed to instructional treatments or to sex. Interaction of concept-manipulation by sex approached significance (F = 3.02, p = . l o ) ; boys receiving the manipulation had higher mean arousal scores ( 11.12) than girls ( 10.80). Contrary to prediction, subjects who received conceptmanipulation scored higher (40.29) on aggression than those who did not receive the treatment (32.88). Boys' over-all mean aggression scores (38.62) were higher than girls' (33.89). Subjects' aggressive and arousal scores were unrelated ( 7 = .082). As predicted, boys' mean scores on the perceived reality measure were higher (20.66) than the girls' (17.91).