Bachilerato

Julian A. Romero
November 5, 2012
Social Psychology
Assignment 5

Aggression can be defined as simply being hostile or displaying violent behaviors/attitudes toward another. It is clear that wesee aggression displayed in the media everyday. Some type of aggression is expressed in through television, whether its instrumental or emotional aggression. According to the textbook, SocialPsychology, instrumental aggression is aggression that aims to harm someone and emotional aggression is aggression carried out in the heat of the moment. While watching Johnny Test (Children’s cartoon),Vampire Diaries (Prime-Time drama), and News 12 local news (Network News Program), I saw at least one type of aggression being exhibited. My predictions and actual data were not too far from each other,but when I made my predictions I overestimated, thinking that they were not going to be as violent, so it was surprising to see that they are that violent.
For the children’s show, Johnny Test, therewas surprisingly more physical assault involving a weapon or object and insults or use of derogatory remark. For the other criteria, it was less then what I predicted or only 1 or 2 tally marks morethan I estimated. Something eye catching from watching this cartoon was that I saw gender differences among the different avenues of aggression. The main character, Johnny, expressed his aggressionthrough instrumental means, intending to hurt a kid from his school. While his twin sisters were the ones who said most of the insults and not really physically assaulting someone. What’s scary aboutthis is the fact that this is a children’s cartoon and that the children are learning to be violent from these shows. Exposure to violence has been correlated to lead to decrease in prosocial behavior,so the children that watch these shows are becoming desensitized. This process of desensitization is what makes these children believe that it is okay to react aggressively in any given situation...