A scale to assess children's moral interpretations of justified and unjustified violence and its relationship to television viewing

This study develops and validates the Moral interpretation of Interpersonal Violence (MIIV) Scale. One hundred fifty-eight children responded to 12 st ories in which a perpetrator performed either justified or unjustified viol ence. Children were asked to report how right or wrong they perceived the v iolence to be and to provide reasons for their responses. Principal compone nts analysis was used to reduce the 12 stories to a smaller set that had hi gher internal consistency and that correlated with the Sociomoral Reflectio n Meas ure-Short Form (SRM-SF). The study also investigated how viewing tel evision violence was related to the MIIV. Children who watched a lot of fan tasy violence judged justified violence as less wrong, whereas children who watched a lot of realistic violence judged justified violence as more wron g. In addition, children who watched more fantasy violence and those who wa tched more realistic violence used less advanced moral reasoning strategies in explaining their judgments.