Kids' Reactions Change As They Grow Up.

• Position: Brief Article

Young children view violent events in emotional and dramatic terms, while older kids see violence in a more intellectual and detached way, an Ohio State University, Columbus, study has found. Researchers surveyed 341 fifth-, seventh-, ninth-, and 12th-graders in Ohio three weeks after the Columbine school shootings in 1999 while NATO was in the midst of bombing Serbia. The students were asked to list as many ways as possible in which the two events were different and similar.

Daniel Christie, professor of psychology at Ohio State's Marion campus, notes that "The similarities and differences that younger children identified were very different from what we saw in the lists written by older children. The older children gave a more intellectual analysis of the events, while the young students saw the events in much more personal terms"

Young children reported on concrete differences and similarities between the two events, such as the types of weapons utilized (guns, bombs, or ammunition). They were very concrete about the kinds of violence involved, using words like killing, dying, shooting, and fighting. They also mentioned the emotions of both the perpetrators and the victims of the violence (such as hate, anger, and fear).

The older kids tended to list differences and similarities that were more abstract and inferential. They treated the events in intellectual terms, applying just-war principles (maintaining that the NATO bombing was legitimate, while the Columbine shootings were not). The kids drew distinctions about motives underlying the NATO bombings vs. the Columbine shootings, and differentiated the causes of the two events. "Young children seem to be more personally affected by the violence, putting a human face on the events, while older children are more detached and analytical," Christie points out.

The results suggest that older kids and adults may be less emotionally upset than youngsters about the violence around them. "If you intellectualize violence too much, you may not attend to the very human consequences," Christie suggests. "Younger children connect emotionally to the people who are hurt by violent events, but that seems to be lost to some extent as we get older"

RELATED ARTICLE: Teen Ecstasy Use Up, Cocaine...