Are We Creating Monsters?: TV and Aggression (continued)

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Does this mean that any viewing of media violence will create aggressive behavior in all children? No. There are important interactions with other factors. As we saw in the longitudinal study described earlier, TV violence may exert its greatest long-term influence on children who already have aggressive tendencies. The effects are stronger for children who identify more with the TV characters, whose fantasy play and conversation are more centered in television, and whose parents use harsh physical punishment (Anderson et al., 2001; Gunter & McAleer, 1997; Huesmann et al., 2003). One journal article compared the relationship between TV violence and aggression to the link between smoking and lung cancer. Not everyone who smokes develops lung cancer, and not everyone who gets lung cancer is a smoker; smoking is not the only cause of lung cancer. Similarly, not every child who views hours of TV violence becomes aggressive, and not every child who behaves aggressively has watched lots of TV; watching violence on TV is not the only cause of aggressive behavior. But just as smoking is a significant risk factor for lung cancer, watching a steady diet of violent TV during childhood seems to be a risk factor for later aggressive behavior (Bushman & Anderson, 2001).