Methodology to Study Behavioral Aggression Due to the Impact of Television Programs

Abstract

The problem of violence on television and its impact on behavioural aggression of the audience occupies a leading position in media effects studies. The main objective of the study was to explore the available methodology used by scientists in the United States and in the European Union to explore the behavioural aggression due to the impact of television programs. Through the classification of findings of the television-induced aggression empirical studies, the methodological framework of the main research methods in this field was formulated. This structure contains two basic types of research methods. First one studies the media-induced aggressive behaviour (using observation and fixing of aggression acts); second one explores the media impact on viewers’ aggressive inclinations. The latter type of techniques does not deal with the behaviour, but only with the ability to act aggressively, and with its help the researcher can only make inference about the likelihood of aggressive actions in the future. Thus, an empirical study of aggressive behaviour is in many aspects more complicated, but this approach allows obtaining more statistically significant data. Instead of that, evaluating aggressive inclinations enables accumulating a large amount of raw (unprocessed) data in faster and easier way. Results / findings. The first attempt was made to systemize all the methods of the TV-induced aggression studies, used by the U.S. and the EU scientists in their respective explorations. Special emphasis was made on the usage of the psycho-physiological measurements in the experimental research of the TV violence impact. It was found that due to the lack of sufficient veracity in the estimation of the impact of long-term media effects, the methods of fixing the short-term effects prevail in the majority of respective studies. Our further studies in this respect will be concentrated on the problematic of formation of aggressive tendencies under the influence of television programs in the long run.