Gender, Race, and Aggression in Television Commercials That Feature Children

Television commercials in programming aimed at young children were content analyzed. Over one-third of the commercials that featured children contained aggression. More than half of the aggressive incidents occurred in commercials that featured only White children, thus offering them many models for possible imitation or for later use in cognitive scripts. The predominant type of aggression was “fortuitous,” i.e., aggression not caused by a character. These unmotivated acts of aggression may cultivate in children fear of a “scary world.” Further, this level of aggression may desensitize children to aggression in their own lives.