Pro-social behaviour is a term used to refer to a variety of behaviour which is seen to be beneficial o other people. This essay outlines how the media influences pro-social behaviour.
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Sprafkin & Rubinstein (1979) carried out some research investigating media influence on pro-social behaviour. The following variables were measured:.
• Amount of TV watched by a group of people .
• The amount of prosocial and antisocial material contained in the programmes watched by the children. .
• The prosocial behaviour shown by each child, based on ratings given by the children themselves and their teachers. .
They found that there was a negative correlation between the amount of TV watched and prosocial behaviour. There was however a positive correlation between watching programmes with a high prosocial content and children's pro-social behaviour. Therefore this study suggests that the more TV you watch overall, the less pro-social you become. However the more prosocial the content of the programme the more prosocial you become.
The research conducted by Sprafkin et al & Rubinstein can be criticised in many ways. Firstly, because it was correlational, correlation doesn't show that one variable caused the other variable. Secondly, it cannot be generalised to adults as it was only carried out on children. Also, it is very reductionist because it only takes into account media influence and not other factors such as personality, genes, etc. it also has high ecological validity because they were only measuring the amount of TV watched. They didn't make them watch it. On the other hand it also has low ecological validity, because you don't expect someone to measure children's behaviour.
Baron (1979) also carried out some research investigating media influence on prosocial behaviour. Children were shown one of two programmes:.
• An episode of The Walton's, where characters were generally helpful to each other .
