Also from The Atlantic:
It’s not just murder and mayhem that are linked to childhood exposure to TV violence. So are gossip, petty theft, and backstabbing—but only among girls. Researchers at the University of Michigan recently examined the relationship between TV-violence viewing among children aged six to ten and their behavior fifteen years later, and the researchers’ findings suggest that childhood exposure to TV violence (along with a tendency to identify with aggressive TV characters and a belief that the violence seen on TV accurately represents real life) better predicts adult aggressiveness than does a child’s initial aggressiveness, intellectual ability, or parents’ educational background. But whereas exposure to violence on TV correlates with adult physical aggression in men and women alike, it correlates more strongly with “indirect aggression” in women. Thus girls exposed to considerable TV violence are more likely not only to grow up to shove, punch, beat, or choke other people but also to try to talk their friends into disliking someone who has angered them.