Meanness appears to rub off on viewers

Researchers have long known that watching violence on TV or in movies ratchets up aggression, but what about watching people being mean to one another? Could watching Mean Girls make you as aggressive as watching Kill Bill?

A new study by professor Sarah Coyne and colleagues at Brigham Young University suggests the answer is yes. USA Today reports.

"... Coyne says the findings suggest parents should pay more attention to relational aggression and perhaps even push to make it part of movie and TV ratings. "Everyone's concerned about violence in the media, as they should be, but we're missing out on lots of violence out there," she says. "We need to look at these other types of aggression out there because we know that they're having an effect on aggression."

The study is in November's Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

emily | 9:38 AM | The impact of TV series on society |
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