Psychological warfare: The media and relational aggression among female college students.

摘要

For this study, the researcher examined the media's influences on the experience of relational aggression among college women. Women in the United States of America are learning to stifle their true selves in favor of the feminine ideal, which includes behaving covertly. Examples of female behavior as presented in the Western media include a wide array of images of women committing acts of relational aggression by means of backstabbing, manipulating, gossiping, and indirectly expressing anger. When considering resolutions to this problem, feminist and relational-cultural frameworks were applied with the understanding that a person develops her self-identity within the context of greater cultural structures. The individual, as well as society, must change in order to rectify the negative effects associated with relational aggression. The presence and impact of these phenomena were considered.