Reducing the Aggression-Promoting Effect of Violent Cartoons By Increasing Children's Fictional Involvement with the Victim: A Study of Active Mediation.(Statistical Data Included)

There is a tremendous body of literature demonstrating that watching violent television is associated with increased aggressive attitudes and behaviors (Paik & Comstock, 1994). This relationship is especially pronounced in children, whose relatively limited experiences and cognitive resources make them especially vulnerable to television (Wilson, Kunkel, Linz, Potter, Donnerstein, Smith, Blumenthal, & Berry, 1997). Because children's exposure to television is virtually inevitable, an appropriate research step is to try and find ways to minimize the likelihood that adverse effects will occur.

Fortunately, a small body of literature on "television mediation" offers some hope. Television mediation has been shown to be a three-dimensional construct that encompasses the following three forms of behaviors: talking to children about television, or "active mediation"; setting rules or restrictions regarding television viewing, or "restrictive mediation"; and watching television with children, or "coviewing" (Nathanson, in press; Valkenburg, Krcmar, Peeters, & Marseille, 1999). Previous research on restrictive mediation and coviewing has produced somewhat inconsistent findings. Whereas some work demonstrates that these forms of mediation have positive effects on children, other work suggests that they have negligible or even negative effects on children's outcomes (e.g., Bryce & Leichter, 1983; Desmond, Singer, Singer, Calam, & Colimore, 1985; Dorr, Kovaric, & Doubleday, 1989; Haefner & Wartella, 1987; McLeod, Atkin, & Chaffee, 1972; Nathanson, 1997; Nathanson, 1999). On the other hand, research on active mediation suggests that it is effective in a variety of domains.

The Effects of Active Mediation on Children's Responses to Television

Active mediation has been studied in the context of a variety of responses. The research reveals that children who receive active mediation learn more from television content (Collins, Sobol, & Westby, 1981; Corder-Bolz, 1980; Desmond et al., 1985; Valkenburg, Krcmar, & de Roos, 1998), better understand the distinction between television and the "real world," (Desmond et al., 1985; Messaris & Kerr, 1984), are more skeptical of television (Austin, 1993), and have less stereotyped understandings of sex roles (Corder-Bolz, 1980). More formal programs, promoting active mediation via in-school "media literacy" curricula, have shown that active mediation can help children think more critically about television (Abelman & Courtright, 1983; Dorr, Graves, & Phelps, 1980; Hobbs & Frost, 1997; Rapaczynski, Singer, & Singer, 1982; Roberts, Christenson, Gibson, Mooser, & Goldberg, 1980; Singer, Zuckerman, & Singer, 1980).

In addition, studies have explored the effects of various forms of active mediation on children's responses to televised violence. Experiments have revealed that children who hear negative comments about the violent acts in the television programs they view (e.g., "It is bad to fight. It is better to help") exhibit less aggressive behavior (e.g., Hicks, 1968), have a lower tolerance for aggression (e.g., Horton & Santogrossi, 1978), and express attitudes that are less aggressive after viewing (e.g., Corder-Bolz, 1980) than do other youngsters. Because these studies were not part of lengthy media literacy programs, they demonstrate that even very small doses of active mediation can have an immediate effect.

Although encouraging, research on active mediation leaves a number of questions unanswered. First, it is unclear whether children who hear negative comments about TV violence really learn to view the violence from a more critical perspective. In studies where children's post-viewing aggressive attitudes were measured, it is possible that children who heard these kinds of comments simply repeated the information they were told in order to meet social desirability demands. Or, because Hicks (1968) found that differences in post-viewing aggressive behavior were evidenced only when the children knew they were being observed, it is possible that children altered their post-viewing behavior simply to please the experimenter and not because they had learned that the violence they saw was unacceptable. It remains to be seen, then, whether active mediation really helps children interpret televised violence differently.

Second, because the mediation strategy itself-telling children that the violence depicted in particular programs is bad-requires an adult to identify and condemn each antisocial act in a given program, it seems that parents or other caregivers must always watch television with their children for active mediation to have an impact. What is needed is an active mediation technique that equips children with the analytical tools that will reduce their vulnerabilities to television even when they are viewing alone.