Antisocial and Prosocial Modeling - Essay Example

Antisocial and Prosocial Modeling The concerns about the negative impact of the portrayal of violence in the TV programs had appeared in early fifties, but it weren't until few years later when the research by Bandura and Berkowitz was conducted that revealed that the violent behavior can actually be caused by watching its portrayal (Comstock, 1975). In the same time, the research displayed that TV is also capable of modeling positive behaviors, the ones that are socially acceptable and approved.

(Hearold, 1986). Moreover, it said that the effect of prosocial modeling is much greater than that of the antisocial modeling. Few explanations were proposed to this fact, like the ones that while the violent episodes in the TV programs are accidental, and they are not targeted on encouraging antisocial behavior, the programs that encourage prosocial behavior are specially designed for this purpose. The programs that feature positive social interactions, altruism, helping etc, make people, and especially children who watch them, imitate the things they see.

The reason for such a great effect of the prosocial and antisocial modeling is that for many Americans the TV programs display their reference group, the people they want to associate themselves with. The people that say or do something on the TV screen are often seen as those who are worthy of imitation, as the information that is presented on the TV screen is exposed to much less amount of psychological and informational filters than the information got by the other means. It's true that nowadays, when the TV screen substitutes parents for lots of U.

S children, the impact of the TV on modeling their behaviors is great. The statistic says that an average U.S child spends 19-25 hours per week in front of the TV screen, thus it's not wonderful that the TV makes such a considerable impact on modeling of their behaviors. If the kid sees every day that people on the screen beat, offend or murder each other, it's no wonder that sooner or later she will come to the thought that these behaviors are normal and acceptable in the human society. Mares (1996) says that "the two basic mechanisms behind (the impact the pro-an antisocial behaviors shown on the TV screen have on the viewers) are: 1) we learn by observation how to do things and whether it is alright to do them 2) we have emotional responses while watching television.

Numerous studies considering the connection between violence-watching and violent behaviors were conducted throughout the last fifty years, which often gave controversial results, but most of them actually exposed that the media violence contributes to the violent behavior in children and teens. For example, the recent study, conducted by Singer and colleagues (1999) proved that "self-reported violent behavior was linked to exposure to violence, watching a lot of television, and a lack of parental monitoring.

Findings revealed that the combination of demographic variables, parental monitoring, television-viewing habits, and exposure to violence explained 45% of students' self-reported violent behaviors. Violence exposure and parental monitoring were the most influential contributors in explaining children's violent behaviors, accounting for 24% and 5% of the variance in violent behaviors, respectively." (Jipguep, Sanders-Phillips, 2003) In the same time, when kids see the examples of positive behavior, they also tend to follow them.

The thing is that the positive behaviors shown on the TV screen are approved by the society, and children who imitate them get positive reinforcements from their surroundings, while the antisocial behavior is discourages in most cases when the child demonstrates it. We can conclude that the depiction of the pro- and antisocial behaviors on the TV screen has a great impact on people who watch it, especially o children. The researchers prove that the stimulation of prosocial behavior is even more effective than of the antisocial one, thus we should us TV for to promote the desired behavior in children and adults References1.

Mares, M-L. (1996). Positive Effects of Television on Social Behavior: A Meta-Analysis. Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved January 3, 2005, from http://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/05_media_developing_child/childrensprogramming/REP3.PDF2. Jipguep, M-C. Sanders-Phillips, R. (2003). The Context of Violence for Children of Color: Violence in the Community and in the Media. The Journal of Negro Education.3. Comstock, G. (1975). Television and human behavior: The key studies.

Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation.4. Hearold, S. (1986). A synthesis of 1,043 effects of television on social behavior. In G. Comstock (Ed.), Public communication and behavior: Vol. 1 (pp.66-135). New York: Academic Press.