Media effects researchers have tended to focus on negative rather than positive effects of watching television. However, given that the same processes of observation, learning, and imitation should be at work for both types of effects, it is plausible that there should be prosocial as well as antisocial outcomes of television exposure.

Prosocial Content on Television

During the 1970s, prosocial behaviors were reported to appear quite frequently on television. However, these behaviors typically occurred in a context of violence and hostility. As Bradley Greenberg and his associates reported in 1980, the favorite programs of a sample of grade-school children contained equal numbers of prosocial and antisocial acts. Marsha Liss and Lauri Reinhard (1980) found that even those cartoons that were considered by the researchers to have moral messages contained high levels of violence—the same amount as in standard cartoons that had...