70% of those who watched over 3 hours of tv a day exhibited violence in their personal life.
Hypothesis: Family violence is a well known background with violent behavior. (Some very high proportion of men on Death Rows were seriously abused, physically and sexually) as children.
Watching TV would be a reasonable way to withdraw from such violence. The high proportion (70%) of heavy TV-Viewers who successfully lead non-violent lives may be due to their use of that device to insulate themselvesd from surrounding violence.
I don't have the foggiest notion if this reading is remotely sensible, but I do think the professor should offer some tentative explanation for tv 'causing' violence in some cases (30%) and not in others (70%).
Carrol
P.S. The decision to focus on the smaller or the larger figure as primary in any quantitative relation is always a complex one. In the case of unemployment figures reactionaries focus on the larger figure (of employed persons). That is obviously wrong. But it is not clear at all to me that either the larger or the smaller figure of tv-violence correlation is relevant.
^^^^^^^^^
Charles: Most poor people are not "criminals". But is economic condition a factor in causing criminal activity of some criminals ? If not, what are we left with as explanations of causes of criminality ? Phrenology ?
The professor's tentative explanation would probably be something like: seeing violence portrayed on television a lot results in some kids imitating what they see, following the example. As with poverty and crime, not every kid who sees a lot of violence on television acts more aggressively as an adult, but it might be posited tentatively as a factor among others.