Exposure to Violence on Television and

The Aggressive Child

Agus W. Setiawan
2017410001

Background

I think we all agree that in the last few decades television has evolved from
“exclusively-built technology for rich people” to “a standard must-own thing in every family
homes”. We know that it doesn’t stop there; with the development of television, we also get
cable television service which allows us to watch television programs from around the globe.
With that freedom given to us of what to watch, there are many issues arising in the society
including personality change because of television.
The main objective of this research is to investigate the relationships between
exposure to violence on television and children’s aggressive personality, whether if exposure
to violence itself plays role in teaching children aggressive acts. Rowell Huesmann (1986)
mentioned that TV provides more opportunities to experience violence than in real life
because violence appears in a larger extent on TV than in real life. He also mentioned that
more aggressive children watch more violent television.
Previous studies found that aggressiveness of most children seems to be determined
mostly by their environment and role models. Many of the published studies were conducted
in Australia, Finland, Israel, Poland, and the Unites States.
Main reason behind this research writing is the arising issue about personality
changes among underage-children because of exposure of violence on television. Currently
there are two different sides in the society; One side believes that exposure to violence brings
bad impacts to children’s personality and the other side does not. This paper was written to
increase parents’ awareness of what television programs their children are watching and for
government to be stricter about TV age rating.

Problem Statement

We all know that children tend to replicate what they see even if it is an inappropriate
thing for underage and all-age. If they watch TV and the content is, for example, rated
thirteen plus or eighteen plus where it most likely to content many violent act, they will most
likely try to re-do what they just watch in real life. It would be the most ideal situation when
children watch TV programs that suit their age and when TV stations try not to play rated
eighteen plus movies or programs during children’s active time or morning to evening at ten
What I think is happening in the real world right now is far different from the ideal
situation. With almost every local TV stations showing bad TV series or soap operas with
inappropriate jokes and words for children to listen to, no punishment to the perpetrators, and
lack of parental supervision, the condition is getting worse. In today’s world, parents must be
extra protective to their children and be very strict of what TV programs can and can not be
watched by their children; also TV stations have to be more selective of their programs’ age
rating and show time. Government has to review the regulations about television
broadcasting and age rating.
 The purpose of this study is to find out the relationships between exposure to violence
on TV and children’s aggressive personality in Indonesia since there are only few research
that have conducted in Indonesia. It is a world wide belief if children copy what they see
around them and this study is conducted to answer the question “Does exposure to violence
on television affect children’s aggressive personality?”. The answer of question above will
confirm whether if the world wide believe regarding children’s personality is affected by
surrounding especially by things they watch on the television is true.

Literature Review

An aggressive act is one that is intended to injure or irritate another person. However,
past research has demonstrated that intentionality is difficult or impossible to measure,
particularly in children (Eron, Walder, & Lefkowitz, 1971). There are numbers of factors that
might cause someone become aggressive; in most cases, genetic, psychological, and
constitutional factors surely play the biggest role (Rowell Huesmann, 1986). In his book,
Huesmann and colleague was focusing on the role that exposure to violence on TV plays in
teaching children aggressive acts. Violence appears to a much larger extent on TV than in
real life, so TV provides more opportunities to experience violence than real life does.
Approximately 60% of TV programs contain violence. Nearly 70% of the TV series
produced for children contain violence (Wilson et al., 2002). Forty percent of the violence is
initiated by characters that are attractive role models, and 75% of the violent acts result in no
form of punishment to the perpetrators (National Television Violence Study, 1996).
Imitative behavior is also more likely when the model has high status, when the
model is perceived as similar to the child, when the model is warm and nurturant, and when
the environmental conditions for the child are similar to those he has observed (Bandura
1969). With that being stated, it is safe to conclude that children will probably try to replicate
what they saw on TV moreover if the model has similar condition with him or her.
The type of study that was conducted by Friedrich and Stein (1973) is an experiment
and observation. There were 97 subjects (52 boys and 45 girls) age3.8 to 5.5 years and most
had no previous school experience. Friedrich and Stein found out that “the aggressive
television programs produced effects on aggressive behavior and on self-regulation. One of
the most clear-cut findings in the study was a sharp decline in tolerance of delay by children
who saw the aggressive programs. They also declined some in rule obedience. Both of these
findings suggest that the aggressive programs led to reduced willingness on the part of the
children to exert self-control or to tolerate minor frustrations”.

Methodology

A quantitative research will be conducted in order to answer the research question

about the relationships between exposure to violence on television and children’s aggressive
personality, specifically true-experimental research design. The reason for this is because I
will be comparing different outcomes from two different groups which are the control group
(exposed only with neutral TV programs) and the manipulated group (exposed with violence
TV programs) to find out whether if violence on TV plays role in teaching children
aggressive acts.
The participants of this study will be students of primary schools in Jakarta. They are
students with age range from 9 to 12 years old and selected randomly from 10 participating
schools. The total number of student participants will be 100 people.
 Violence on TV in this study is operationally defined as the use of physical, verbal or
graphic force so as to injure, irritate, or abuse. There are many examples of violence on TV;
starts from cartoons like Tom and Jerry, Woody Woodpecker, SpongeBob Square pants,
Scooby-Doo, and many more that contain physical forces to superhero movies like
Superman, Batman, Dead pool, Avengers, etc. in which have many fighting scenes. In fact,
we all know that most of superhero movies’ scenes are fighting scene. News broadcasts can
also be included because they sometimes show graphic violence.
The operational definition of children’s aggressive personality is pretty much similar
with violence, which is one that is intended to injure or irritate another person physically or
verbally. For example: hitting a friend, making fun of a friend, saying inappropriate words to
friends.

To summarize, this study will follow these steps:

1. Choosing random participants from 10 participating schools

2. Ask 10 students from 1 school to participate in the study
3. Collecting data
4. Input and analyze the data using SPSS
5. Report the findings and output to public
Reference:

Huesmann, L. R., & Eron, L. D. (2013). Television and the aggressive child: A cross-
national comparison. London: Routledge.

Rosenkoetter, L. I., Rosenkoetter, S. E., & Acock, A. C. (2009). Television violence:

An intervention to reduce its impact on children. Journal of Applied Developmental
Psychology,30(4), 381-397. doi:10.1016/j.appdev.2008.12.019

Friedrich, L. K., & Stein, A. H. (1973). Aggressive and Prosocial Television

Programs and the Natural Behavior of Preschool Children. Monographs of the Society for
Research in Child Development,38(4), 1. doi:10.2307/1165725