ren viewed adults hitting a Bobo clown. Immediately following, the children were provided in their play environment with a human clown, which many of the children hit repeatedly (Liebert, 1973).
Other studies have found that television watching produces a dulling of sensitivities to violence. One such study was conducted by Dr. Victor Cline at the University of Utah Laboratories (Winn, 1977). He used a physiograph (an elaborate lie detector) to test the reactions to graphic violence of five to 14-year-old boys who watched very little television, as compared to those who watched an average of 42 hours per week for at least two years. The boys who watched the most television were significantly less aroused by what they saw. The conclusion was that they had become so accustomed to emotion-arousing events on television that their sensitivities had become blunted.
Children's reports of their own experience would support these findings. One seventh-grade girl, without knowledge of research findings in this area, said "I think TV violence has some effect on how you feel - how you think - because you become a little calloused, probably, to things happening in the world. But I think a normal person wouldn't get the incentive from TV to go out and commit a violent act" (Borgman, 1979).
A recent item however, on NBC's Entertainment Tonight tells of two young boys from the Midwest who were injured as a result of making a pipe bomb which exploded. The boys, both of whom lost fingers in the incident, indicated they had gotten the idea and the know-how to make the bomb from watching an episode of ABC's "McGyver." The producers of the show denied any wrongdoing and insisted that there was never anything of such an instructional nature on the show.
While most television production companies deny the pervasiveness of violence in their programming, content analysis of TV programming shows a steady diet of crime shows containing r...