In my experiment I will study the behavior of children before, during and after viewing a violent television program, specifically “The Power Rangers.” I will use the theories of Charles Horton Cooley, George Herbert Mead and Harold Wilensky to analyze the results according to their theories.
             Cooley’s theory is that people shape the aspects of their identity so that it would fit what others would want. Therefore we would become the kind of person we believe others think we should be. Harold Wilensky said that the media produces a mass culture, in which people have similar culture, that people have similar cultural tastes and political values shaped by the media. This produces a mass of people with similar thoughts and feelings, which can be manipulated by the media.
             Mead believed that the self is a social product, acquired by observing and assimilating the identities of others. He believed that for identification and assimilation there is a need for communication. The communication is the interaction of language, culture, family, peers and with a new form of communication, media. For Mead, childhood play and games were important activities. These activities used the idea of role taking, the way we try to look at social situations from the standpoint of another person, and significant others, influential people in our lives.
             The theorist that I think is the best for my experiment is Mead. For my experiment my hypothesis will be that after viewing a violent television program children will act more aggressive than before. That the children’s play will change so that it would become more violent, so that it would be similar to the show that they had seen.
             In my experiment I observed two children 30 minutes before watching the “Power Rangers” 30 minutes during the show and 30 minutes after the show. The observation was done on the friends of my brother and the friends of my cousin...