Convergent and Divergent Social Cues

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Abstract
A study was conducted to assess the impact of consistently negative cues versus mixed negative and positive cues about a televised aggressor's motives and the consequences to him on children's subsequent behavior. Second and sixth graders viewed one of two edited versions of an aggressive television program: (1) convergent, in which scenes relevant to motives and consequences were clearly negative; and (2) divergent, in which the aggressor sometimes seemed negative, but sometimes positive. There were also nonaggressive control programs at each age. Some random subgroups of children were tested on an indication of willingness to hurt or help a (fictitious) other child, while other random subgroups responded to a paper-and-pencil instrument employing both aggressive and nonaggressive response alternatives to hypothetical situations. As expected, divergent-condition viewers were significantly more aggressive than convergent-condition children. This was true for both second and sixth graders, despite an expectation that sixth graders would be better able to ignore the interference of duplicitous positive cues in the divergent version. Results are discussed in terms of differences in viewers' cognitive representations of the observed aggression.