Media and Children Aggression Fear and Altruism Article Summary Read this attachment, which summarizes various areas of research related to the influence o

Media and Children Aggression Fear and Altruism Article Summary Read this attachment, which summarizes various areas of research related to the influence of the media on children’s emotional, moral and altruistic development.  After reading the attachment, respond to the following items in a 2 – 3 page response paper.

What is the author’s contention about the effect of the media on prosocial development?
Describe the connection between the different topics discussed. That is, how might the development of emotional empathy be related to moral development and/or prosocial behavior?
Connect the article to material discussed in the textbook. That is, find at least one concept discussed in the text that relates to the material discussed in the article and explain the connection.
Critical thinking: Given that the research suggests that there are positive media effects on children’s’ behavior, why do you think we hear so much about the negative effects? Explain your answer. Excerpts from:
Media and Children’s Aggression, Fear, and Altruism by Barbara J. Wilson
http://futureofchildren.org/publications/journals/article/index.xml?journalid=32&articleid=58&s
ectionid=271&submit
Section 1: Media and Emotional Development
Children need emotional skills to form relationships with others. Indeed, the capacity to
recognize and interpret emotions in others is a fundamental building block of social
competence.2 Developmental psychologists and media scholars alike have argued that screen
media play a crucial role in children’s emotional development. 3 Yet few studies address this
larger issue, in part because researchers have given so much empirical attention instead to
media’s impact on maladaptive or antisocial behaviors.
1.2 Emotional Empathy
Learning to feel empathy or share emotions with others is part of what makes children effective
social agents. Empathic children are more sensitive to others and are more likely to engage in
socially desirable behavior in groups.17 Empathy is typically construed as a developmentally
acquired skill, dependent on a child’s ability to recognize what emotion the other person is
feeling and to role-take, or imagine the self in that person’s place. 18 Infants often respond to the
crying of other babies by crying themselves.19 But this emotional contagion is different from
empathy, though it may be a precursor to it.
Although children clearly share experiences with media characters, few researchers have studied
this phenomenon. One early experiment confirms that empathy is a developmental skill. 20 In the
study, children from two age groups (three through five and nine through eleven) watched a
movie clip of either a threatening stimulus or a character’s fear in response to a threatening
stimulus that was not shown directly. Younger children were less physiologically aroused and
less frightened by the character’s fear than by the fear- provoking stimulus. The older children,
however, responded emotionally to both versions of the movie. The preschoolers did not lack
empathy because they failed to recognize the nature of the character’s emotion—the vast
majority did recognize the character’s fear. But they were less likely than the older children to
engage in role-taking with the character, a skill that other studies have found to emerge around
age eight and increase during the elementary school years. 21
Besides their developmental stage, other characteristics of children seem to encourage empathy
with media portrayals. Children, for example, are more likely to share the emotions of a samesex than an opposite-sex character.22 They are also more likely to experience empathy if they
perceive the media content as realistic.23
To summarize, a few experimental studies show that children engage in emotional sharing with
well-liked characters. Because empathy requires the ability to identify others’ emotions and to
role-take, older children are more likely to share the emotional experiences of on-screen
characters than younger children are. Once again, content matters. Children are more likely to
experience empathy with plot lines and characters that they perceive as realistic. They are also
more likely to share the emotions of characters similar to themselves, presumably because it is
easier to role-take with such characters. Thus, movies or television programs that feature
younger characters in emotional situations that are familiar and seem authentic should produce
the strongest empathy in youth. But all of these insights are derived from short-term studies. No
longitudinal studies of children’s media exposure over time address its effect on empathy.
Nevertheless, a recent survey of adults’ lifetime media habits is suggestive. In the study, adults
reported on their exposure to various types of fiction (romance, suspense novels, thrillers,
science fiction, fantasy, domestic and foreign fiction) and nonfiction (science, political
commentary, business, philosophy, psychology, self-help) print media. 24 They also filled out a
questionnaire measuring social skills and various facets of empathy, including perspectivetaking. Even after controlling for age, IQ, and English fluency, researchers found that readers
who were more exposed to narrative fiction were more empathic and had higher general social
abilities. Furthermore, readers of more fiction became more deeply absorbed in stories. In
contrast, readers who were more exposed to nonfiction were less empathic. In order to untangle
definitively whether empathic people seek out fiction, or whether fictional stories help teach
empathy, or whether both are true, researchers will have to track children’s media habits over
time.
Section 2: Media and Moral Development
One criticism often leveled against the media is that they are contributing to the decay of
morality. Indeed, a recent national poll reported that 70 percent of Americans are very or
somewhat worried that popular culture, as portrayed in television and movies, is lowering moral
standards in the United States.62 The concern is fueled by the tremendous amount of time youth
are spending with the media and by their easy access to explicit content. Children can readily
find stories about violence, sexual promiscuity, theft, and greed in a variety of media outlets
including fictional programming, reality shows, rap music, and the Internet. Almost no research,
however, focuses on how the media shape children’s moral development. Researchers have
written widely on how the media affect children’s behaviors, both prosocial and antisocial. But
they have paid little attention to the moral lessons children learn from the media that may be
underlying these behaviors.
Moral development in children follows a predictable developmental path. When presented with
an ethical dilemma, children under the age of eight typically judge an action as wrong or
incorrect when it results in punishment or goes against the rules set forth by authority figures. 63
As children mature, they begin to consider multiple perspectives in a situation, taking into
account the intentions and motives of those involved and recognizing the often-conflicting rules
inherent in moral dilemmas. In other words, their moral reasoning becomes more flexible and
“other” oriented.
Marina Krcmar and her colleagues have conducted several studies on whether watching violence
on television affects children’s moral reasoning. In one survey, they presented six- to twelveyear-olds with hypothetical stories in which a perpetrator performed aggression either for reasons
of protection, called “justified” violence, or for random reasons, called “unjustified” violence. 64
Most of the children perceived the unjustified aggression to be wrong. But children who were
heavy viewers of fantasy violence programs such as Power Rangers were more likely than
children who seldom watched such programs to judge the “justified” aggression in the stories as
being morally correct. And indeed researchers have found that much of the violence in popular
superhero cartoons is portrayed as justified.65 In the Krcmar study, both children who watched a
great deal of fantasy violence and those who watched more realistic entertainment violence, such
as Cops, displayed less advanced moral reasoning strategies, focusing more on rules and the
presence or absence of punishment in their reasoning about moral dilemmas.
A follow-up study found the same pattern.66 Again, children who watched a great deal of fantasy
violence were more likely than light viewers to perceive justified violence as morally acceptable.
Heavy doses of fantasy violence also were linked with a child’s ability to take on someone else’s
perspective. In particular, children heavily exposed to fantasy violence had less advanced roletaking abilities, which in turn predicted less sophisticated moral reasoning skills. This second
study also looked at the family’s influence on children’s television viewing and moral reasoning.
In families where parents stressed communication, children were less likely to watch fantasy
violence on television and therefore exhibited higher moral reasoning skills. Parents who
stressed control had children who watched more fantasy violence and had less advanced moral
reasoning.
Both these studies suggest that watching a great deal of violence on television may hinder
children’s moral development. Yet it may also be that children with less sophisticated moral
skills are drawn to violent programs, especially superhero shows, because their fairly simplistic
storylines depict aggression as typically justified and rarely punished. 67
Two recent studies shed some light on this puzzle. In an experiment, Marina Krcmar and
Stephen Curtis tested the causal effect of television on children’s moral conceptions of right and
wrong.68 Children between the ages of five and fourteen were randomly assigned to one of three
groups: one group watched an action cartoon that featured characters arguing and eventually
engaging in violence; another group watched a similar clip involving an argument from which
the characters walked away instead of fighting; and a control group did not watch television.
Afterward, children listened to and judged four hypothetical stories involving violence. Children
who had watched the violent program were more likely than those in the control group to judge
violence as morally acceptable. They also exhibited less sophisticated moral reasoning in their
responses, often relying on authority or punishment as rationales (for example, “You shouldn’t
hit because you’ll get in trouble”). The reaction was the same regardless of the children’s age. In
fact, older children (nine to fourteen years) who had seen the violent clip displayed reasoning
skills that were on par with those of younger children (five to eight years) in the control group.
The experiment demonstrates that exposure to a single program containing fantasy violence can
alter children’s short-term moral evaluations of aggression and can even adversely affect the
strategies they use to make sense of those evaluations.
Unexpectedly, the study found that children who viewed the nonviolent version of the cartoon
reacted much the same as those who viewed the violent version; that is, they judged violence as
being more morally acceptable than did members of the control group. The authors reasoned that
action cartoons might be so familiar to children and so typically full of violence that even
watching a nonviolent segment from this genre triggers mental models or schemata in children
that involve justified violence.
A second study, in this case a longitudinal one, also illuminates how the media affect moral
development. Judy Dunn and Claire Hughes tracked forty “hard-to-manage” preschoolers and
forty matched control children over a two-year period, measuring their cognitive skills, social
behavior, and emotional functioning.69 The two groups of preschoolers engaged in similar
amounts of pretend play at age four, but the hard-to-manage children were substantially more
likely to engage in play that involved killing, death, and physical violence. Many of these fantasy
play incidents were tied to media characters and programs. In addition, children from both
groups who engaged in much violent pretend play at age four had significantly lower moral
reasoning scores at age six, even after researchers controlled for verbal ability, aggression, and
friendship quality at age four. These violent-play children were more likely than their peers to
respond in selfish or hedonistic ways to moral dilemmas, often focusing on punishments rather
than on the motives and feelings of the story characters. Although the study did not directly
measure children’s media habits, the preschoolers’ violent fantasy play was often tied to violent
television and movies they had seen.
To summarize, some research suggests that extensive viewing of television violence can alter
children’s views about the acceptability of violence and perhaps even hinder the development of
their moral reasoning. Fantasy violence that is portrayed as justified or heroic is most strongly
implicated here, again suggesting that the type of content children watch is important. Such
conclusions must be tentative, however, because of the paucity of studies in this area. With the
exception of one experiment and one longitudinal study, nearly all the evidence is of the
snapshot-in-time variety and does not permit drawing causal conclusions. In addition, the
research has examined only children’s moral views about aggression. It has paid little attention to
media’s effect on other moral issues such as altruism and even other types of antisocial behavior
such as cheating, lying, and stealing. Finally, the focus to date has been on detrimental effects of
media exposure, not on whether some programs and genres can enhance moral development.
And the research has focused solely on television. Websites, video games, movies, and even
children’s books sometimes grapple with moral dilemmas, and researchers need to explore their
impact as well.
Section 3: Media and Prosocial Behavior
So much public attention has been paid to potential negative effects of the media on children that
parents and researchers alike have scarcely acknowledged the positive. Yet if television and
movies can teach children antisocial behaviors such as aggression, then it makes sense that these
same media can teach beneficial behaviors as well. The challenge is to differentiate the media
messages that are potentially harmful from those that are positive or prosocial in nature.
Prosocial behavior can be broadly defined as any voluntary behavior intended to benefit another
person.99 Altruism is the most common example of prosocial behavior. Others are friendliness,
sharing, cooperation, sympathy, and even acceptance of others from different groups.
Clearly children are exposed to a great deal of violence in the media. But how often do they
witness prosocial behavior? One recent, large-scale study examined a randomly selected week of
television programming across eighteen channels. 100 The total sample included more than 2,000
entertainment shows. Nearly three-fourths of the programs (73 percent) featured at least one act
of altruism, defined as helping, sharing, giving, or donating. On average, viewers of these
programs saw about three acts of altruism an hour. Human characters rather than
anthropomorphized ones enacted most of the altruism, and about one-third of the behaviors were
explicitly rewarded in the plot. Altruism was more common in situation comedies and children’s
shows than in other types of programs. It was also more common on children’s cable networks
such as Disney and Nickelodeon than on general audience cable such as A&E or TNT or on the
broadcast networks. Thus, programs targeted to younger viewers often portray helping behavior.
As examples, Sesame Street (PBS), Dora the Explorer (Nickelodeon), and Dragon Tales (PBS)
are popular prosocial and educational programs for preschoolers. Arthur (PBS) and The Wild
Thornberrys (Nickelodeon) are prosocial shows that are well liked by younger elementary school
children, and The Suite Life of Zack and Cody (Disney) and Drake and Josh (Nickelodeon) are
prosocial shows popular among older elementary school children.
Comparing the findings on prosocial TV content with those of the National Television Violence
Study reveals much about the landscape of television.101 Children are more likely to encounter
depictions of altruism (in three out of four programs) than of physical aggression (in two out of
three programs) when they watch television. But the concentration of altruistic behaviors is
lower (three incidents an hour) than that of violence (six incidents an hour). In children’s
programming itself, altruism occurs about four times an hour, but violence occurs roughly
fourteen times an hour. Thus, an American child who watches an average of three hours a day of
children’s television programming will see 4,380 acts of altruism and 15,330 acts of violence
each year.
But children and adults do not watch television indiscriminately. They are generally selective
and gravitate toward their favorite programs. An examination of the top-rated programs on cable
television is revealing (see table 1).
In a typical week in 2007, most of the top cable shows were targeted to children and were
featured on children’s networks such as Nickelodeon. Most were also situation comedies about
young people in social situations. Zoey 101, for example, features a teenage character named
Zoey who is one of the first girls to attend an all-boys boarding school. She is described as “a
quick thinker who is constantly saving the day with her smarts and problem- solving skills.”
Other child-oriented programs on this list such as Drake and Josh are similarly prosocial in
nature. Nevertheless, the top two programs that same week were two episodes of WWE
Entertainment Raw, which features professional TV wrestling. Because these ratings are not
calibrated by age, it may be tempting to conclude that children are watching the Nickelodeon and
Disney shows, whereas adults are watching the violent wrestling shows. Yet 15 percent of the
audience for wrestling shows consists of children under the age of twelve. 102
The TV ratings data highlight both the variety of programming available to youth and the
challenge of guiding youthful preferences in a prosocial direction. In the next sections, I will
explore the impact of the media on three types of prosocial children’s behaviors: altruism,
positive social interaction, and acceptance of others.
3.1 Altruism
Most of the research on prosocial effects of the media focuses on children’s altruism or helping
behavior. Early studies had children watch a television clip that featured a character engaging in
helping behavior and then placed the children is a similar situation to see if they would imitate
the behavior. In one experiment, first graders who viewed an episode of Lassie in which the main
character saved a puppy were subsequently more helpful toward distressed puppies than were
first graders who saw a neutral Lassie episode with no prosocial behavior or a Brady Bunch
episode with no prosocial displays or dogs.103
Of course, one question is whether such short-term imitation can persist beyond the viewing
situation. Field experiments that control children’s viewing over time in naturalistic settings can
shed light on this issue. In one such study, kindergartners were assigned to watch either Mister
Rogers’ Neighborhood or neutral programming that did not feature prosocial behavior, over the
course of four sessions.104 In addition, some of the children watching the prosocial Mister Rogers
received puppet role-play training that re- enacted the main events and dialogue in each episode
they had seen. Two to three days later, all the children were given the opportunity either to work
on an art project or to help another child who was struggling with the project. The children who
had viewed the prosocial programs were more helpful than those who had seen the neutral
programs were, especially if the prosocial programming had been reinforced by role-playing.
Other studies have found that training or follow-up lessons can enhance the effects of prosocial
television.105 One reason why such guidance may be beneficial is that prosocial morals on
television can be difficult for children to extract. Compared with violent programming, prosocial
shows typically have less action and more dialogue, which makes their plots and subplots more
challenging to follow and comprehend, especially for younger children. In one study, four- to
ten-year-olds watched an episode of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and were asked about
possible lessons in the program. 106 Most of the children agreed that there was a “moral” to the
show, y…
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