Kgavura psychology spark

1. APPROPRIATE FORM OF
A JOURNAL ARTICLE

2. THE EFFECT OF VIEWING WWE ON
VIOLENT BEHAVIOR IN CHILDREN
• Kathleen Gavura
• MCCC

3. ABSTRACT
• If ten 10 year old boys watch 30 minutes of WWE
wrestling, then their violent behavior will increase.
There will be ten groups of 10 year old boys
participating in the study. The participants will view
one half hour of WWE wrestling as a group and then
be permitted to play. The expected results are the
number of violent acts toward others will increase.
The conclusion is that viewing violent television is
detrimental to children as it increases violent
behavior.

4. INTRODUCTION
• If ten 10 year old boys watch 30 minutes of WWE
wrestling, then their violent behavior will increase. A
previous study by Bandura, Ross, & Ross (1961) gave
early evidence of the effects of viewing violence by
children and the subsequent increase in their violent
behavior. The children in the study were in elementary
school and were a mix of boys and girls. The children
watched an adult beat up an inflatable “Bobo” doll.
After viewing the adults behavior, the children imitated
the violence and became even more violent than the
models as the children used toy guns and the models
did not. The current study explores the effects of viewing
television wrestling on children.

5. METHOD
• If ten 10 year old boys watch 30 minutes of WWE
wrestling, then their violent behavior will increase.
Ten groups randomly obtained of 10 year boys will
be included in the study by choosing random social
security numbers from a local school district. The
boys will be randomly assigned to five control and
experimental groups. The experimental groups will
view 30 minutes of WWE on a flat screen television.
They will next be allowed to play with the same
group in a room with various toys and free space,
Raters will be given a list of behaviors considered
violent such as:

6. METHOD
• pushing, shoving and imitating wrestling moves, etc.
They will mark the rating sheets for each boy
separately. The control groups will follow the same
procedure except that these groups will view 30
minutes of Sesame Street. The procedure will be
double-blind as the children will not know the exact
nature of the experiment and the raters will not be
aware of which group is being currently rated,
experimental or control.

7. RESULTS
• Results will be tabulated by counting the number of
violent acts recorded for each boy. The mean
number of violent acts from the control group and
the experimental groups will be compared.

8. DISCUSSION
• If ten 10 year old boys view 30 minutes of WWE
wrestling, then their violent behavior will increase. It
is expected that after viewing the WWE wrestling,
the boys violent acts as counted by the raters will
be significantly higher than that of the control
group. Viewing violence on television causes
children to imitate the violent model. Although the
experiment should be repeated, possibly with other
violent and non-violent programs, it will be clear
that there is a tendency for children to be
influenced in a negative way by these violent
programs. This suggests that viewing these programs
by young children should be severely limited.

9. REFERENCES
• Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S. (1961). Transmission
of Aggression Through Imitation of Aggressive
Models. Journal of Abnormal and Social
Psychology, 63(2), 575-82.