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ARTICLE |
a Department of Pediatrics, Brenner Children's Hospital, Winston-Salem, North Carolina
b Department of Social Science and Health Policy, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, North Carolina
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ABSTRACT |
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OBJECTIVE. Our purpose with this study was to examine the relationships between the frequency that high school students reported watching wrestling on television and engaging in date fighting, weapon carrying, and other fighting behaviors.
DESIGN. The initial analysis consisted of a cross-sectional study of a simple random sample of high school students, which was followed by a longitudinal analysis of these students over a 6- to 7-month period.
SETTING. The setting was all public high schools in 1 city/county system.
PARTICIPANTS. We used a simple random sample (N = 2228) of students.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES. The primary outcome variables included the frequency of date fighting during the previous 12 months and alcohol or other drug involvement associated with the last date fight.
RESULTS. There were significant correlations between frequency of watching wrestling on television during the previous 2 weeks and engaging in date fighting, fighting in general, and weapon carrying for both males and females, although the relationships were stronger among females than among males. The frequency of watching wrestling was highest among students reporting date fighting when either the victim or perpetrator had been drinking alcohol or using illegal drugs. When analyzed using logistic regression, the strongest relationships were observed between the frequency of watching wrestling and date-fight perpetration among females in cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses. These findings persisted after adjusting for multiple other factors.
CONCLUSIONS. For males and females, the frequency of watching wrestling was highest among students who fought with their dates when alcohol or other drugs were involved. The association between watching wrestling and date fighting was stronger among females than males. The relationship between watching wrestling on television and being the perpetrator of dating violence was also stronger among females and remained consistent over a 6- to 7-month time period.
Key Words: adolescence • violence • youth • fighting • media impact • television
Abbreviations: TV—television • OR—odds ratio • aOR—adjusted odds ratio • CI—confidence interval
Factors that have been found to be consistently associated with the use of violence, aggressive behaviors, weapon carrying, and intentions to use violence by children and adolescents include indicators of exposure to violence and victimization within the community or neighborhoods and in the home.1–9 Exposure to violence from the entertainment media is also considered by many to be a major contributor to aggressive and violent behavior by youth.9–12 Media violence portrayed on television (TV), movies, the Internet, and video games are the most prevalent and most thoroughly studied sources of exposure for children and adolescents.13 Media violence is thought to influence the use of violence by youth through similar mechanisms as exposure to social environmental violence, such as modeling and reinforcing violence, desensitization to the consequences of violence with increased proviolent attitudes, and alterations in cognitive processes.9–16 There is also evidence that these mechanisms persist over many years.17,18
An illustration of how media violence influences children's and adolescents' behaviors, attitudes, and values is the relationship between playing violent video games and these outcomes.13,14,19–25 A meta-analysis by Anderson and Bushman19 found that playing violent video games increases aggressive behaviors, aggressive cognitions, aggressive emotions, and physiologic arousal and decreases helping behaviors. There was no evidence of moderator effects between playing violent video games and any of these outcome variables in the meta-analysis. Anderson and Bushman also found that, across studies with diverse designs, the effects were consistent for children and adults and for males and females. In a second meta-analysis with a larger number of studies, Anderson20 confirmed the initial study's findings but with a larger effect size of 0.26.
Anderson24 points out that there are serious gaps in this area of research. Games such as Grand Theft Auto: Vice City award players for having virtual sex with prostitutes and beating them to death to get their money back. In some versions of BMX XXX, players who reach master levels watch short videos of dancing topless strippers. Research on the effects of media exposures to these images on both males and females has not been published. Anderson and Murphy26 state that there is a paucity of experimental research on the effects of playing violent video games by young women, which may provide insight into the relationship between exposing female adolescents to other genres of media violence and aggressive and violent behaviors. Anderson and Dill23 found a small increase in females' aggressive behavior as a result of playing a violent video game. A more recent study of females who played a violent video game found a significant increase on one measure of aggression but not on another.25 Anderson and Murphy26 experimentally tested the effect of playing Street Fighter II among female college students; the students portrayed either a female or a male protagonist in the game, and the control group consisted of students playing a nonviolent video game. Short-term exposure to the video game increased aggressive behavior, and the effect was greater among those students who played the game as a female protagonist.
A genre of media violence that has received little study has been the effect of watching professional wrestling on TV on adolescents' behaviors.27–30 Of particular importance is the influence that watching wrestling on TV may have on female children's and adolescents' attitudes, values, self-images, and behaviors. For years the Nielsen's ratings for cable TV viewing have indicated that large numbers of people regularly view wrestling on TV. For example, for the week of June 6, 2005, to June 12, 2005, Nielsen's top-ten cable-TV programs had World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE RAW) on the Spike network ranked number 3 with 895000 viewers, and WWE RAW Zone ranked number 5 with 621000 viewers. Maguire28 points out that people who watch professional wrestling not only see a substantial amount of extreme violence without the expected consequences occurring but also a lack of morality (the bad guy wins23), racist stereotypes, sexism, use of sex, the degrading of women (women are referred to as "bitches," "whores [hos]," and "sluts"), and extreme verbal intimidation and abuse. In addition, there is celebratory beer consumption by some wrestlers after "winning" matches. Of particular concern is the degree that women are victims of severe violence from both men and women, that the use of violence against women (usually nonwrestlers) by men is justified as morally acceptable, and the modeling of women wrestlers engaging in violence against both men and women. Although male youth watch televised wrestling more often than female youth, females report watching televised wrestling as well.29 On the basis of the literature reviewed above, we hypothesize that the more often both male and female adolescents watch wrestling on TV, the more likely they will be to have engaged in violent behaviors.
One social situation that consistently provides the opportunity for violence between male and female adolescents is dating or intimate partner violence within the heterosexual/homosexual relationship.31–34 Because professional wrestling aired on TV often portrays violence between men and women, we hypothesize that there will be a positive relationship between the frequency of watching professional wrestling and adolescent dating violence behaviors.
Our purpose with this study was to examine how often high school students watched professional wrestling on TV. We also examined the relationships between the frequency with which adolescents had recently viewed TV wrestling, had engaged in violent behaviors, and had perpetrated or been the victim of dating violence. Also, we examined the relationship between the frequency of watching wrestling on TV in the fall of the school year and engaging in violent behaviors 6 to 7 months later in the spring of the school year.
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METHODS |
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The sample was 48.4% female, and the mean age was 15.6 ± 1.3 years. The school grade and the race/ethnicity distribution of the sample are shown in Table 1. The students classified their own race/ethnicity.
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Questionnaire
The frequency with which the students had engaged in health-risk and problem behaviors was measured with questions from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Youth Risk Behavior Survey.32
The questionnaire included multiple questions related to fighting and weapon carrying. Students were asked, "During the past 30 days, on how many days did you carry a gun other than for hunting or target practice?" Students were also asked about carrying a knife, club, or stick as a weapon. These questions were repeated in reference to whether weapons were carried on school property as well. The 5 possible responses were the number of days that weapons were carried, ranging from 0 to 
6 days. Participation in physical fights and fights at school during the past 12 months were also assessed. The response categories ranged from 0 to 12 times on an 8-point scale. One question with the same response categories asked how often during the previous 12 months did the student start a physical fight or hit a boyfriend, girlfriend, or date. The question was then repeated asking if a boyfriend, girlfriend, or date had started a physical fight or hit them. If the student had been in a date fight, 2 follow-up questions were asked: "The last time you were in a physical fight with a date, boyfriend, or girlfriend, had you/had they been drinking alcohol or using any drug before the fight?" Response options to these 2 questions consisted of "no physical date fight," "no," or "yes."
The frequency that professional wrestling was watched on TV was assessed with the question, "During the last 2 weeks, how many times have you watched pro wrestling (such as WWF [World Wrestling Federation], WCW [World Wrestling Council], Monday Night Nitro, or Smackdown) on television?" The possible responses were the number of times such shows were watched on a 10-point scale ranging from 0 to 9 times.
Additional variables that were on the questionnaire included the number of school-sponsored sports, service clubs, performance groups, and honor societies in which the students participated. Students were also asked about their perception of alcohol, drug, and gun availability in the community and enforcement of laws concerning tobacco, alcohol, drugs, and violence. Students were asked to what extent they agreed or disagreed with the following statements: "My teachers really care for me"; "I get a lot of encouragement at my school"; and "Students at my school care about me."
Statistical Analyses
For the cross-sectional analyses of the fall 1999 sample, the associations between the frequency of watching wrestling on TV and engaging in violent behaviors and weapon carrying were measured with Spearman correlation coefficients (r). Mean differences in the frequency of watching wrestling for the categories of not engaging in a physical fight with a date, engaging in a date fight with no alcohol or drug involvement, or date fighting with alcohol or drug involvement of the respondent or date (second question) were assessed with Kruskal-Wallis 1-way analysis of variance and Tukey multiple-comparison tests. Multiple logistic-regression analyses were used to assess the relationship between the frequency of watching wrestling on TV and date fighting while controlling for other variables. Multiple logistic-regression models were constructed with different combinations of the variables listed above to determine if other confounding or moderator variables could influence the relationship between watching wrestling and date fighting. The findings are presented as adjusted odds ratios (aORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). All analyses were conducted for males and females separately. These analyses were repeated on the relationship between watching wrestling in the fall of 1999 and date fighting in the spring of 2000. The intraclass correlation coefficient was used to measure the reliability or consistency in the frequency of viewing wrestling on TV from the fall of 1999 to the spring of 2000.
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RESULTS |
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6 times recently. Although the female students reported watching wrestling on TV less often than the males, 35% had watched it 1 time during the previous 2 weeks. Approximately 10% of all of the female students had watched wrestling 3 to 5 times, and 9% had watched it 6 times recently.
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In the spring of 2000, 58.1% of the males and 35.9% of the females reported watching wrestling 1 time during the previous 2 weeks. One third of the males and 9.3% of the females had watched wrestling 6 times during this time period. The intraclass correlation coefficient of the frequency of watching wrestling in the fall of 1999 and the spring of 2000 was 0.69 for males and 0.73 for females, indicating a high level of consistency in viewing behaviors over this time period.
Among males, the variables that had been found to be significantly associated with watching wrestling for the cross-sectional sample in the fall of 1999 were not significant when analyzed longitudinally. Among females, the frequency that they reported watching wrestling on TV in the fall of 1999 was significantly associated with the frequency of engaging in several indicators of fighting and weapon carrying in the spring of 2000 (Table 6). As was observed with the fall 1999 sample, the mean frequency of watching wrestling in the fall of 1999 was associated with date-fight victimization and perpetration in the spring of 2000 among females but not males (Table 7).
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COMMENTS |
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We found that female students were more likely to report that they had been both the perpetrator and the victim of a date fight than the male students. These findings are consistent with previous research.33,35,36 Several investigators have suggested that this may be a result of gender-biased reporting where males may avoid admitting engaging in or being the victim of socially undesirable behavior. Females may report hitting their dates more often out of self-defense. However, Foshee31 and Malik et al36 found that even after controlling for violence perpetrated in self-defense, females still report being the perpetrator of dating violence more often.
In this sample of high school students, the frequency of self-reported viewing of professional wrestling on TV was weakly, but significantly, associated with the frequency of reported substance use, fighting, and weapon carrying. Although fewer female students had watched wrestling recently, the correlations between the frequency of watching wrestling and engaging in these violent behaviors were larger among females than among males. There are several possible explanations for these findings. Because males often expose themselves to a wider variety and greater amount of media violence, the desensitization than can occur from viewing media violence may result in little "value-added" effects from also viewing wrestling more often.
Although fewer female students watched wrestling, those who reported watching wrestling may have also been more likely to have chosen to engage in these violent behaviors and weapon carrying. Thus, the relationship may be circular, in that the female students already engaging in violent behaviors may choose to watch TV programming that reinforces their current behaviors (such as wrestling), resulting in social learning that is associated with an increased frequency of weapon carrying and fighting.
There were no gender differences in the correlations for frequency of watching wrestling and being the victim of a date fight. However, the magnitude of the correlation between watching wrestling and being the perpetrator of a date fight was nearly 3 times larger among females than among males. When the influence of alcohol or drug use by either the victim or the perpetrator of the date fight was examined, the increase in the frequency of watching wrestling from no date fight to date fight with substance-use involvement was much greater among the female students than among males.
When the relationship between the frequency of watching wrestling on TV and being the perpetrator or victim of a date fight was analyzed using logistic-regression analysis, the ORs were larger for females than males, and the largest OR was found for the relationship between watching wrestling and being the perpetrator of a date fight by females. When this relationship was examined longitudinally, the magnitude of the relationship did not change. This may be partly because of the stability of the viewing behavior for televised wrestling over the 6- to 7-month period between surveys. Multiple logistic regression was then used to determine if other factors such as substance use, other fighting and weapon-carrying behaviors, race/ethnicity, participation in school activities, perceptions of the community and connectivity to teachers, students, and the school could influence the relationship between watching wrestling and being the perpetrator of a date fight. For both the cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses, the aORs decreased slightly but remained statistically significant when adjusting for these variables.
The positive relationship between exposure to violence from electronic media sources and engaging in fighting behaviors by adolescents involved in dating relationships has not been reported previously. The fact that the results from the cross-sectional analyses were confirmed by the longitudinal analyses for females who did and did not perpetrate date fighting strengthens the confidence one can have in these findings. It should not be a surprise that youth who are exposed more often to TV programs that portray a barrage of severe violence without the expected consequences, the degrading of women, sexuality connected with violence, and extreme verbal intimidation and abuse between wrestlers and their female escorts are influenced by what they see and hear. Similar to violent video games,12–14,19–26 youth who watch wrestling know that what they are watching is not "real." However, consistent with the research on other genres of media, the social learning that occurs from increased exposure to wrestling on TV has a negative effect on adolescents' behaviors, particularly among females.
Reducing children's and adolescents' exposure to violence from media sources should be an important component of any violence-prevention strategy. Although parents should take responsibility for monitoring and controlling what their children view on TV, in many homes little or no TV monitoring occurs, particularly among adolescents.37 Physicians and other health care providers should educate parents about the influence that exposure to violence from media sources, such as wrestling, can have on their children's normative expectations concerning the use of these behaviors in "real-life" situations such as dating. These educational efforts should not be limited to interactions with parents and adolescent patients in the office setting but extend to schools and communities.
Although existing dating violence–prevention programs address what are acceptable and unacceptable behaviors within a dating or an adolescent interpersonal relationship, the most effective combined school-based/community-based curriculum31 does not have a component that addresses media influences. In communities where curricula such as Safe Dates31 have been adopted, health care providers have an opportunity to advocate for media-literacy components of this and other health education curricula.
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FOOTNOTES |
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Address correspondence to Robert H. DuRant, PhD, Department of Pediatrics, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Medical Center Boulevard, Winston-Salem, NC 27157. E-mail: rdurant{at}wfubmc.edu
The authors have indicated they have no financial relationships relevant to this article to disclose.
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This article has been cited by other articles:
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  J. A. Manganello Teens, Dating Violence, and Media Use: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Model for Future Research Trauma Violence Abuse, January 1, 2008; 9(1): 3 - 18. [Abstract] [PDF]
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