Reducing the Aggression-Promoting Effect of Violent Cartoons By Increasing Children's Fictional Involvement with the Victim: A Study of Active Mediation

Abstract

An experiment with 351 second through sixth graders was conducted to determine the effectiveness of an active mediation strategy: encouraging children to focus on the feelings of the victim of violence in a cartoon. Although boys who watched the cartoon without the mediation were more aggression-prone after viewing than a control group, boys who received the mediation did not show an increase in aggressive tendencies. Neither the cartoon nor the mediation affected girls' aggression-proneness.