hen President Clinton approved legislation that requires TV sets to contain a "v-chip" that will enable adults to block violent programs from their screens, Leonard Eron was standing right behind him. A photo of the occasion hangs outside Eron's office in U-M's Institute for Social Research building, where he is an adjunct research scientist in the Research Center for Group Dynamics.
Such recognition is altogether appropriate, considering that Eron, who is also
an adjunct professor of psychology at U-M, has been researching the causes of
violent behavior in children and young people since 1960.
Eron is dubious, however, about the v-chip's ability to make much of a
difference. "It's a step in the right direction," he says, "but a parent has to be concerned, and has to be available to do it. The v-chip will have some effect, but it doesn't solve the problem, not with two working parents, single-parent families and, frankly, a lot of parents who don't give a darn."
Two problems with a technological response are (a) today's kids can master technology at least as fast as their parents do, and (b) it essentially begs the more ethical, and thus less tractable, question of parental involvement.
In fact, some of Eron's research supports the notion that adult supervision is the most effective antidote to the effects of TV violence on the responses children learn. While one morose aspect of his work is that TV's effects show up cross-culturally, one encouraging aspect is that an exception was found among one of the groups he and E. Rowell Huesmann, U-M professor of communication and psychology, have studied: Israeli children raised in kibbutzim.
On a kibbutz, Eron says, "All the children watch together at one time in a commons, and there is always an adult present who can explain to them that what they see on television is not how real life is."
That's quite a contrast to the American scenario, where kids go home from school, let themselves in and settle down in front of the tube---alone or with their peers. The setting itself is significant, Eron believes.
"You're watching it in your own home, watching it where it becomes part of
your routine, very often while you're having dinner or eating potato chips and
getting primary reinforcement that way," he says. "The conditioning is quite powerful, I think. It makes violence more routine and like everyday activity."
Eron is not one of those who would blame television for most, if not all,
of the ills of society and its children. "It accounts for about 10 percent of violence, which means that 90 percent is caused by other things," he says. "Violence is a multi-determined behavior. It's caused by genetic, biological, physiological, macroeconomic and macrosocial factors, all of which can account for some part of the variance."
And, in what may be an ironic consequence of the women's movement, little girls are now equally afflicted by TV violence. "When we did the first study [in upstate New York] in 1960, we found the effect just for boys," Eron says. "There was no effect on girls. However, when we did another longitudinal study in 1977 in Oak Park, Illinois, we found indeed there was an effect for girls. This held up in the four other countries that we
studied---Finland, Australia, Poland and Israel.
"You have to remember that in 1960, any indication of assertiveness or aggressiveness was discouraged in girls. Also, in 1960, there were no aggressive female characters on television."
Two of the television industry's most frequent defenses are easily punctured,
in Eron's view. One is that their programs have no effect on behavior, a curious position
for a business that makes its money selling advertising. The other is that they merely
"give the public what it wants."
"A self-fulfilling prophecy," says Eron. "This is what they get, so this is what
they think they want." Besides, he points out, some of the most popular and successful shows in TV history---The Cosby Show, Cheers, All in the Family, among many others---weren't at all violent.
But what about solutions? "Everybody talks about `conflict resolution' and I
don't know what they mean," says Eron. "They have no before-and-after assessment.
But in any good program, you have to work not with the children themselves, but also
with the families and the neighborhood."
In an attempt to inject some rigor into the assessment of conflict-resolution, Eron and Huesmann have begun a three-year evaluation of a conflict-resolution program in the Ann Arbor Public Schools.
Jeff Mortimer is an Ann Arbor freelancer.
This Issue's Index | This Issue's Front Page | CURRENT Michigan Today
. . . June 1996
