CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Aggression in schools is one of the most pressing issues in the current generation. Aggression
is generally defined as a behavioural act that results in hurting or harming others. Berkowitz
(1993), defined aggression as a behaviour directed toward the goal of harming or injuring
another living being, where the other person will be motivated to avoid the harm. This study
identifies three different type of aggression using Direct-Indirect Aggression scale (Bjorkvists
et al., 1992). Direct, indirect and verbal aggression. Children engaging in direct aggression
usually display it in terms of being physical, like hitting, kicking, punching, biting and so on.
Indirect Aggression is shown by exclusions, social isolations, spreading rumours, telling
other’s secret and so on. Verbal aggression is displayed by using bad words, abuses,
threatening others, calling names and so on.

Aggression is also commonly viewed as being proactive or reactive; covert or overt (Werner
and crick, 2004). Children engaging in Proactive aggression typically use aggression to meet
a goal. For example, if the child wants to have an object that belongs to another child, the
proactively aggressive child will simply use aggression to take the object from the other
child. These children use aggression to obtain social goals (Dodge, 1991). Reactively
aggressive children on the other hand, do not seek to meet goals through aggressive
behaviours. Instead they react negatively to perceived or actual threats and are easily irritated.
(Lochman et al., 2009). This study takes into account the proactive ways of aggression, in all
the three forms, i.e. direct, indirect and verbal aggression, where the aggressor has an
intention of obtaining some tangible or intangible social goals in the process. And also
reactive aggression, where a child in the intention of avoiding harm or securing oneself reacts
in an aggressive way, which shows up as aggressive behaviour. Therefore in this study more
than the intention or emotion behind it, the act of aggression, either proactively or reactively
is considered.

Aggression is related to mental health problems in children, including externalizing disorders

as Oppositional Defiant Disorder and Conduct Disorder, along with internalizing problems
with Depression and Anxiety (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Aggression is
therefore seen as a dysfunctional aspect of a Childs’ development and growth. Aggression is
seen as a continuity from externalizing behaviour problems in childhood to risk taking
behaviours in adolescence (Thompson et al., 2011; Nagin et al., 2003). Therefore it becomes
very crucial to identify the problem behaviours early in the school age and provide

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appropriate prevention mechanisms. Researchers in the west have shown that many of the
aggressive symptoms and precursors of later aggressive behaviours and violence is evident in
early childhood behaviours, which would be of milder forms (Tremblay, 2000). The studies
have clearly indicated that aggression is a problem which continues through the adolescence
and adulthood and hence it is just not a problem at that point of time.

A. THEORIES OF AGGRESSION

Anderson and Bushman (2002), in their article ‘Human aggression’ have given five main
theories of aggression which they say guide most of the current research which mostly fall
under cognitive and learned response theories.

Cognitive Neoassociation Theory

Berkowitz 1989, (as cited in Anderson and Bushman, 2002), has proposed a theory that
negative feelings and experiences are the main causes of anger and aggression. He has
proposed that negative affect produced by unpleasant experiences automatically stimulates
various thoughts, memories, expressive motor reactions, and physiological responses
associated with fight and flight tendencies. The fight associations give rise to feelings of
anger, whereas the flight associations give rise to feelings of fear. Furthermore, this theory
assumes that the situational cues which come into play during an aversive event becomes
associated with the event and the cognitive and the emotional responses gets influenced by
the cues present at that time.

This model is particularly suited to explain hostile aggression. It also includes higher order
cognitive processes of appraising a situation and attributions made to it. Therefore the
interpretations a person has on the motives of the people involved for him to act aggressively
also makes it accessible to him to act on aggression.

Social Learning Theory

According to social learning theories (Bandura 1973), people acquire aggressive responses
the same way they acquire other complex forms of social behaviour – it is by either observing
directly or by observing others or imitating others, which they term as ‘modelling’. It could
therefore be observational learning or vicarious learning. Social learning theories explains the

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acquisition of aggressive behaviours, via observational learning processes and it provides a
useful set of concepts for understanding and describing the beliefs and expectations that
guide social behaviour. It could also be learnt through vicarious learning where, the child
who observes others getting reinforced or rewarded for aggression learns to imitate the model
who gets rewarded.

Script Theory

Huesmann (1986, 1998) proposed that when children observe violence in the mass media,
they learn aggressive scripts. Scripts define situations and guide behavior. The person first
selects a script to represent the situation and then assumes a role in the script. Once a script
has been learnt, it might be retrieved at some later time and used as a guide for behaviour.
This approach can be seen as a more specific and detailed account of social learning
processes.

Excitation Transfer Theory

Excitation transfer theory (Zillmann, 1983) notes that physiological arousal dissipates slowly.
It says that if there are two separate events which induce arousal and it is separated by a short
amount of time, the first event may be misattributed to the second. If the second event is
related to anger, then the additional arousal should make the person even angrier. The process
of excitation transfer also suggests that even after the situation has passed, the anger may be
extended over long periods of time if a person has consciously attributed his or her
heightened arousal to anger. Thus, even after the arousal has dissipated the person remains
ready to feel aggressive for as long as the self-generated label of anger persists.

Social Interaction Theory

According to Social interaction theory (Tedeschi & Felson 1994), an individual gets into
coercive actions when he or she feels that they have been wronged or not given justice which
may lead to grievance. The individual any then attempt to restore justice by absolving the
other party of blame or by claiming restitution. The other party might also get into the same
behaviour or engaging in a similar decision making process in responding to the claim. This
leads to a character contest, which can escalate and lead to interactants attempting to manage
impressions, save face and maintain certain desired identities. Tedeschi and Feson (1994),
argue that certain behaviours are scripted or they would have become habitual, and therefore
rationality in actions can be limited by strong emotions, in some cases even alcohol and drugs

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create the same effect, or even the urgency to make a snap decision. They therefore say that
social groups and larger social structures always have an implication in our social behaviour,
including violent behaviours.

The above theories give us a broad understanding of the various theoretical perspectives of
the aggressive behaviours through which it could be understood. These theories help us to get
a deeper understanding of the various ways through which an aggressive act can come into
play.

The present study has taken the GAM as the foundation to understand the various influences
for aggressive behaviour.

General Aggression Model (GAM): The aggression in children could be looked into in our
present study from the perspective of GAM (Anderson and Bushman, 2002). General
Aggression Model is a social cognitive model that includes situational, individual and
biological factors that interact to produce a variety of cognitive, emotional, physiological and
behavioural outcomes. The key features include the ideas that knowledge structures (a)
develop out of experience; (b) influence perception at multiple levels; (c) can become
automatized with use; (d) can contain affective states, beliefs and behavioural program; (e)
are used to guide people’s interpretation and behavioural responses to their social
environment.

Three relevant sub types of knowledge structures are (a) perceptual schemata, which helps to
identify phenomenon, both simple and complex; (b) person schemata, which includes beliefs
about certain groups and or persons; (c) behavioural scripts, which contain information about
how people behave under varying circumstances. A knowledge structure contains links to
experiential affect, like when a knowledge structure of anger is activated, anger is
experienced. They also include knowledge about the affect, such as when a particular
emotion is experienced, how emotions influence people’s judgement and behaviour, and so
on. It also contains a script which may include affect as an action rule, for example, a person
insult script may prescribe aggressive retaliation if only anger is at high level or fear is at low
level.

GAM focuses on the ‘person in the situation’ called an episode, consisting of one cycle of an
ongoing social interaction. The three main concerns are (a) person and situation inputs; (b)
cognitive, affective, and arousal routes, through which these input variables have their
impact; and (c) outcomes of the underlying appraisal and decision processes.
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The inputs according to the author can be person factors, like attitudes, personality traits,
genetic predisposition, sex, beliefs, and values and so on. Situational factors could be
aggressive cues, provocation, frustration, pain and discomfort, and incentives. Routes can be
through cognition via hostile thoughts and scripts; it could be through affect, via mood and
emotion, and expressive motor responses like arousal. And the outcomes include immediate
appraisal of the situation, which is automatic, which is relatively effortless, spontaneous and
occurs without awareness.

The present study takes into consideration the General Aggression Model to understand the
processes of aggressive behaviour which leads into certain behaviour and outcome. As seen
in the model, the aggressive child has an inbuilt knowledge structure, which is supported by
the script stored in the structures and influenced by other variables like personal and
situational factors. This study therefore tries to understand the aggressive behaviour in
children, where the study does not have any control on the person or the situational factors,
but tries to understand the influence of the situational variables (home and parents) which can
lead the child to store certain scripts in the schemata, displayed through certain ‘routes’, like
aggressive thoughts and feelings, and the outcome which could be automatic leading to
displayed aggressive behaviours.

B. FACTORS OF AGGRESSION

A wide spectrum of factors has been associated with the development and persistence of
aggressive behaviour in children. Theoretical models of developmental psychopathology,
including the development of aggressive behaviour are multi-factorial: Child, parenting,
familial and extra-familial variables are related to problem behaviours in children. Below are
the variables which have been studied in the west largely

CHILD TEMPERAMENT

Temperament has been conceptualized as a set of inherited personality traits that appear in
infancy (Buss and Plomin, 1984). A child’s temperament usually describes the way in which
the child behaves and reacts to others. It is an inbuilt part of a person’s nature. Many
researchers have revealed the relationship between early temperamental disposition and
behaviour problems later in life (Olweus, 1980; Kingston and Prior, 1995). In these studies it
was seen that a child with a ‘hot-headed’ temperament developed into an aggressive
youngster compared to a child with a ‘quieter’ disposition (Olweus, 1980). Temperament

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predicted the way parents react to the child, their approach and parenting styles. Therefore
temperament in childhood was seen as an important predictor for later behaviour problems
either directly through uncontrolled behaviour later or indirectly through parental stress and
perceived negativity about the child.

FAMILY FACTORS AND FAMILY FUNCTIONING

Literature shows that family factors play an important role in developing aggression in
children. Studies indicate that lack of supervision, parental rejection, parent-child
involvement. Also important predictors are marital relations and parental criminality (Loeber
and Stouthamer-Loeber, 1986). Research shows that family history of criminality is a strong
predictor of aggression in children and antisocial behavior in youths. Farrington (1995) has
shown family history of family criminality, that children are more likely to become
delinquent if one or both parents have been involved in crime, or if they have a sibling, who
is, or was, delinquent

PARENTAL STRESS

The effect of socio demographic variables such as poverty and unemployment is mediated
through, and has its effect on, parent-child interactions through causing increasing levels of
parental stress. It is seen that a longitudinal reciprocal effects emerged between parenting
stress and externalizing behaviours and there was an indirect effect that suggested that
parenting stress both is affected by and affects parent and child behaviour (Mackler et al.,
2015). This could be so because parenting stress may impair the quality of parenting and
lower the threshold of parental reaction to child misbehaviour. Studies show that single
parenthood, divorce, reconstituted families, poverty, maternal depression, alcohol and
substance abuse, all have been positively related to children’s aggressive behaviours.

PARENTAL DISCIPLINING STYLES

Studies have identified four major parenting styles: Authoritative, Authoritarian, permissive
and neglectful parenting styles. It has been researched that authoritative parenting, which is
characterized by parents who are nurturing and responsive, but still hold high expectations for
behaviour, is the most successful in raising children who are both academically and
emotionally strong. Therefore the way the parent approach their child in terms of discipline,
communication, negotiation has taken a very important place in the research area.

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MARITAL CONFLICT/DISCORD

Marital discord or conflict between parents has been extensively researched to evaluate the
impact on children. It has been studied that children from homes who witness domestic
violence are more likely to exhibit borderline to severe behaviour problems, had low adaptive
behavioural skills (Mathias, Mertin, & Murray, 1995). It is also seen that conflict and discord
has been studied under various hypotheses like exposure hypothesis, Emotional Security
Hypothesis, Spillover Hypothesis, where conflict has been studied to have an indirect impact
through parenting styles of the parents and hence affecting the externalizing or internalizing
behaviour of children.

ANTISOCIAL PARENT ATTITUDES

One of the contributing factors for aggressive behaviours, conduct disorders or antisocial
behaviour in children and adolescent also is seen as antisocial parent attitudes (Farrington,
2005; Smith and Farrington, 2004). The studies show that there is a continuity of antisocial
attitudes and behaviours from parents to children and it is mediated by parenting variables.

POOR PARENTAL SUPERVISION

Parental supervision is an aspect of parenting which involves looking after, or monitoring a

child’s activities. It is about knowing where your children are, what they are doing and who
they are with. The authors of parental monitoring and prevention of problem behavior,
Dishion & McMohan (1998) in their article propose that parental monitoring or supervision is
particularly relevant to prevention science because of its critical role in the behavior change
process and the fact that it is a potentially malleable parenting behavior. They say that
adequate parental monitoring is necessary but not the sufficient condition for effective
parenting and improved adaptation for the child. It serves as a protective factor for children
living in high risk settings. Farrington (1995) has quoted that one of the predictors of
delinquency at ages 8-10 were poor parental supervision, along with other factors like family
history of criminality, low family income, harsh and authoritarian parenting.

PEERS

Peers, as a factor, influencing aggression in children have been studied extensively by

researchers in the West. A study by Dodge et al., (2003) has highlighted the finding that
being rejected by peers in early elementary school plays an incremental role in the later
development of aggressive behaviour problems. In addition these findings support the

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hypothesis that this effect is moderated by a child’s disposition towards aggression. They say
that mere peer rejection does not serve as an early marker of later behaviour problems. They
also say that social rejection or peer rejection acts as a stressor to exacerbate antisocial
development only among children who are initially predisposed towards aggression. Among
the children who are below the median in the initial levels of aggression, the experience of
social rejection does not increase aggressive behaviour nor does it exacerbate withdrawal.
They also concluded that a significant portion of peer rejection is accounted by the child’s
tendency to develop biased patterns of processing social information processing as a
consequence of being rejected by peers.

It was also seen that rejection and friend’s relational aggression predicted increases in
relational aggression in girls, whereas, rejection and friend’s physical aggression predicted
increases in boy’s physical aggression (Werner and Crick, 2004).

A longitudinal study by Cowen et al., (as cited in Dodge et al., 2003)) also which predicts
peer sociometric status as a mark of later antisocial outcomes.

NEIGHBOURHOOD

It has been researched in the west that children from disadvantaged neighbourhoods are more
prone towards aggression during childhood. Therefore there are many research conducted to
find a consistent relationship between high risk neighbourhoods and children’s later conduct
problems.

Ingoldsby & Shaw (2002) have in their paper suggested that middle childhood may represent
a critical developmental period during which children are at heightened risk for
neighbourhood based effects on antisocial behavior problems. Vanfossen et al., (2010) in
their study have highlighted the findings that the neighbourhood sources of the development
of child aggression are independent and different from early childhood experiences. Problems
with neighbours were associated with an increased risk for being a bully-victim over and
above the socioenvironmental factors and children’s behaviour problems (Bowes et al.,
2009).

MEDIA AND GAMES

Huesmann et al., (2003), has done a study on longitudinal relations between children’s
exposure to TV violence and their aggressive and violent behavior in young adulthood. It was
a follow up of the 3 year longitudinal study conducted by Huessmann and his colleagues. The

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results of the study revealed that early childhood exposure to TV violence predicted
aggressive behaviour for both males and females in adulthood.

Research in this area has consistently shown that television and media violence contribute to
both short-term and long-term increase in aggression and violence in young viewers. It has
also been researched that video games are capable of producing short-term increase in
aggression and violence, but not many long-term longitudinal studies have been conducted to
demonstrate the long term effects.

The above shown are some of the factors having a relationship with aggression that have
been well researched in the past in the west. Taken from the researches in the Western
counterparts, the present study tries to find the influence of factors related to family and
home, like parenting styles, supervision, marital conflict resolution tactics, television
watching and gaming habits on the display of aggressive behaviour of children in elementary
schools.

The next section provides an insight into the variables that have been chosen in the present
study and its relevance and meaning taking the past researches and theoretical models into
consideration.

C. FACTORS CHOSEN FOR THE STUDY

The factors which are considered in this study to have an influence on the aggressive
behaviour of children are discussed in the following section.

Parenting styles:

It is seen in the past literature, mostly in the Western studies, parenting styles is one of the
variables studied very vastly in relation to child’s positive or negative behaviour. The present
research has chosen Baumrind’s (1967, 1971) classification of parenting styles, which is
categorised as Authoritative, Authoritarian and Permissive parenting styles in the Parenting
Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire (PSDQ, Robinson et al., 1995), to understand its
relationship with aggressive behaviours in children. Baumrind (1966) in her classification
describes that authoritative parents are those who attempt to direct the child’s activities in a
rational, issue oriented manner. They encourage verbal give and take, share with the child the
reasoning behind their policy, and solicit his objections when he refuses to conform. The
authoritative parent affirms the child’s present qualities, but also sets standards for future

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conduct. As cited in Pettit et al., (2001), Authoritative parents promote psychological
autonomy, yet firm in establishing behavioural guidelines. They are lesser on psychological
control and higher on behavioural control, whereas Authoritarian parents are high on
demandingness accompanied by low levels of warmth and psychological autonomy. They
attempt to shape, control and evaluate the behaviour and attitudes of the child in accordance
with a set standard of conduct, usually an absolute standard. Parent values obedience as a
virtue and favours punitive, forceful measures to curb self-will at points where the child’s
actions or beliefs conflict with what she thinks is right conduct. Parent believes in keeping the
child in its right place, in restricting the autonomy, and believes that the child should accept
her word for what is right. Permissive parent according to Baumrind (1971), attempts to
behave in a non-punitive, acceptant, and affirmative manner toward the child’s impulses,
desires and actions. They consult with him on policy decisions and gives explanations for
family rules. They allow the child to regulate his own activities as much as possible, avoid
the exercise of control, and do not encourage him to obey externally defined standards. They
attempt to use reason and manipulation, but not overt power, to accomplish their ends. A
permissive parent is low on psychological control and behavioural control according to the
author.

Parenting Style and Dimension questionnaire (PSDQ), with 62 items evaluated using 5 points
was used for fathers and mothers to evaluate their attitude to frequency of their child’s
behaviour, aiming to understand their parenting styles. Three parenting styles, authoritative,
authoritarian and permissive styles were further divided into 11 dimensions or factors.
Authoritative parenting included 27 items which were divided into 4 factors: (a)
warmth/involvement (i.e., give praise when child is good), b) reasoning/induction (i.e.,
explains the consequences of child’s behavior), c) democratic participation (i.e., allows the
child to give input into family rules), d) good nature/easy going (i.e., shows patience with the
child). Authoritarian parenting included 20 items which were further divided into 4 factors: a)
verbal hostility (i.e., explodes in anger towards the child), b) corporal punishment (i.e., uses
physical punishment as a way of disciplining the child) c) non-reasoning/punitive strategies
(i.e., punishes by taking away privileges with little explanation if any), d) directiveness (i.e.,
tells the child what to do). Permissive parenting included 15 items (among of which 3 were
reverse scoring) which was divided into 3 factors: a) lack of follow through (i.e., states
punishments to the child and does not actually do them), b) ignoring misbehavior (i.e., allows

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the child to annoy someone else), c) self-confidence (i.e., appears unsure on how to solve the
child’ misbehavior).

Parenting style in the Western literature has in itself different dimensions and typologies, as
quoted by Skinner, Johnson and Synder (2005), that parenting researchers have repeatedly
suggested that three dimensions can be considered as a set of core features of parenting style.
They are Warmth vs. Rejection, structure vs. Chaos, and Autonomy vs. Coercion. According
to Skinner et al., (2005), in his motivational model, the key aspect is that interacting with
parents who support children’s basic psychological needs serves as an energetic function. The
children thus supported by parents are motivated to constructively engage with parents, to
cooperate with the parental agenda, and to internalize the behaviours and values promoted by
the parents. These children, they say, are ready to be socialized. In contrast, children whose
parents are hostile, chaotic, and coercive become disaffected from parent. In other words,
they resist socialization. Their motivational model emphasizes that compared to three bipolar
dimensions, six dimensions better reflect the dimensionality underlying parent and child
report of warmth, rejection, structure, chaos, autonomy support and coercion. They concluded
that parenting constructs are of multiple dimensions (Unipolar), which provided a better fit
than the traditional bipolar models.

Darling and Steinberg (1993), proposed an integrative model, where they say that parenting
style is best conceptualized as a context that moderates the influence of specific parenting
practices on the child. They argue that only by maintaining this difference between parenting
style and parenting practices can researchers address questions concerning socialization
process. They say that researchers have argued that the values parents hold and the goal
towards which they socialize their children are critical determinants of parenting behaviour.
The socialization goals include the child’s acquiring specific behaviours and skills and their
acquiring global qualities like curiosity, critical thinking, independence and so on. Darling
and Steinberg propose that the attributes of parenting influenced by the goals, wherein goals
include both the child’s acquisition of specific skills and behaviours and the child’s
development of more global qualities, are at least of two distinct types: Parenting styles and
Parenting practices. They postulated that in order to understand the processes through which
parents influence their children’s development, researchers should maintain this distinction
between practice and styles. They say that practice is behaviours defined by specific content
and socialization goals. Attending school meetings or functions and spanking are both
examples of parenting practices. They say that parenting practices are best understood as

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operating in fairly circumscribed socialization domains, such as academic achievement,
independence, or cooperation with peers.

The second class of parenting attributes influenced by parent’s goals and values is parenting
style. Parenting style, according to the authors is a constellation of attitudes towards the child
that are communicated to the child and create an emotional climate in which parent
behaviours are expressed. They include aspects of behaviours that encompass parenting
practices as well as other parent child interaction that communicate the emotional attitude.
Thus they infer that parenting style is expressed partly through parenting practices, because
these are behaviours from which the children infer the emotional attitudes of parents. Their
integrative model says that each of these parenting attributes influences the child
development through different processes. Parenting practices have a direct effect on the
development of specific child behaviours, where parents directly help their child to attain
socialization goals. In contrast, the primary processes through which parenting style
influences child development are indirect. Parenting style alters the parent’s capacity to
socialize their children by changing the effectiveness of their parenting practices. They say
that from this perspective parenting style can be best thought of as a contextual variable that
moderates the relationship between specific parenting practices and specific developmental
outcomes. Therefore they postulate that the extent to which children manifest a particular
psychological or behavioural characteristic varies as a function of (a) the extent to which the
practices that parents use are correlated with the specific outcome (b) the extent to which the
style the parents use is effective to the child in general. Therefore the supporters of this model
say that an integrated approach which has both the aspects of parenting has the best results.

Maccoby and Martin (1983), has further updated Baumrinds parenting style by defining
parenting style using two dimensions: parental demandingness (control, supervision, maturity
demands) and parental responsiveness(warmth, acceptance, involvement). The interaction
between the two dimensions produced four distinct parenting styles. A primary difference
between Baumrinds parenting style typologies and Maccoby and Martins parenting style
typologies is that Baumrind discussed on “permissive” parenting while Maccoby and Martin
differentiates between two types of permissive parenting.

Authoritarian parents according to Maccoby and Martin are characterized by high in

demandingness but low in responsiveness. Authoritative parents are characterized by high on
both demandingness and responsiveness. The two types of permissive parenting as discussed

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by Maccoby and Martin (1983) are indulgent parents and neglecting parents. Indulgent
parents are characterized by low on demandingness but high on responsiveness while
neglecting parents are characterized by low on both demandingness and responsiveness.
Indulgent parents are warm, accepting, and tolerant but make few demands for mature
behaviours, exercise little authority, and allow children to self-regulate as much as possible.
Neglecting parents do not care much of their children’s behaviour and parents are often too
preoccupied by their own problems and thus neglect their children. Neglecting parents often
neglect their parental responsibilities.

The above parenting dimensions and models show that the area of parenting has a wide
spectrum and different typologies that can be studied. The present study has used the
parenting style typology of Baumrnind (1971), which has been quite popular in the Indian
context also, and has been used widely in the Indian studies too.

As seen in the literature review, there are many studies which support that parenting
approaches and problem behaviour in children are significantly associated. There are quite a
few studies which shows that harsh parenting, corporal punishments, spanking are all
positively correlated to child’s aggressive behaviour (Chang, Schwartz et al., 2003; Mulvaney
and Mebert ,2007; Brenner & Fox, 1998; Shawna, Inna and Elizabeth, 2013). It is also seen
that behaviour control exercised by parents, has a better impact on children than
psychological control (Aunola & Nurmi, 2005; Barber et al., 1994; Barber et al., 2005; Hart
et al., 1998; Hart, Nelson et al., 1998; Pettit et al., 2001; Bean, Barber and Crane, 2006). It is
seen that psychological control was associated with depression in adolescents, and behaviour
control by parents was associated primarily with lower antisocial behaviour (Barber et al.,
2005). It was seen that monitoring or behaviour control was anteceded by proactive parenting
style and psychological control was anteceded by harsh parenting and by child’s externalizing
behaviours (Pettit et al., 2001). A negative relationship between parental support and
depression and between parental behaviour control and delinquency in adolescents was seen
(Bean et al., 2006).

There are also lot of studies available in the West which supports the authoritative parenting
as the best in terms of child outcome compared to authoritarian and permissive parenting
(Querido, Warner and Eyeberg, 2002; Robison et al., 2005; Dornbusch et al., 1987; Simons &
Conger, 2007), Authoritarian and permissive styles were negatively associated with grades,
while authoritative parenting were positively associated with grades (Dornbusch et al., 1987).

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Having two authoritative parents is associated with the most positive outcomes for
adolescents in terms of delinquency, depression and school commitment, and there is
evidence that having one authoritative parent can buffer a child from the deleterious
consequences associated with less optimal styles of parenting (Simons & Conger, 2007).

To contradict these findings there are a handful of studies which reveals that there has not
been a significant association between parenting styles and aggressive or externalizing
behaviours in children ( Veenastra et al., 2005; Shayesteh, Hejazi, and Foumany, 2014; Elvis
Fili 2016; Underwood et al., 2008; Laura McKee, et al., 2008). Therefore the associations
between parenting styles and externalizing behaviours are still getting various view points
and contradictory evidences in the literature.

There are studies in the Indian context which study adolescent depression and parenting style,
Parenting style and academic performance in school children (Sharma et al., 2011; Radhika
and Joseph, 2013), which shows there is a significant relationship between authoritarian style
and depression, and negative relationship between permissive style and depression and
children of authoritative parents have a better outcome on academics than children of
authoritarian or neglectful parents. One study by Shayetesh, Hejazi and Foumany (2014)
indicated that there is no significant relationship between adolescent aggression and parenting
styles. One study by Johal and Kaur(2015), showed that there is a significant positive
correlation between aggression among adolescent boys and democraticism of parental
behaviour, which means that more freedom, independence and democracy might lead to more
aggression in boys and there was a significant positive correlation to aggression in adolescent
girls and dominance dimension of parents. A study by Bakhla et al., (2013), found that most
of the adolescents perceived their parents ‘Democratic’, high anxiety was significantly
associated with female gender and there was a significantly higher anxiety among students
who perceived their parents as authoritarian. It was seen that there was a significant
difference in the parenting approaches of delinquents to non-delinquents (Moitra and
Mukherjee, 2010). They concluded that parenting styles of mothers and fathers were linked to
delinquency and authoritative style of parenting was the best approach, whereas neglectful
and authoritarian parenting was positively related to delinquency. One study by Sharma and
sandhu (2006), which studied the association between parenting dimensions and externalizing
behaviours in children found that correlations between non reasoning, verbal hostility,
physical coercion, autonomy and indulgent parenting dimensions and externalizing
behaviours were significantly positive, whereas regulation and connection parenting

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dimensions showed significant negative correlation with externalizing behaviours.
Regression analysis showed that autonomy, non-reasoning and indulgence parenting
dimensions predicted externalizing behaviours.

In the Indian context these are the few published studies that have studied the aggressive
behaviour in relation to problem behaviour in adolescents and children. So there are
definitely not as many studies in India to understand the school aggressive behaviour in
children and their association to parenting and home.

Marital conflict:

Marital conflict and its influence on child’s development and behaviour has been a topic of
interest in the research areas. There are many theoretical and empirical studies which have
pointed towards the deleterious effect of intense, consistent and prolonged conflict among
parents on children. Marital conflict has been studied under various hypotheses, where the
researchers try to identify certain ways through which conflict affect children. One of the
hypotheses is Emotional Security Hypothesis by Davies and Cumming (1994) which is built
on the attachment theory. They argue that children’s concern about emotional security play a
role in their regulation of emotional arousal and organization and in their motivation to
respond in the face of marital conflict. Over time these response processes and internalized
representations of parental relations that develop have implication for children’s long term
adjustment. Emotional security is seen as a product of past experiences with marital conflict
and as a primary influence on future responding. They proposed that emotional security is
comprised of three main components: children’s emotional reactivity to conflict, regulation of
parental affect, and internal representations of marital relations. There are certain studies
which has tested this Emotional Security Hypothesis on their outcomes of children behaviour
(McCoy, Cummings., & Davies, 2009; Davies and Cummings, 1998; Harold, Shelton,
Goeke-Morey, Cummings, 2004; Cummings et al., 2006;) It is seen that children’s emotional
security acted as an intervening variable between both constructive and destructive marital
conflict and children’s prosocial behaviour (McCoy et al., 2009). Emotional reactivity and
internal representations were most closely linked with marital relations and child adjustment,
especially with regard to internalizing symptoms (Davies and Cumming, 1998). It was
indicated that children’s emotional security about inter parental conflict, mediated the
relationship between marital conflict and children’s security about parenting (Harold et al.,
2004). In support of Emotional security model, it was indicated that emotional security in the

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context of interparental conflict was mediating or intervening process linking interparental
discord and subsequent child adjustment problems (Cummings et al., 2006).

Grynch and Fincham (1998), proposed a cognitive-contextual frame work for understanding
children’s response to marital conflict. According to the frame work, the features of the
conflict that are proposed to have greatest impact on children are its intensity, content,
duration and resolution. The frame work proposes that, conflicts of a greater ‘intensity’ cause
greater distress to children. The intensity of the conflict may be determined by a number of
factors, including the degree of negative affect or hostility expressed, and physical
aggression. The ‘content’ of conflicts can vary widely but certain conflicts, such as those
concerning the child or the state of marriage may be more upsetting to children than other
less threatening topics. They say that although ‘duration’ of conflict episodes have not
received much attention in the literature, longer lasting episodes may lead to greater distress
for children because they increase the length of time children are exposed to a stressor. They
also suggest that conflicts that lack satisfactory resolution may upset children more than
conflicts that are successfully resolved. They also propose that although ‘context’ of a
conflict may encompass a broad range of factors including the physical setting of the conflict,
the psychological aspects of ‘context’ (e.g., child’s memory of past conflicts) may be most
important influences on children’s response to marital conflict. Distal context refers to
relatively stable or slowly changing factors and includes such elements as children’s memory
of past episodes of conflict. Proximal content, in contrast, refers to the thoughts and feelings
experienced by the children immediately before their processing of the conflict episode.
Therefore this framework give us a broad understanding of the nature of influence of marital
conflict on children and their responses which vary depending on the children’s
understanding of the conflict, which varies as a function of characteristics of the conflict,
contextual factors and the level of cognitive development.

Cummings et al., (2004), proposed an exposure hypothesis in marital conflict and its impact
on children’s aggressive behaviours. He examined children’s immediate responding to
marital conflict, where he concluded that exposure to destructive conflict tactics and negative
parental emotionality increased the likelihood of aggressive behaviour in children when they
witnessed a marital conflict, whereas constructive conflict tactics and positive parental
emotionality decreased the probability of aggression. Therefore the authors proposed that
exposure to conflict have a direct impact on the aggressive responding of children
immediately. There are many studies which has tested and supported the exposure hypothesis

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which has indicated that being a witness to violence puts a child at risk for a number of
serious mental health and other problems, regardless of the socioeconomic status (Straus,
1990a). It has also been analysed that witnesses had significantly worse outcome relative to
non-witnesses and children from verbally abusive homes (Katherine, Noni, Aimee, &, Erin,
2003). Young people reporting high levels of exposure to inter parental violence had elevated
rates of adjustment problems at age 18. While father initiated violence was associated with
anxiety, conduct disorder, property crime; mother initiated violence was associated with later
alcohol or dependence behaviours (Ferguson and Horwood, 1998). These studies indicate that
more a child is a direct witness to the conflict or violence, worse the outcomes are. Therefore
in this context, for a parent to display constructive conflict tactic is the best way to help a
child to gain better understanding and control.

There have been quite a few studies in the area of marital conflict and child outcomes
supporting the spillover hypothesis, Erel and Burman, (1995), has referred it as the transfer
of mood, affect or behaviour from one setting to another (as cited in Katz and Gottman,
1996). This process involves the expression of feelings and behaviour in one system, of
feelings that were generated in another system; marital hostility linking to father’s rejecting
parenting which predicts child’s aggressive play and husband’s emotional withdrawal from
the marriage linking to mother’s rejecting parenting, which predicts child’s internalizing
behaviour (Katz and Gottman, 1996). Meta analytic reviews also suggested that there existed
a linkage between marital conflict and child outcomes, moderated by parent-child
relationships (Erel & Burman, 1995; KrishnaKumar and Breuler, 2000). These meta-
analytical reviews suggested that the link between marital and child-parent relations as stable
force in predicting child outcomes. A longitudinal study by Gerard, Krishnakumar and
Breuler, 2006, had found a concurrent association between marital conflict and youth
externalizing problems mediated by harsh discipline and parent youth conflict in both wave 1
and wave 2. The internalizing problems and marital conflict was partially mediated at both
waves through parent-youth conflict. It was also suggested that father’s parenting may be
more strongly related to internalizing behaviours and mother’s parenting may be more related
to externalizing behaviour in boys (Kaczynski et al., 2006). Therefore it is seen that parent
gender also moderates the relationship between conflict and child outcomes through
parenting behaviours.

Therefore it can be seen that there are direct effect models that suggest that child
maladjustment is directly related to the child’s exposure to overt marital conflict which can

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impact through child appraisal and reaction to the conflict as discussed in the exposure
hypothesis and emotional security hypothesis. And also there are studies which show the
indirect effects of conflict through parenting behaviours as discussed above.

In the Indian context there are no published studies in the area of marital conflict and child
adjustment and hence it is perhaps in its nascent stage.

The present study has tried to understand the presence of conflict in a couple through Conflict
Tactic Scale (CTS original, Straus, 1990a) and its association with school aggressive
behaviours in children. CTS Original measures the frequency and intensity of conflict
resolution tactics used by couples in the past 6 months as a referent period.

Parental Supervision:

Parental Supervision or monitoring is one of the grey areas in research which has not
received much of an attention. Although in many ways parenting behaviours and approaches
can overlap each other, supervision is a term which is just not parenting but a little more than
that. Parental monitoring or supervision is a set of correlated parenting behaviours involving
attention to and tracking of the child’s whereabouts, activities and adaptations (Dishion and
McMahon, 1998). As quoted by Laird et al., (2003), most often parents of young children
obtain their knowledge through direct supervision, however as children grow older, children
spend more time outside direct supervision. It therefore becomes important for a parent to
shift from in-person supervision to more distal forms of monitoring, like parent initiated
conversations about activities and friends, knowing the child’s friends, who they are going
with or playing with and so on. The present study has a focus on the middle childhood, where
children are slowly drifting away from direct supervision approaches. Hence, the aim of this
study is to understand the ways in which supervision practices are carried in the present
context in terms of knowing, communicating, sharing, and knowledge of the child and so on.
Dishion and McMahon (1998), in his conceptual and empirical formulation has quoted that
parental monitoring or supervision and child problem behaviour has been established in three
areas, namely, safety and injury, antisocial behaviour and substance abuse. There are a few
studies in the West which shows that early monitoring habits among parents have a positive
influence on the child in the later years also (Petit et al., 2001). It is seen that decreases in
knowledge about adolescents lead to increase in parent-reported delinquent behaviour. It was
seen that parental knowledge appears to inhibit adolescent’s future involvement in delinquent
behaviour (Laird et al., 2003). Stattin and Kerr (2000), made a suggestion that tracking and

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surveillance was not the best prescription for parental behaviour, but a new prescription
should rest on an understanding of the factors that determine child disclosure. Therefore they
suggest that a part of the monitoring or supervisory practices rest on the parent effort, and a
part also come from child’s spontaneous and willing divulgence of information.

Many of the empirical studies focus on the parental supervision and its outcome on
adolescent behaviours (Jacobson & Crockett, 2000; Pettit et al., 1999; DiClemente et al.,
2001; Borawski et al., 2003; Dishion & McMahon, 1998; Clark, Thatcher and Maisto, 2005;
Li, Stanton, Fiegelman, 2000; Daniel et al., 1999; Ary et al., 1999)It was seen that parental
monitoring had strong associations with all the indicators of adjustment for both boys and
girls, (sexual activity, depression, minor delinquency, grade point average), except for boy’s
depression (Jacobson & Crockett, 2000). Unsupervised peer contact, lack of neighbourhood
safety, and low monitoring incrementally predicted grade 7 externalizing behaviour (Pettit et
al., 1999). It was seen that adolescents perceiving low parental monitoring were more likely
to have a sexually transmitted disease, have risky sex partners, use marijuana more often,
greater alcohol consumption, have a history of arrests and tend to be more violent
(DiClemente et al., 2001). In males, high parental monitoring was associated with less
alcohol use and consistent condom use (Borawski et al., 2003). Adolescents with inadequate
supervision were significantly more likely to drink alcohol in a variety of situations and more
likely to have Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) in the initial assessment (Clark et al., 2005).
Parental monitoring was inversely related to unprotected sex, drug use and drug trafficking
cross-sectionally and longitudinally (Li, Stanton, Fiegelman, 2000). Those spending
unsupervised time with peers reported higher levels of aggression, delinquency, substance
abuse and susceptibility to peer pressure, and lower levels of parental monitoring, than did
adolescents at home with parents (Daniel et al., 1999). Poor parental monitoring, and
association with deviant peers were strong predictors of engagement in problem behaviours
such as substance abuse, antisocial behaviour, academic failure, and risky sexual behaviour in
adolescent boys (Ary et al., 1999)

From all the above studies we can understand that there are a lot of studies supporting the
inverse relationship with high parental supervision and adolescent problem behaviours like
drug abuse, substance abuse, trafficking, violence, aggression, delinquency and so on.

It is also seen in some of the studies that it is very important to begin the practices of
supervision early in childhood, continuing into adolescence as a preventive medicine against

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delinquency and antisocial behaviours in adolescence (Patterson and Stouthamer-Loeber,
1984; Loeber and Stouthamer-Loeber, 1986; Laird, et al., 2003; Eaton et al., 2009; Fischer,
1983; Hoeve et al., 2009; Cookston, 1999; Li, Stanton, Fiegelman, 2000; Reid and Patterson,
1989; Farrington, 2005). They have consistently shown that parental supervision, parental
rejection and parent-child involvement are the most powerful predictors of juvenile behaviour
problems and delinquency. Hoeve et al., (2009), found that the strongest links for
delinquency were from parental monitoring, psychological control and rejection and hostility
from parents. Neighbourhood crime rates were found to moderate the effects of supervision
on children’s behaviours, peer relations, locus of control and language achievement. Children
with low supervision and dangerous neighbourhood showed lower self-efficacy. (Coley and
Hoffman, 1996). It was seen that for boys both low and medium levels of supervision
indicated higher problem behaviours, while for girls it served as a protective factor against
problem behaviours (Cookston, 1999). Irritable, ineffective discipline and poor parental
monitoring were the most proximal determinants of the early development and maintenance
of antisocial behaviour (Reid and Patterson, 1989). The major early risk factors for antisocial
behaviour include impulsiveness, low intelligence and low school achievement, poor parental
supervision, child physical abuse, punitive discipline parental conflict, antisocial parents
(Farrington, 2005).

From the above empirical studies it can be seen that parental supervision in early childhood is
one of the very stable predictors of later antisocial behaviour or delinquency, and also it
serves as a protective factor against problem behaviours in children.

TV watching and Aggressive behaviours in children

TV watching and its influence on aggressive behaviours in children has been an area which
has been well researched in the past decade. There have been a lot of theoretical and
empirical studies which points out to the direct relationship between TV watching among
children and aggressive behaviours displayed by them. The present study also explores the
relationship between the duration of TV watching and contents watched and the aggressive
behaviours displayed in children in schools. For this, the researcher designed a survey
questionnaire, administered to the parent and the child to understand the TV watching habits
of children. Since there has been a lacunae in the published studies in this area in the Indian
set up, the present study has framed a null hypothesis to understand the association between
TV watching and aggressive behaviour in children.

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There are certain very prominent theoretical researches that lead the path into this research
and Huesmann (1986, 1988) has been one of the pioneers in this area of research which is
briefly discussed below.

Huessman (1988), (as cited in the book, aggressive behaviour: current perspectives),
developed the information processing theory intended to explain the stability of aggressive
tendencies overtime and the role of media violence in promoting aggressive behaviour.
Huesmann’s theory adopts the premise that social behaviour is controlled to a great extent by
programs for behaviour that are established during a person’s early development. These
programs are described as cognitive scripts that are stored in a person’s memory which are
stored in the person’s memory and are used as guides for behaviour and social problem
solving.

According to Huesmann, the process through which scripts are formed is a learning process
involving both observational and enactive components. He theorized that primary learning
processes is one in which the child observes sequences of behaviour by others and encodes
these sequences into a cognitive script. This he called it as observational learning. The
secondary process occurs when the child utilizes this script to guide his or her own behaviour
and is reinforced for the resulting response. They say both these learning processes may alter
the structure of the script, affect the strength with which it is encoded, and its connections to
other elements in the child’s cognitive schema. Cognitive rehearsal of the script will also
strengthen its encoding and connectedness.

According to this theory it is clear that the child’s observation of dramatic or real violence in
childhood could contribute to the construction of lasting cognitive structures that would affect
the child’s behaviour in childhood and when he or she was grown.

Huesmann (1986), formed a developmental theory to account for the linkage between
increased exposure to media violence and increased aggressive behaviour. It is argued that
the effect of media violence on individual differences in aggression is primarily the result of a
cumulative learning process through childhood. Aggressive scripts for behaviour are acquired
from observation of the media violence and aggressive behaviour itself stimulates the
observation of media violence.

The proposed model describes how the reciprocal process, once started, can become self-
perpetuating, with more and more aggressive scripts learnt and employed. They say that the
parents play an important role in dampening the cycle once it starts. Parents can intervene to
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moderate their child’s viewing, to convince their children that the violent solution to social
problems portrayed on television is not realistic and that the violent television heroes are not
the ones that the children should emulate. This would reduce the likelihood that the children
would encode the aggressive scripts they see. Parents could also intervene to help children
learn prosocial scripts that will compete with the aggressive scripts as guides for behaviour.
They concluded that, however, that while parents’ behaviour, the child’s sociocultural
environment, and many other factors contribute to both the child’s aggressive behaviour and
the child’s television habits, none if these variables can ‘explain away’ the relation between
violence viewing habits and aggression as an artefact or unimportant to the development of
long lasting aggressive habits.

The above models of Huesmann, helps us to understand the impact of media on children,
both short term and long term and the need to have parental intervention and control of what
is being watched and how much. There are many empirical studies which are in line with the
theoretical models (Bushman and Huesmann ,2006; Huesmann et al., 2003), it was concluded
that short term effects are mostly due to the priming of existing well-encoded scripts,
schemas or beliefs, which adults have more time to encode. In contrast long term effects
require the learning of scripts, schemas or beliefs. Children can encode new scripts, schemas
and beliefs via observational learning with less interference and effort than adults (Bushman
and Huesmann, 2006). It was also seen that early childhood exposure to TV violence
predicted aggressive behaviours for both males and females in adulthood (Huesmann et al.,
2003).

Albert Bandura (1971), Social Learning theory, is also one of the theories which are seen to
play a role in the children’s learning of aggressive behaviour from media violence. The
theory assumes that modelling influences produces learning principally through their
informative functions and that observers acquire symbolic representations of modelled
activities. They is it is governed by four interrelated sub processes namely:

Attentional processes: A person cannot learn much by observation if he does not attend to, or
recognize, the essential features of the models behaviour. One of the component functions in
learning by example is therefore concerned with attentional processes. Simply exposing
persons to models does not in itself ensure that they will attend closely to them, that they will
necessarily select from the models numerous characteristics the most relevant ones, or that
they will even perceive accurately the aspects they happen to notice. Attention to models they

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say is channelled by interpersonal attraction. Models who possess interesting and winsome
qualities are sought out, whereas, those who lack pleasing characteristic tend to be ignored
and rejected, even though they may excel in other ways.

Retention processes: A person cannot be much influenced by observation of the model’s

behaviour, if he has no memory of it. A second major function involved in observational
learning concerns long term retention of activities that have been modelled one time or the
other. If one has to reproduce the model’s behaviour when the latter is no longer present to
serve as a guide, the response pattern must be represented in the memory in symbolic form.
By this it means past influence has some degree of permanence.

Motoric reproduction processes: The third component of the modelling is concerned with
processes whereby symbolic representations guide overt actions. To achieve behavioural
reproduction, a learner must put together a given set of responses according to the modelled
patterns. The amount of observational learning that a person can exhibit behaviourally
depends on whether or not he has acquired the component skills. If he possesses the
constituent elements, he can easily integrate them to produce new patterns of behavior, but if
the response components are lacking, behavioural reproduction will be faulty. In most
everyday learning, people usually achieve rough approximation of new patterns of behaviour
by modelling and refine them through self-corrective adjustments on the basis of informative
feedback from performance.

Reinforcement and motivational processes: A person can acquire, retain, and possess the
capabilities for skilful execution of modelled behaviour, but learning may rarely be activated
into overt performance if it is negatively sanctioned or otherwise unfavourably sanctioned or
otherwise unfavourably received. When positive reinforcements are provided, observational
learning, which previously remained unexpressed, is promptly translated into action.
Reinforcement influences not only to regulate the overt expressions of matching behaviour,
but they can affect the level of observational learning by controlling what people attend to
and how they actively code and rehearse what they have seen.

The above theories give a strong foundation for the violence viewing and aggression in
children, where the processes that lead to aggressive behaviour can be understood from the
above theoretical frameworks. There are studies in the west which has shown that media
exposure in early childhood has an impact on their aggressive behaviours (Ostrov, Gentile
and Crick, 2006; Gentile, Coyle and Waish, 2011; Gentile Mathieson and Crick, 2011). It

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was seen that media exposure were associated with relational aggression for girls and
physical aggression for boys (Ostrov et al., 2006), and also lesser prosocial behaviour later in
the school (Gentile et al., 2011), Media violence exposure was related to lower reactive
relational aggression, higher proactive relational aggression, and higher reactive physical
aggression (Gentile, Mathieson and Crick, 2011). Eron (1963), found a causal circular effect,
where TV violence had an affect on sample’s aggression and aggressive samples watching
more violence on TV. They say that the important intervening variables in the TV violence–
aggression relationship are samples identification with aggressive characters and the extent to
which sample believes TV portrays reality. There are also studies which show that there is a
longitudinal relationship between TV viewing in childhood and adult aggressive behaviours
(Huesmann et al., 2003; Eron, 1972; Huesmann et al., 1984; Johnson et al., 2002), they also
say that for both males and females this relationship holds good. They also suggested that
identification with aggressive TV characters and perceived realism of TV violence also
predicted later aggression. No evidence was found that those samples predisposed to
aggression or those with aggressive parents were affected more by TV violence. However, a
number of other variables (e.g., strong identification with aggressive characters) were
correlates of aggression and violence viewing (Huesmann et al., 1984). There was a
significant amount of association between the amount of time spent watching television
during adolescence and early adulthood and the likelihood of subsequent aggressive acts
against others and this association remained significant after previous aggressive behaviours,
childhood neglect, family income, neighbourhood violence, parental education, and
psychiatric disorders were statistically controlled (Johnson et al., 2002). A meta-analytical
study found a consistent evidence that violent imagery in television, video and computer
games had a substantial short-term effects on arousal, thoughts and emotions increasing the
likelihood of aggressive behaviour in young children, especially boys (Browne and
Catherine, 2005).

All the above mentioned studies very clearly indicates that violent TV viewing and
aggressive behaviours are associated longitudinally, and also that Violent TV viewing is one
of the factors which has had a strong variance compared to other variables or when they are
even statistically controlled. The above results indicate that there is indeed a very direct
impact of the content of TV watching and child problem behaviours.

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Gaming on gadgets and aggressive behaviour in children

In recent times, the advancement of gaming technology has led to a rise in the popularity of
video games and virtual reality. As all of us have seen, this has consumed a considerable
amount of time and energy in an individual’s daily life. In children, especially, as noticed,
gaming is seen to become addictive and this is a cause of concern in the present day, where it
is seen that children tend to get hooked on to gaming gadgets and slip away from reality into
the fantasy world.

There are several empirical studies, meta-analytical and longitudinal studies in the West
which says that there is a definite short term and long term impact of video gaming on the
aggressive behaviours of children. Anderson and Dill (2000), found that real-life video game
play was positively related to aggressive behaviour and delinquency and also exposure to
graphically violent video games increased aggressive thoughts and behaviour. Therefore they
concluded that exposure to violent video games will increase aggressive behaviour in both
short term and long term. Meta analytical studies by Anderson (2004), Anderson et al.,
(2010), revealed that exposure to violent video games is significantly linked to increase in the
aggressive behaviour, cognition, aggressive affect and cardiovascular arousal. It was also
seen that in the cross cultural comparison also, video game effects was a causal risk factor for
increased aggressive behaviour, cognition and affect and for decreased empathy and prosocial
behaviour. Gentile et al., (2004), studied that adolescents who expose themselves to greater
amounts of video game violence were more hostile, reported getting into arguments with
teachers more frequently, were more likely to be involved in physical fights and performed
poorly in schools. They found that hostility mediated the relationship between violent video
game exposure and outcome. Silvern and Williamson (1987), also revealed that there was no
difference between the television and video conditions and concluded that violent video
games arouse children in much the same way as violent television. An experimental study by
Bartholow and Anderson, (2002), also showed that playing violent video games would result
in more aggression than playing a non-violent video game. Polman et al., (2008), through an
experimental study found that specifically for boys, playing a violent video game leads to
more aggression than watching television violence. Bushman and Anderson (2002), tested the
General Aggression Model on the effect of playing violent video games on hostile
expectations. They concluded and the results supported the model that people who played a
violent video game perceived others as more aggressive, thinking of more aggressive
thoughts and feeling angrier than did people who played a non-violent video game. Anderson

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and ford (1986), revealed in their experimental studies that high-aggression games, led to
increased hostility than the mild-aggression game. Students playing high-aggression games
were also more anxious compared to students playing mild-aggression game.

A longitudinal study by Anderson et al., (2008), in Japan and the US, revealed that habitual
video game players early in the school years predicted later aggression. Those who play a lot
of violent video games became relatively more physically aggressive. They concluded that
playing violent video games is a significant risk factor for later physically aggressive
behaviour and that this effect on youth generalizes across very different cultures.

All the above studies quoted shows that, one, most of the studies are experimental and meta-
analytical in nature, measuring the short term effects and effect sizes of the meta-analytic
studies, which reveals that there is a definite short term effect on arousal, hostility, aggressive
thoughts which lead to aggressive behaviour. There are only a few studies which is
longitudinal in nature, to understand the long term impact of violent gaming. All the studies
found that habitual, addictive violent video game play has a definite effect on the aggressive
behaviour.

There are also a handful of studies which has some different results and findings
contradictory to the above studies. Sherry (2001), in a Meta-analytical study found that there
is a smaller effect of violent video games on aggression than has been found with television
violence on aggression. Unsworth and Ward (2001) show the inconsistencies in the findings
from a vast body of research and they say that the rate of growth of video technology make it
difficult to draw any conclusions about the relationship between exposure and aggressive
behaviour. Fleming and Wood (2001), found that arousal significantly increased after playing
the violent game, but there was no significant increase in the aggressive mood scores for
either boys or girls after playing the violent game. Wiegman and Schie (1998), found that
there was no significant relationship between video game use in general and aggressive
behaviour, but a significant negative relationship with prosocial behaviour was supported. It
also showed that especially boys who showed a preference for aggressive games were more
aggressive in nature and showed less prosocial behaviour. And also that children who
preferred playing aggressive games tended to be less intelligent. Schie and Wiegman (1997),
concluded that there was no significant relationship between the times spent playing video
games and aggressive behaviour, but a negative relationship was found between the times
spent paying videogames and prosocial behaviour. In the similar lines Cooper and Mackie

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(1986), found that there was no significant effect on either boys or girls free play after
playing either an aggressive video game or a video game with little aggression. Neither
violent video game exposure, nor parental involvement predicted bullying and delinquent
behaviour in young adolescents, but trait aggression and stress levels predicted the same
(Ferguson et al., 2014). It was also noted that neither past exposure to violent games or
randomized exposure made any differences in aggression, compared to the impact of trait
aggression, family violence and male gender on aggression and violent crime (Ferguson et
al., 2008). Individuals who are already at risk for violent behaviour may respond more
negatively to violent games than the majority of individuals, and according Ferguson (2007),
increase in aggressive thoughts through gaming, might not lead to aggressive behaviour, but
it might lead to increases in visuospatial cognition in individuals, which can help in a positive
way.

The above quoted studies show that effect of violent video game did not result in aggressive
behaviour. Therefore as seen from the literature in the area of video gaming and aggression
there are mixed and contradictory results which are seen and hence to draw an inference from
these results might be difficult and hence it is a space where still there is a lot of work
happening to draw conclusions on the same.

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