• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, March 15, 2003

Child TV Violence-Viewers Turn Out More Aggressive

A recent study, presented in the Journal of Developmental Psychology by L. Rowell Huesmann and colleagues at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, summarized by Malcom Ritter in an AP release concludes that people who watch violent television as children behave more aggressively even 15 years later, according to one of the few TV violence studies to follow children into adulthood.

The study involved 329 adults who were initially surveyed as children in the late 1970s. As children, the participants were rated for exposure to televised violence after they chose eight favorite shows from 80 popular programs for their age group and indicated how much they watched them.

As young adults, researchers found, men who had scored in the top 20 percent on childhood exposure were about twice as likely as other men to have pushed, grabbed or shoved their wives during an argument in the year preceding the interview. Women in the top 20 percent were about twice as likely as other women to have thrown something at their husbands.

For one or both sexes, these "high TV-violence viewers" were also more likely than other study participants in the previous 12 months to have shoved somebody in anger; punched, beaten or choked an adult, or committed a crime or a moving traffic violation.

The analysis argued against the idea that aggressive children seek out TV violence, or that the findings were due to the participants' socioeconomic status or intelligence, or their parents' childrearing practices.

Dennis Wharton, though, spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters, said not all studies find a relationship between TV viewing and violent behavior.

You can find out more here.