Word: behavior
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Some evidence that the influence of models is partly determined by the sex appropriateness of their behavior is provided by the finding that the aggressive male model was a more powerful stimulus for aggression than the aggressive female model. Some of the children, particularly the boys, commented spontaneously on the fact that the female model's behavior was out of character (e.g., "That's no way for a lady to behave. Ladies are supposed to act like ladies...
Furthermore, the data reval that aggressive models are highly influential not only in reducing children's inhibitions over aggression, but also in shaping the form of their behavior. Children who observed the aggressive models displayed a great number of precisely imitative aggressive acts, whereas such responses rarely occurred in either the nonaggressive group or the control group...
...finding that film-mediated models are as effective as real-life models in eliciting and transmitting aggressive responses indicates that televised models may serve as important sources of behavior and can no longer be ignored in conceptualizations of personality development. Indeed, most youngsters probably have more exposure to prestigeful televised male models than to their own fathers. With further advances in mass media and audiovisual technology, models presented pictorially, mainly through television, are likely to play an increasingly influential role in shaping personality patterns and in modifying attitudes and social norms...
...been widely assumed on the basis of psychoanalytic theory and other hydraulic energy models of personality that children's vicarious participation in film-mediated aggression or the direct expression of aggressive behavior will serve to discharge "pentup energies" and effects. Guided by this catharsis hypothesis, many parents, educators, and mental health workers encourage hyperaggressive children to participate in aggressive recreational actavities, to view highly aggressive televised programs, and to aggress in psychotherapeutic play-rooms and other permissive settings...
...contrast to this "drainage" view, the growing body of research provides considerable evidence that vicarious participation in aggressive activities can be highly effective in modifying observers' aggressive behavior, but not in the direction predicted by the catharsis hypothesis. These findings are perhaps not too surprising. It is highly improbable that even advocates of vicarious drive reduction would recommend community programs in which sexually aroused adolescents are shown libidinous movies at drive-in theatres as a means of reducing sexual behavior, or in which famished persons are presented displays of gourmands dining on culinary treats in order to alleviate hunger pangs...