television’s impact on...

PEDIATRICS Vol. 75 No. 2 February 1985 233

Television’s Impact on Children

Diana M. Zuckerman, PhD, and Barry S. Zuckerman, MD

From the American Psychological Association, and Department of Pediatrics, BostonUniversity School of Medicine and Boston City Hospital, Boston

ABSTRACT. Television has a major impact on children’sknowledge, attitudes, and behavior. Research has dem-onstrated the association between television viewing andfour areas: (1) children’s aggressive behavior; (2) racialand sex-role stereotypes; (3) decreased interest in readingand school activities; and (4) poorer health habits andattitudes. Methodological limitations make it difficult todraw firm conclusions about a causal relationship be-tween television viewing and children’s behavior. Repre-sentative studies in these four areas are reviewed, impor-tant methodological concerns are pointed out, and con-clusions from the research findings are drawn. The im-plications of the data for pediatricians and other healthprofessionals are discussed. Pediatrics 1985;75:233-240;television, health habits, aggression, sex roles, racial ster-otypes, reading.

Television is a major source of information and

influence for children’s lives. More than 96% of

American homes have at least one television set;the average American child spends more time

watching television than in the classroom. In recentyears, television is increasingly being perceived as

having a negative impact on the mental and phys-ical well-being of children. The theoretical basis for

concern about television’s impact on children is

social learning theory, which predicts that a child

will learn and imitate behavior seen on television,even in the absence of any obvious reinforcement.This learning through observation can apply to any

content area presented, regardless of the intentions

of the message and regardless of whether the mes-

sage appears on programs or commercials.

As physicians, psychologists, and educators have

become more involved in assessing television’s im-

Received for publication Feb 24, 1983; accepted March 30, 1984.

Dr D. Zuckerman is a Congressional Science Fellow, US Houseof Representatives.Reprint requests to (B.S.Z.) Child Development Unit, BostonCity Hospital, Boston, MA 02118.

PEDIATRICS (ISSN 0031 4005). Copyright © 1985 by the

American Academy of Pediatrics.

pact and vocalizing their concern, they have focused

primarily on television violence. However, duringthe last decade, three less well publicized areas ofresearch have been developing. These areas include

television’s influence on children’s attitudes toward

minorities and women, its impact on children’s

reading abilities and classroom behaviors, and the

effect of television advertising on children’s health

attitudes and behaviors. The purpose of this paper

is to review the data of representative studies of

television’s impact on children in the four areas

outlined above. In addition to summarizing thedata, we shall also critically review the research

methodologies for two reasons: (1) there is a con-troversy about the causal relationship between tel-

evision viewing and children’s behavior, stemming

from limitations of the methodologies used, and (2)

contradictory findings have been reported that maybe a consequence of different assessment proce-dures for the variables assessed rather than of true

differences. Regarding the first point, most of the

research has demonstrated only an association

rather than a causal relationship between television

viewing and children’s behavior. A causal relation-

ship could only be proven by a longitudinal study

in which children were randomly assigned to watch

specific television programs over long periods of

time. Because this is not possible, studies that

assess the impact of television on children’s behav-ior and attitudes independent of other possible

confounding factors will be emphasized in this re-

view. Regarding the second point, different proce-

dures have been used to assess television viewing.

For example, some studies use the total amount of

television viewed, other studies assess specific types

of television programs viewed, whereas still others

measure children’s expressed preference for certain

types of programs. In addition, television viewing

has been measured by parental recall, children’srecall, or the use of a diary. The reliability of these

methods is rarely reported. Finally, studies use dif-ferent measures of assessing the same outcome

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234 IMPACT OF TELEVISION

behavior. For example, aggression has been mea-sured by teachers’ reports, children’s reports, or by

trained observers. This review will point out thevarious methodologies used in the reported studiesand discuss their impact on the findings, in orderto draw conclusions about the relationship betweentelevision viewing and specific outcomes.

VIOLENCE

Most of the research has focused on the impact

of television violence on children’s aggressive be-

havior. According to the Neilson Index, the averageAmerican child watches 18,000 television murdersbefore he or she graduates from high school.’ Inaddition, beatings, bombings, and other types ofviolence are frequently represented on television.In a comprehensive review of the research literatureon television content, Signorielli and colleagues2concluded that consistently high levels of violenceand aggression have been reported in studies oftelevision programming, regardless of the measuresused to define or assess violence. They reported

that children’s television programs are six times asviolent as adults’ television programs. In their own

research, they found that the average amount ofviolence on television has remained stable since1967. However, they found that on children’s pro-

grams the average number of violent acts increasesdramatically one year, decreases substantially thefollowing year, increases again the next year, and

so on.

Social science researchers have questioned the

effect of televised violence for the last 25 years intwo ways: (1) In laboratory settings (i.e., experi-ments in day care centers or schools), does a child

behave more aggressively after watching a violentmovie or television program? (2) In the community,are the children who watch more television moreaggressive than other children?

Dozens of laboratory studies have consistentlydemonstrated that children imitate the violencethat they have just watched on television.3 Despitepsychologists’ suggestions made in the 1950s that

watching television violence has a cathartic affect,and thus reduces viewers’ aggressive behavior, thereare no data from recent years to support that the-ory. In a recent review of the literature publishedby the National Institute of Mental Health

(NIMH), Huesmann4 stated that “At this time, itshould be difficult to find any researcher who does

not believe that a significant positive relation exists

between viewing television violence and subsequentaggressive behavior under most conditions.” In one

study,5 for example, nursery school children imi-tated new forms of aggression that they had just

seen on the television screen. In another study,6

children aged 5 to 9 who were exposed to 3.5 mm-utes of “The Untouchables,” a violent television

program, were more willing to hurt another childthan were children who were exposed to a nonvi-olent program. There is evidence that the behaviors

of young adults of college age are also influencedby television violence: students who watched a beat-ing on television were later given the opportunityto administer electric shocks to a person who hadannoyed them before the program. The studentswho had been told that the television beating wasdeserved administered more severe shocks thanstudents who were told the beating was not de-

served.7 In nonlaboratory settings, children have

injured themselves by imitating behaviors viewedon television. The “Eve! Knievel syndrome” is anexample of children suffering significant injuries by

imitating motorcycle jumps with their bicycles.8In addition to imitating violence, children who

watch violent television programs may learn toperceive aggressive behavior as normal and accept-able. Drabman and Thomas9 reported that after

observing televised violence, children were moretolerant of what they thought was real life aggres-sion against children for whom they were babysit-ting.

There are two major shortcomings of laboratoryresearch. First, because “laboratory settings” areoften nursery schools or classrooms, children might

be more likely to learn from what they see ontelevision than they would in a home setting. Sec-

ond, the effects may be short-lived, rather thanlonger term. Studies in the community overcomethese shortcomings. Most community studies in the1960s and 1970s support findings in the laboratorysetting that children who watch more violent tele-

vision programs behave more aggressively. How-

ever, many of these studies failed to control statis-tical!y for such important influences on children’s

behavior as their social class, intelligence, or theirparents’ behaviors. These considerations are im-portant because children who choose to watch moreviolent television programs may be different fromor more violent than their peers before they watchthe programs. For example, children who are lesssupervised by their parents may be permitted towatch more violent programs than other children.Their violent behavior may therefore be due to lackof parental supervision rather than the viewing ofviolent television programs. In addition, these earlystudies also used relatively unsophisticated statis-

tical analyses such as product-moment correlationsor analysis of variance.

These methodological and statistical shortcom-ings have been overcome in several recent studies.

These studies indicate that when family back-ground is taken into account, there is still a clear


ARTICLES 235

relationship between children’s behaviors and their

viewing of violent television programs. For exam-

ple, in a study’#{176}of 158 third, fourth, and fifth grade

students in a middle-class suburb, the children who

watched more violent television programs were

rated by their teachers as less cooperative, less

successful in interpersonal relationships, and less

happy. The children’s television viewing habits

were recorded by their parents, and their teachers

were unaware ofthese behaviors. These results were

statistically significant at the P < .05 level or better

regardless of the children’s age, sex, social class, IQ,or parents’ television viewing behaviors. Whereas

the children who watched more violent programs

were not described as more aggressive, in this study,

their behaviors indicated interpersonal difficulties.

It is important to note that the violent programs

these children watched were usually “fantasy” pro-

grams with actors depicting superheroes such as

Wonder Woman, the Hulk, and the Six Milion

Dollar Man. However, the children’s viewing of

cartoons, most of which are also violent, was notassociated with any of these negative behaviors.

A special opportunity to assess the impact oftelevised violence in a community setting occurred

with the introduction of television in a small Ca-

nadian community that had never had access to

television before. The results demonstrated that

verbal and physical aggression increased among

primary school children in this community after

television became available.11 No such changes in

behavior were found among children in two “con-

trol” communities that already had television.

Long-term changes in children’s behavior as a re-

suit of television viewing have also been an impor-tant source of information regarding causality be-

tween television viewing and behavior. In a 2-year

longitudinal study of 758 American children,

Huesmann4 found that watching television violence

was a significant precursor of aggressive behavior.

Similarly, Lefkowitz and colleagues12 documented

a significant relationship between preference for

violent television programs and aggression mea-

sured 10 years later.

Although these studies have indicated that chil-

dren who watch more television violence are more

aggressive, television viewing appears to be only

one of many factors associated with children’s ag-

gressive behaviors. In statistical terms, television

viewing rarely accounts for more than 10% of the

variance in explaining aggression in children. Theresults of these studies should be interpreted cau-tiously due to the self-selected nature of television

viewing, the potential inaccuracies of self-reported

television viewing, and the many variables that

might influence both television viewing habits and

aggressive behavior. The Lefkowitz et al’2 study has

been particularly criticized because they used pref-

erence for violent television programs as the pre-

dictor rather than the number of hours of viewing

of violent programs. Nevertheless, the consistency

of the results of research in this area strongly

suggests that violence on television influences view-ers’ behavior, particularly in the direction of in-

creasing aggressive behavior.

One of the few studies that contradicts these

findings was conducted by researchers at the Na-

tional Broadcasting Company.’3 They found the

relationship between viewing television violence

and aggressive behavior several years later became

insignificant when social class was controlled. The

study had several important limitations. First, chil-dren’s aggressive behavior was defined strictly toinclude only “physical or verbal acts intended or

known in advance to cause injuries to others” and

did not include “rough play” or other unintended

aggressive behavior. Teenagers’ aggression was

measured by intentional violence, vandalism, and

theft. Second, less than half of the original sample

of 800 teenage boys completed the study. The au-

thors reported that more aggressive respondentswere more likely to drop out of the study, so this

attrition may have minimized the apparent impact

of viewing televised violence. Finally, the use of

self-reported viewing, particularly for the younger

children, may have resulted in inaccurate data. The

authors checked the accuracy of the self-reports by

using a “dummy item,” the title of a nonexistentprogram in their list of programs. The authorsadmitted that “a number” of children reported that

they had watched the nonexistent program. Unfor-tunately, the authors did not mention how fre-

quently this misreporting occurred and claimed

that the inclusion of these “less valid reporters” did

not affect the results significantly. Given these

limitations, the results of this study do not negate

an association between viewing television violence

and aggressive behavior described in the vast ma-

jority of studies.In the last decade, research on television violence

has assessed a new area, television viewers’ percep-tions of the world. A review of research in this areasuggests that adults who watch more television aremore fearful of being the victims of crime, more

pessimistic about the crime rate, and less trustfulof others. Similar results for children and adoles-

cents are reported even when socioeconomic status,race, and other potentially confounding traits are

statistically controlled.14

Because research has consistently shown that

television violence has a negative effect on chil-

dren’s behaviors, it is not surprising that prosocial

television programs apparently influence children’s

behaviors in positive ways. Several studies’5 have



found that programs such as “Mr. Rogers’ Neigh-

borhood” have a positive impact, because childrenimitate the cooperative behaviors that are depicted.

Unfortunately, there are few programs that explic-

itly depict such behaviors. However, in a study of

the content of prime time and Saturday morning

programs, Dominick and colleagues’6 found that

many television characters solved problems

through positive behaviors (eg, helping behaviors

or assertive, nonaggressive behaviors). In fact,physical and verbal aggression comprised only one

third of the problem-solving “strategies” depicted

on prime time action/adventure programs. In con-

trast, aggressive responses comprised approxi-

mately half of the responses to conflicts on Satur-

day morning programs. These data suggest that

television programs may teach children positive

strategies to solve problems. However, the investi-

gators only measured the number of strategies por-

trayed and not the amount of time spent portraying

positive or negative behaviors. It could be that the

violent incidents, although fewer in number, may

have lasted longer or been more dramatically pre-

sented, compared with the more positive responses

to conflict that were portrayed.

PREJUDICE AND STEREOTYPES

Studies of many different kinds of programs have

consistently shown that minority group members

are infrequently shown on television and when they

are shown they tend to be portrayed in stereotypicroles. For example, the number of nonwhite char-

acters on television has increased in the last decade,

but nonwhite characters tend to be depicted in

smaller, less important roles,’7 as criminals and

victims,’8 and in roles in which they are dominated

by whites.19

The statistics for female television characters are

similar. There are fewer female characters than

male characters in prime-time and daytime televi-

sion,20’2’ on children’s programs,22 and on public

television programs.23 Analysis of their roles mdi-cates that women tend to be dominated by men.19

Women in traditional roles are presented morefavorably: single women are more likely to be por-

trayed as victims of violence than are married

women, and employed women are more likely to beportrayed as villains than are full-time home-

makers.18

Laboratory and community studies have dem-

onstrated that television can influence children’s

racial stereotypes and perceptions of appropriateroles for men and women. For example, girls whowere exposed to commercials than depicted women

in nontraditional jobs (eg, pharmacist, butcher)

became more interested in these occupations.24

Community studies have shown that increased tel-

evision viewing is associated with specific attitudes

about sex roles.25’26 Although these studies did notcontrol for possible confounding variables, a more

recent study27 of 155 elementary school childrenindicates that viewing of particular types of televi-

sion programs is related to sex and race prejudice

regardless of the children’s age, social class, IQ, or

parents’ TV viewing habits. In this study, children’s

stereotypes associated with race or gender were

assessed by a projective test. The test consisted of55 slides of children in ambiguous school situations,

each accompanied by a brief description of one of

the children portrayed in the slide. The students

were asked to guess which of the children was being

described; for example, which child “will win at tic-

tac-toe.” The white children who watched more

violent television programs believed that black chil-

dren were less competent and less obedient than

white children. White children who watched more

television programs with major black characters

expressed more positive attitudes toward black chil-

dren regarding their athletic abilities. Boys’ sex

prejudice was not related to their television viewing.

However, girls who watched more game shows andvariety programs perceived girls to be less compe-

tent than boys. These results indicate an associa-

tion and not a causal relationship between televi-

sion viewing and role stereotypes. However, becausethe findings were significant regardless of family

background and child’s IQ, television viewing of

specific programs might be considered either to

encourage or to reconfirm these attitudes.

Although there has not been a great deal of

research on the impact of television stereotypes,

the results that have been reported tend to support

the clinical impression that children learn the ster-

eotypes presented on television.28 These findings

have important implications, not only for the de-

velopment of attitudes toward women and minority

groups, but also because of the potential impact on

a child’s developing self-esteem that results whenchildren see members of their sex or group por-

trayed in certain ways on television. Longitudinal

research is needed in order to evaluate this issue.

READING AND RELATED CLASSROOMBEHAVIOR

The decline in students’ reading scores and the

increased concern with children’s short attention

spans and their lack of enthusiasm in school have

been widely blamed on television. However, rela-

tively little research has been done to examine

television’s potential impact on children’s reading

behaviors or abilities and general motivation in

school.


ARTICLES 237

There are several hypotheses of how televisionmay influence reading and school behaviors. Themost obvious is that television displaces reading:children have less incentive to read and spend lesstime reading.29 This would be especially importantduring the elementary school years when childrenare first learning to read. During the years whenchildren most need to practice reading in order toimprove their skills, they are spending a great dealof time watching television, reaching a peak of threeto five hours a day at age 12 years.3#{176}Even comicbooks and other “light reading” offer the opportu-nity to practice reading. A child who spends at least35 hours a week at school and 20 to 35 hours eachweek watching television will not have much timeto read at home.

Research conducted in the 1950s and early 1960sfound no significant relationship between televisionviewing and grades.31’32 Several more recent studieshave found small but significant negative correla-tions between the number of hours children spendwatching television and their reading grades33 andreading comprehension scores.34 In the stud?3 dem-onstrating a negative association between televisionviewing on reading grades, the parents’ educationalattainment and social class were not controlled. Inaddition, television viewing was assessed by thechildren’s reports of the programs that they viewed

regularly. Such a self-report could be quite maccur-ate, and may not include many hours of watchingmovies and special programs on television. In con-trast, the study34 of reading comprehension ad-dressed many of these shortcomings. Televisionviewing was assessed by having 625 students ingrades 6 through 9 estimate their daily televisionviewing hours. The authors reported reliabilites of.70 to .80 for this measure. The results demon-

strated that children who watched more televisionscored lower on tests of reading comprehensioneven when the child’s sex, grade, socioeconomicstatus, birth order, and number of siblings werecontrolled. This relationship was higher for boys (r

= .29) than for girls (r = .15). However, when IQwas also statistically controlled, the inverse asso-ciation between television viewing and readingcomprehension was significant only for studentswith higher IQs. Heavy television viewing seemedto be an important factor in this relationship. Al-though high-IQ, “light,” and “moderate” televisionviewers had similar reading scores, high-IQ, heavytelevision viewers had lower scores.

Conflicting results are described from a study ina middle-class Connecticut suburb. In this study,35children who watched television spent less timereading, but the amount of their television viewingwas not associated with reading ability when IQand socioeconomic status were controlled. The dif-

ference between these results and those of the pre-vious study could be due to the relatively smallnumber of heavy viewers determined in the Con-necticut study or the use of a different measure oftelevision viewing. In the Connecticut study, tele-vision viewing was measured by parents’ reports ofdaily television viewing.

Concerns have also been expressed regarding tel-evision’s impact on other classroom behaviors. Thequick pace of most television programs may influ-ence children’s learning habits. Cartoons, actionprograms, and fast-paced educational programssuch as “Sesame Street” cater to children’s shortattention spans. However, in the Connecticutstudy35 cited above, television viewing and viewing

of cartoons were associated with teachers’ rating ofchildren as less enthusiastic but not less attentivein school.

Less research has been conducted on television’simpact on reading or school behaviors than in theareas of television’s role in promoting violent be-havior and stereotypes. At the present time, tele-vision does not appear to have an impact on mostchildren’s reading abilities or classroom behaviors.Preliminary findings suggest that research focusingon a subsample of the heaviest television viewersmight clarify the conflicting results.

ADVERTISING AND HEALTH BEHAVIORS

The average child watches more than 20,000 tel-evisidn commercials each year36; approximately twothirds of these are for food, most frequently high-sugar foods.37 Although young children do not ac-tually purchase products themselves, they exertconsiderable influence on their parents’ purchases.Children’s requests for advertised products fre-quently result in adversarial interactions betweenparents and their children when parents deny theirchildren’s repeated requests. A naturalistic studyconducted in a supermarket demonstrated that pre-school children attempted to influence their moth-ers’ purchases approximately once every two mm-utes, primarily for candy and sugared cereals. Thechildren who watched more commercial televisionprograms made more requests for purchases.38

Young children are especially vulnerable to tele-vision commercial messages because they do notunderstand what a commercial is. Young childrenhave difficulty distinguishing between programcontent and the commercial message, and they areeasily influenced by the special effects and othertechniques used to enhance the attractiveness ofproducts.39 Although children’s understanding ofcommercials increases during the elementaryschool years, most children continue to assume thatcommercials provide accurate information. Because



commercials for health-related products are oftenmisleading, they may be a source of misinformationfor many children.4#{176}For example, in one study,4’fifth and sixth grade students were asked to de-scribe several commercials for health products andvitamins that they saw on television. Nearly half ofthe children believed all of the ‘commercials thatthey described. Overall, the 208 children in the

study believed 70% of the health-related commer-cials that they viewed. Commercial messages weremost likely to be believed by children who had usedproducts that were advertised, or who knew thattheir parents used the products. In those cases, theyoften justified their belief in the product on thebasis of their own or their parents’ experiences. A

modest correlation between the viewing of moreproprietary drug commercials and children’s beliefin the efficacy of the drugs (r = .16) and their

reported frequency of requesting the drug whenthey are not feeling well (r = .30) was reported in

another study.42 This latter association was evenstronger for children with less educated parents.However, there was no relationship between view-ing of these commercials and actual use of proprie-

tary drugs.Overall, studies on the impact of TV commercials

on health-related behaviors suggest that children’sattitudes toward food, medicine, and health prod-ucts are influenced by television commercials. How-ever, as is the case with other areas cited earlier,the statistical associations are modest, usually ac-counting for less than 10% of the variance. Theimpact on children of health behaviors practiced bytelevision characters also needs to be assessed. Forinstance, Gerbner et al43 reports 36% of prime timemajor characters consume alcohol, and seat beltsare used in only 23% of commercials involvingdriving. On the positive side, of the major primetime television characters, only 11% of males and2% of females smoke cigarettes. Nevertheless, the

authors suggest that adults who watch more tele-vision may develop a less healthy life-style by beingless concerned about good eating habits, alcoholconsumption, and exercise. Because the develop-ment of a healthy life-style is an important goal forchildren, the impact of television viewing on chil-dren’s health habits needs futher consideration andassessment.

SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS

Whereas children’s behavior and attitudes areshaped by many factors, the research reviewed in-dicates that television must be considered a con-tributor to aggressive behavior, to stereotypes as-sociated with race and gender, and to selectedhealth habits. The impact of television on other

behaviors such as interpersonal relationships, achild’s developing self-esteem, reading, and otherhealth habits needs further study.

Health professionals need to be aware of theprograms that children watch, and to be sensitiveto their potential impact on children. Althoughtelevision programs do not seem to have a detri-mental effect on all children, research results con-sistently indicate that some children may be partic-ularly vulnerable to the specific content of televi-sion programming. For a variety of reasons, paren-tal censorship is probably not the answer. Parentsshould monitor the programs that children watch,but forbidding all or most television programs willprobably result in children watching television atfriends’ houses or when their parents are not athome.

Instead, pediatricians and other health profes-sionals should encourage parents to limit the num-ber and kinds of programs that their childrenwatch, and suggest that parents set a good exampleby also watching television selectively. Moreover,

with the advent of cable television and videocas-sette recorders, more children will have access totelevision programs not intended for or inappro-priate for children. These technologic advancesmake parental monitoring and selective viewingeven more important now than in the past. Parentsshould be encouraged to watch television with theirchildren when possible, and to talk to their childrenabout the programs that they watch. As familieshave bought more television sets, it has becomeincreasingly uncommon for parents to watch tele-vision with their children. More positive use oftelevision is possible by making television viewinga family activity and by using programs as a spring-board for family discussions. For example, parentsand children can discuss alternatives to the violentsolutions presented in a television program. Many

programs have plots that parents and children can“rewrite” together; eg, how would a telephone callto the police have helped to avoid a dangerous carchase or a violent shoot-out between the privatedetective and the criminal, thus, changing the plotof the story? Parents can encourage their childrento be “TV detectives” who look for minorities andnonstereotypic characters. Discussing children’stelevision habits and parents’ attitudes about tele-vision viewing, and suggesting a more positive useof television, as described above, should be a stand-ard part of counseling by pediatricians and familyphysicians during well-child care.

The lack of attention by child health profession-als to television viewing has been described in astudy44 reporting more daytime television viewingin hospitalized than in nonhospitalized children.Much of the daytime programming is directed to-


ward adults, and the authors describe much of the

ARTICLES 239

viewing as indiscriminate. Therefore, hospitalstaffs need to be aware of the influence of television

on children and, if possible, of the need to providealternative programming or activities.

Physicians and other health professionals dealingwith children also need to study the effect of tele-vision viewing on children and adults at risk for

behavioral or emotional disorders. For example, itis important to assess whether children who havedifficulty controlling their impulses, as seen with

attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity, aremore negatively influenced by televised violencethan other children. The modest statistical associ-ations between television viewing and children’s

cognitive or behavioral problems may be “masking”the more extreme responses of small groups ofespecially vulnerable children. The identification ofa high-risk subsample of children has been virtuallyignored in the research that has been conductedthus far.

Pediatricians and other health professionalscould become more effective advocates for childrenregarding TV programming. In the late 1970s, theAmerican Academy of Pediatrics and the AmericanAcademy of Child Psychiatry issued position papersregarding their concern about the impact of televi-sion programs on children. The research evidence

clearly substantiates their concern in addition todocumenting other adverse effects of television.More active involvement may be appropriate inorder to have an impact on this important socialforce that influences children’s mental and physicalwell-being.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was supported, in part, by the William T.Grant Foundation (No. 81-062978 to B.S.Z.).

The authors thank Susan Simon for her help in pre-paring the manuscript and Deborah Frank, MD, HowardDubowitz, MD, and Nancy Dietz for the helpful com-ments.

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DECISION MAKING

In science one must choose between being absolutely safe but entirely sterileon the one hand, and on the other having the courage to think beyond one’s

facts. The conclusion of the latter method may require revision-it will certainlyentail some mistakes and is bound to expose one to the ridicule or suspicion of

those who would rather be safe than constructive. Nevertheless, most of thegreat discoveries of science have been made with the inductive rather than thedeductive method.

Ascribed to Menninger

Submitted by Edward B. Shaw, MD


1985;75;233Pediatrics Diana M. Zuckerman and Barry S. Zuckerman

Television's Impact on Children

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