Monday, December 7, 2009

Results from my Aggression Study

I went to Walmart and observed parents with their children. I found a couple different senarios in the behaivor of the children, parents, and of gender.
First
I observed three different cases of a child asking there guardian for a toy they really wanted. There was two girls and a boy in this selection. Each of the three asked if they could please have this toy because they had always wanted it. Two of the adults sat and explained to the child, one girl and one boy, that they did not have enough money to purchase the toy at this time. They then continued explaining that the next time they take a trip to Walmart and money is better than they would buy him/her a toy. These two children put the toys back and continued on with no aggression at all. The next young girl asked her mother for a barbie doll and stated she wanted it really bad. The mother explained to the little girl she should ask Santa for the toy, because if she buys it now she wont get anything for Christmas. This child also put the toy back and showed no frustration or aggression. This finding is similar to Fumito, Shunsuke, and Hironori's findings. Similar in the way that teaching children problem solving skills can lower aggressive outcomes.
Next i observed many children, 4 boys and 3 girls, who stood at their parents feet saying over and over they wanted candy or a toy. The parents ignored them until about the sixth time, on average, that the child asked. When the guardian finally responded their response was a simple no. These children then started getting frustrated throwing there arms in the air, screaming and yelling, and 5 of them started crying. Six of these adults gave into the childs uproar after approximatley 4 minutes. Two of these children were girls and the other four were boys. Only one adult stood strong and stuck with no until the child, a young girl, gave up trying.
I believe a childs aggression strongly depends on the way the parents teach them. A child needs to be told why he/she can or cant have something. This would help to get rid of some of the aggression in young children. If a child throws a fit to get what they want, then they will continue to throw fits everytime they want something. In my study I found that the boys were more aggressive than the girls when throwing a fit. The boys seemed to get more violent, throwing things to the ground and some even hitting. These results shared the same outcomes as did the studies from Martin and Ross.

1 comment:

  1. I feel that this may also apply to the topic of compliance. In the first paragraph you stated that the parents gave the children a reason as to why they weren't allowed to have the toy and they simply put it back, whereas the parent who just said no had to put up with a screaming child. Could it be that, as humans, when we ask for compliance and don't get it we resort to aggression?

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