Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum. Here a question that's been troubling parents more
Speaker 1: and more in an age when mass shooting seemed to
Speaker 1: occur with horrifying frequency, is should young children be allowed
Speaker 1: to play with toy versions of the weapons that are
Speaker 1: killing other kids and adults. In an article for Vogue,
Speaker 1: writer Michelle Rui's described a conversation she had with a
Speaker 1: fellow mother who asked, what are we feeding our children
Speaker 1: in the metaphorical sense when we hand them guns to
Speaker 1: play with? After a recent school shooting in Indiana, a
Speaker 1: reader's letter to the Indianapolis Star voiced a similar sentiment.
Speaker 1: He wrote, children should not have even cap pistols or
Speaker 1: toy guns to play with because it teaches the wrong lesson.
Speaker 1: And here's a quote from a Huffington's Post article by
Speaker 1: Wendy Kannar, a former teacher, who explains why our family
Speaker 1: doesn't allow toy guns. She said, at least one retailer
Speaker 1: has already stopped selling some types of toy guns. In February,
Speaker 1: when Walmart announced it would raise the purchase age for
Speaker 1: firearms at its stores to twenty one. The company also
Speaker 1: said that it would remove from its website items resembling
Speaker 1: assault style rifles, including toys. Walmart stopped selling actual modern
Speaker 1: sporting rifles, including the A R fifteen back in For
Speaker 1: all the anxiety and outrage it stimulates, there's relatively little
Speaker 1: scientific research on the effect that playing with toy guns
Speaker 1: has upon children, and although some studies suggest it may
Speaker 1: be linked to aggressive behavior in childhood, no clear connection
Speaker 1: has been established between childhood play with toy guns and
Speaker 1: adult attitudes toward or propensity for violence. Some psychologists who
Speaker 1: have done research on children and toy guns think that
Speaker 1: parenting is a much more important indicator of aggressive behavior.
Speaker 1: We spoke with Charles W. Turner, a psychologist on the
Speaker 1: staff of the organ Research Institute who has more than
Speaker 1: forty years of experience conducting treatment and prevention research on children, adolescents,
Speaker 1: and young adults with behavior problems. Back in the midnighteteen seventies,
Speaker 1: he and colleague Diane Goldsmith published one of the earliest
Speaker 1: papers on the subject, in which they compared a group
Speaker 1: of children who played with toy guns to another group
Speaker 1: who played with toy airplanes and kids who played with
Speaker 1: other toys. All were observed for signs of antisocial behavior,
Speaker 1: such as aggression or rule breaking. Why the airplanes, Turner
Speaker 1: explains the purpose of the airplanes was to control for
Speaker 1: the fact that you're introducing a novel toy. Is it
Speaker 1: the novelty of the toy leading to the acting out,
Speaker 1: or whether it's something specific about the gun. Turner and
Speaker 1: Goldsmith found that the toy guns produced a reliably higher
Speaker 1: rate of antisocial 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 real aggression, 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 actual 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 real aggression in girls. Interestingly, we also
Speaker 1: 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 maybe cued and increased when children play more
Speaker 1: with toy guns. It just didn't seem that anything good
Speaker 1: came from playing with toy guns. But Watson also notes
Speaker 1: that the strongest factor that predicted real aggression in preschoolers
Speaker 1: more than toy guns or watching violent TV was the
Speaker 1: amount and frequency of parents spanking their kids or using
Speaker 1: other corporal punishment. Watson said, we have done subsequent studies
Speaker 1: that showed the children who were more aggressive led to
Speaker 1: parents using more corporal punishment over time 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 was written by
Speaker 1: Patrick Jake Tiger and produced by Tyler Clang. If you
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Speaker 1: and of course, for more on this and lots of
Speaker 1: other topics that help unpack some of today's biggest questions,
Speaker 1: visit our home planet, how Stuff Works dot com.