Links Between Genetics and Aggressive Behaviors 

Looking back at the recent lockdown event that happened at the CUNY – City College of New York (CCNY) on October 18, 2018 and similar school shooting events that happened in other schools and states, I wanted to investigate further the effect playing violent video games or watching any forms of violent media has on a child’s behavior and if genetics plays a role in their aggressive behavior.

On October 18, 2018, CCNY was placed in lockdown mode after a high school student at the adjacent high school was found with a toy gun which closely resembled a real gun in his backpack.

While this event was not as tragic as the Sandy Hook Massacre or the Parkland High School shooting in Florida, it still sparked curiosity as to why this student would carry a toy gun that looked like a real gun around with him. Like other school shootings, were the gunman’s involved avid violent video game players? Did they start playing violent video games or watching violent media as a child and have those aggressive behaviors multiply until it led them to start shooting at people in real life? Or are there genetic predispositions that could lead to this aggressive behavior?

The purpose of this study was to look at the relationship between a preschooler’s favorite tv show, movie or video game and their aggressive behavior. There were two types of aggressive behaviors that were examined: physical aggression and relational aggression. Physical aggression can be defined as the actions of hitting, kicking, punching, pushing and taking things away from others.

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Relational aggression can be defined as the actions of wanting to hurt, harm or injure another individual through social relationships. There were four hypotheses for this study. Boys would prefer the types of media exhibiting more physical aggressions than girls, and girls would prefer the types of media showing more relational aggression than boys. A preschooler’s preference for either aggressive media, parental aggression, and child’s negativity during interactive play would be positively related to the parents reports of their child’s aggressive behavior.

The child’s sex would play a role in their aggressive behaviors, meaning that boys who liked more aggressive media would show more negative behaviors during the interactive play and would be rated as being more aggressive. Lastly, it was hypothesized that preferences for media aggression are heritable. The participants of this study were 5 year old twins and triplets and their parents. The hypotheses were measured by asking the child what their favorite television show and video game were and having the parents fill out a personality questionnaire. A Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) which measured the child’s social, emotional and behavioral functions as well as a Parent-Child Interaction scheme was also utilized which rated the behaviors of the parent and child on a minute by minute scale for a total of 10 ratings for every behavior.

Researchers found many things from performing this study. One thing researchers found based off of the parent’s questionnaire, was that parents who rated their child as more aggressive were more likely to have aggressive mothers. Based off of the observation of the Parent-Child Interaction scheme, it was found that children who had more negative, aggressive behaviors were more likely to have more aggressive mothers and prefer relational aggressive media. It was found that there was a significant sex effect for physically aggressive media preferences.

For physically aggressive media, boys showed a stronger preference compared to girls, but for relationally aggressive media, the preferences were similar between boys and girls. From performing a mixed-model multilinear regression analysis, it was found that maternal aggression and sex in choosing physical aggressive media preferences had significant results in predicting the child’s aggression. For boys, the prediction of child aggression was significant based off of their choice of physically aggressive media and maternal aggression. For girls, there was only a slight significance in predicting their aggression based off of their physically aggressive media preferences. From the mixed-model linear regression and looking at identical twins and fraternal twins and measuring their aggressive behaviors, it was found that the preference for physically aggressive media which leads to child aggression is genetic in origin.

This research was done to get a better understanding of child aggression and examine if there are genetic factors that could influence a child’s aggressive behavior. This study is different from other studies done on this topic in two crucially important ways; it looks at preschoolers as the subjects and it does not expose the preschool children to any forms of violent media whatsoever. Here, the researchers use preschoolers as their main participants. I find that it was important to use 5 year old preschoolers as the subjects because they would not have been as exposed to many violent forms of media out there compared to third or fourth graders or older children. Since these preschoolers would not have been exposed to violent media, it would be easier to measure if genetics is a factor of childhood aggression.

The other important part of this study is that the researchers have not exposed children to any forms of violent media. In other studies, researchers would want to measure the effects violent video games have on aggressive behavior, and in order to do so, researchers would have the control group as the group of participants playing non-violent video games and they would have an experimental group of participants playing a violent-video game. By setting up the experiment in this manner, the researchers are exposing these group of participants to violent video games which may in turn influence their aggressive behavior.

Here, the researchers are asking the children what their favorite television shows and video games are and are measuring the child’s aggression based on that. For example, if the child reported that their favorite television show was Power Rangers or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, then the researchers marked this as a form of media that exhibited major aggression, but if the child were to report that they favorite television show was Barney, then the researcher would mark that as a form of media that showed no aggression.

What I liked the most about this study was the researchers asking the preschoolers what their favorite show was in order to measure their aggressive behaviors. By performing the experiment this way, the researchers are avoiding the experimental manipulation of exposing children to violent or nonviolent media types. What shocked me the most from reading this study was finding out that children who exhibited negative or aggressive behaviors were more likely to have an aggressive mother. I think this shocked me the most because mothers are seen as the more caring and nurturing parent of the two. If a child were to express aggressive behaviors from a parent, I would have assumed it would have came from the father as there is not much emphasis placed on him being the nurturing figure in household, but rather he is seen as the strict disciplinarian.

Apart from being shocked, I think a definition to define the characteristics or traits of what makes an aggressive mother should have been included in the study. If a definition was included on aggressive mothers, maybe I would not have been as shocked as I was to find out children got their aggressive behaviors from their mother. One thing that I think could be an improvement for future studies would be to have a larger, more inclusive sample size. Instead of just looking at mainly Caucasian families from a small area in the state of Illinois to measure if there are genetic predispositions in childhood aggressive behaviors, maybe researchers could broaden their search to include more states and families of different ethnic origins.