ABSTRACT
It is a commonly held belief that television viewing does more harm than good, especially to young audiences. Particular attention has been focused on the negative effects of watching violent programming on social behavior. Over ten years ago, Paik and Comstock (1994) reviewed 217 studies on the link between viewing and aggression. In this chapter we review the effects of exposure to pro social audiovisual content on children's social interactions. The goals are to update an earlier metaanalysis of prosocial effects conducted by Hearold (1986), to identify the conditions under which prosocial effects are strongest, and to compare effect sizes for prosocial content with the effect sizes for violent content reported by Paik and Comstock.
