Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff, Lauren bog obam here, but another classic
Speaker 1: episode from our archive. This one deals with the sticky
Speaker 1: psychological science of playtime. Kids use play to explore their
Speaker 1: world and themselves. So is there danger in letting kids
Speaker 1: play with toy versions of violent weapons like guns? Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren voge obam here. A question that's been
Speaker 1: troubling parents more and more in an age when mass
Speaker 1: shooting seem to occur with horrifying frequency, is should young
Speaker 1: children be allowed to play with toy versions of the
Speaker 1: weapons that are killing other kids and adults. In an
Speaker 1: article for Vogue, writer Michelle Rui's described a conversation she
Speaker 1: had with a fellow mother who asked, what are we
Speaker 1: feeding our children in the metaphorical sense when we hand
Speaker 1: them guns to play with? After a recent school shooting
Speaker 1: in Indiana, a reader's letter to the Indianapolis Star voy
Speaker 1: a similar sentiment. He wrote, children should not have even
Speaker 1: cap pistols or toy guns to play with because it
Speaker 1: teaches the wrong lesson. And here's a quote from a
Speaker 1: Huffington's Post article by Wendy Kannar, a former teacher who
Speaker 1: explains why our family doesn't allow toy guns, she said.
Speaker 1: At least one retailer has already stopped selling some types
Speaker 1: of toy guns. In February, when Walmart announced it would
Speaker 1: raise the purchase age for firearms at its stores to
Speaker 1: twenty one. The company also said that it would remove
Speaker 1: from its website items resembling assault style rifles, including toys.
Speaker 1: Walmart stopped selling actual modern sporting rifles, including the a
Speaker 1: R fifteen back in. For all the anxiety and outrage
Speaker 1: it stimulates, there's relatively little scientific research on the effect
Speaker 1: that playing with toy guns has upon children, and although
Speaker 1: some studies suggest it may be linked to aggressive behavior
Speaker 1: in childhood, no clear connection has been established between childhood
Speaker 1: play with toy guns and adult attitudes toward or propensity
Speaker 1: for violence. Some psychologists who have done research on children
Speaker 1: and toy guns think that parenting is a much more
Speaker 1: important indicator of aggressive behavior. We spoke with Charles W. Turner,
Speaker 1: a psychologist on the staff of the Organ Research Institute
Speaker 1: who has more than forty years of experience conducting treatment
Speaker 1: and prevention research on children, adolescents, and young adults with
Speaker 1: behavior problems. Back in the mid nineteen seventies, he and
Speaker 1: colleague Diane Goldsmith published one of the earliest papers on
Speaker 1: the subject, in which they compared a group of children
Speaker 1: who played with toy guns to another group who played
Speaker 1: with toy airplanes and kids who played with other toys.
Speaker 1: All were observed for signs of antisocial behavior, such as
Speaker 1: aggression or rule breaking. Why the airplanes, Turner explains, the
Speaker 1: purpose of the airplanes was to control for the fact
Speaker 1: that you are introducing a novel toy. Is it the
Speaker 1: novelty of the toy leading to the acting out, or
Speaker 1: whether it's something specific about the gun. Turner and Goldsmith
Speaker 1: found that the toy guns produced a reliably higher rate
Speaker 1: of anti social behavior than the average of the toy
Speaker 1: airplanes and the other toys, though the toy airplanes also
Speaker 1: increased the rate of kids misbehaving as well. But today, Turner,
Speaker 1: who moved on from what he calls hypothetical studies to
Speaker 1: studying actual young offenders, cautions against reading too much into
Speaker 1: his early work from a practical standpoint. He says it
Speaker 1: would be hard to look at whether playing with guns
Speaker 1: as a child affected attitudes as an adult. Based on
Speaker 1: his own work as well as that of other researchers.
Speaker 1: He suspects that playing with guns as a child is
Speaker 1: one small part of a bigger picture of what leads
Speaker 1: to adult aggressive behavior. It's a small, nearly trivial part.
Speaker 1: He puts more weight on other influences, such as how
Speaker 1: a family relates to a child and their pattern of interactions.
Speaker 1: In a study published in the journal Early Education and
Speaker 1: Development in researchers Malcolm W. Watson and Ying Peng observed
Speaker 1: thirty six three to five year old children in free
Speaker 1: play in a daycare center and coded their behavior for
Speaker 1: the amount of reallygression, pretend aggression, ref and tumble play,
Speaker 1: and non aggressive pretend play. They also had parents fill
Speaker 1: out a questionnaire to gather data such as whether kids
Speaker 1: played with toy guns at home mostly boys did, as
Speaker 1: well as whether they watched TV programs with aggression and
Speaker 1: the amount of physical punishment that parents used for discipline.
Speaker 1: The researchers found that toy gun play, along with parental
Speaker 1: punishment were associated with a higher level of real aggression,
Speaker 1: though not with pretend aggression. We spoke via email with Watson,
Speaker 1: who is the George and Francis Levin Professor of Psychology
Speaker 1: at Brandeis University He said, there are so many factors
Speaker 1: that act as antecedents to real aggression that this one
Speaker 1: study could not evaluate the entire story. Various factors may
Speaker 1: interact to increase the likelihood of aggression in children and
Speaker 1: children developing long term aggressive tendencies. Watson explains the study
Speaker 1: was designed to pit the cathartic theory of aggression, in
Speaker 1: which aggressive fantasy play might reduce act will, frustration, and aggression,
Speaker 1: with the queuing theory, in which toy guns and aggressive
Speaker 1: play would act as cues and practice for real aggression.
Speaker 1: He said, the more toy gun play that was used,
Speaker 1: the more real aggression boys showed. In their preschool boys
Speaker 1: showed much more toy gun play than did girls, and
Speaker 1: probably because of this, there was no relation found between
Speaker 1: toy gun play and real aggression in girls. Interestingly, we
Speaker 1: also found that the more toy gun play that was used,
Speaker 1: the less non aggressive pretend play, including pretend aggression, children showed,
Speaker 1: and not aggressive pretend play is seen as a good
Speaker 1: thing for children, he continued, So, in effect, there was
Speaker 1: no evidence for a cathartic effect, but there was evidence
Speaker 1: for a probable queuing effect playing with toy guns. Maybe
Speaker 1: increased when some children already show more aggression, or reciprocally,
Speaker 1: real aggression may be cued and increased when children play
Speaker 1: more with toy guns. It just didn't seem that anything
Speaker 1: good came from playing with toy guns. But Watson also
Speaker 1: notes that the strongest factor that predicted real aggression in
Speaker 1: preschoolers more than toy guns or watching violent TV, was
Speaker 1: the amount and frequency of parents spanking their kids or
Speaker 1: using other corporal punishment. Watson said, we have done subsequent
Speaker 1: studies that showed the children who were more aggressive led
Speaker 1: to parents using more corporal punishment over time, but that
Speaker 1: the use of more corporal punishment led to even more
Speaker 1: aggression in the children. Parental use of corporal punishment was
Speaker 1: part of an ongoing negative spiral. He continued, I think
Speaker 1: pretend play overall has a great influence on children's development
Speaker 1: and thinking, and so I suspect that toy gun play
Speaker 1: may have long term consequences. But I also suspect that
Speaker 1: parental attitudes towards guns and also parents modeling of aggression
Speaker 1: will have even stronger influences. Today's episode is based on
Speaker 1: the article does playing with toy guns lead to later
Speaker 1: acts of gun violence on how stuff works dot Com
Speaker 1: written by Patrick J. Keiger. Rain Stuff is production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff Works dot Com,
Speaker 1: and it's produced by Tyler Clang. For more podcasts my
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