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. 2023 Aug 6;13(8):659.
doi: 10.3390/bs13080659.

Effects of Animated Movies on the Aggression and Behavior Performance of Primary School Students and Their Control Using a Cognitive Behavioral Anger-Control Training (CBACT) Program

Ponam Saba  1 , Haiwen Qi  1 , Atif Saleem  2 , I-Jun Chen  1 , Fahd Naveed Kausar  1   3 , Muhammad Farhan Iqbal  4
Affiliations

Effects of Animated Movies on the Aggression and Behavior Performance of Primary School Students and Their Control Using a Cognitive Behavioral Anger-Control Training (CBACT) Program

Ponam Saba et al. Behav Sci (Basel). .

Abstract

This work is a combination of two studies, Study I and Study II, which aimed to examine the impact of animated movies on the aggression and behavioral performance of primary school students, as well as their control using the CBACT program. In Study I, the influence of animated movies on 300 students from ten primary schools in Pakistan with gender differences (50% male), family systems, and viewing time duration was examined. This study was performed on 7- to 9-year-old children on four subscales of the Buss-Perry aggression questionnaire (BPAQ), three subscales of the child behavior questionnaire (CBQ), and toy selection. Following that, in Study II the CBACT intervention was applied to aggressive students (n = 46) selected from Study I. Students were randomly divided into CBACT treatment (50%) and control groups. The results of Study I indicated that violent animated movies had a greater impact on the aggressive behavior of male students than on that of females, while girls were more affected by watching nonviolent movies. Furthermore, male viewers from nuclear families and females from joint families showed more aggressive problems. It was also observed that aggression in students significantly increased (p < 0.001) with increasing viewing animation time duration (10 to 30 min). The results of Study II showed that aggression in the treatment group was significantly reduced (p = 0.000) with the CBACT program but remained constant for the control group. The findings of Study I showed that violent animation is strongly linked with aggression and behavioral performance in primary school students. The CBACT program in Study II indicates that students may not be completely eliminated from watching violent movies, but their aggression levels were reduced when they watched animated movies. Therefore, the CBACT program opens a new window into behavioral problem treatment, which is casually influenced by violent media.

Keywords: CBACT; aggression; animation; behavior management; students.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests to disclose.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Schematic diagram illustrating the methodological framework of Study I.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Impact of animation viewing duration on the aggression of students. The viewing time duration for 10, 20, and 30 min was displayed in (A–C).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Schematic diagram showing the summary of the CBACT program (Study II).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Evolution of students’ aggression before and after the CBACT program. Here (A–D) depicted anger (AN), physical aggression (PA), verbal aggression (VA), and hostility (HS).
Figure 5
Figure 5
Changes in the behavioral dimensions of the students from the treatment and control groups were observed before and after CBACT. The (A–C) represent effort control (EC), surgency, and negative affectivity (NA) respectively.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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