Immediate reactions to TV‐violence by Finnish pre‐school children of different personality types

Abstract

Children were filmed while watching violent films and their facial expressions were rated from the videotape. After having seen the violent films and after a control film they were filmed while playing in groups of three. The children represented four personality types, aggressive, constructive, submissive, and anxious. While viewing, the aggressive children looked less concentrated than the others, the constructive children showing most tenseness and fear. In the play behaviour, personality accounted for more differences than type of film seen. The submissives and constructives showed an increase in aggressive play after the violent film. Facial expressions while viewing predicted later behaviour only to a small extent. There were no differences between the sexes in the total scores, but within the sexes there were differences between the personality types.

Personality and aggressive behavior under provoking and neutral conditions: A meta-analytic review.

“…Researchers have operationalized aggressive behavior in a number of ways, including measuring the intensity of electric shocks administered to another individual (e.g., Bailey & Taylor, 1991;Bushman, 1995;Buss, 1963Buss, , 1966Giancola & Zeichner, 1995a, 1995bTaylor, 1967), pushing and hitting (e.g., Josephson, 1988), monetary or point penalties (e.g., Bjork, Dougherty, Moeller, & Swann, 2000;Check & Dyck, 1986;Netter et al, 1998;Strube, Turner, Cerro, Stevens, & Hinchey, 1984), verbal attack (e.g., Langerspetz & Engblom, 1979), and negative evaluations (e.g., Leibowitz, 1968;Rothaus & Worchel, 1960;Shemberg, Leventhal, & Allman, 1968;Wingrove & Bond, 1998).…”

Personality and developmental psychology

“…These studies show that pre-school children react most strongly to physical violence on the screen, but that the children also tend to withdraw from scenes of verbal violence between adults (Lagerspetz, Wahlroos & Wendelin, 1978). Personality type (aggressive, constructive, submissive and anxious) predicts more of the children's behaviour in a playsituation after TV watching than their facial expressions when watching, or the type of film shown (Lagerspetz & Engblom, 1977).…”

Children's Experience of Three Types of Cartoon at Two Age Levels*

“…This specific item was to begin with considered to be the best anxiety measure (cf. Lagerspetz and Engblom 1979).…”

“…These two subgroups can be expected to react differently to violent films. Earlier studies (Feshbach and Singer 1971;Lagerspetz and Engblom 1979) have shown that the behaviour of aggressive and nonaggressive children is affected differently by violent films. Aggressive children are known to prefer violent films (Heller and Polsky 1976;Eron 1963) and to more often entertain aggressive fantasies (Huesmann et al 1984).…”