Download Effects of Violence/Aggression

Effects of Violence/Aggression
There’s an assumption that violence
affects the audience
 Research should be done to see if the
assumption is true

Why is there violence in the media?
It’s exciting
 It attracts attention
 It’s one way to fulfill a dramatic necessity

storytelling
A problem upsets the balance of the
story’s universe
 Protagonist tries to solve the problem,
antagonist tries to prevent the problem
being solved
 Protagonist finally does or says something
that solves the problem
 The story is over

Characters in storytelling
Each character wants something
 Each character wants something different
 This causes conflict

So why violence?

Quickest and easiest way to show the
conflict and solve it
What Does Media Violence Look
Like?
Has the amount of violence on
television increased or decreased
over time?
NTVS Results: Context
24-28% of perpetrators are “good” characters
37-40% of perpetrators are “attractive”
~15% of violent scenes show blood & gore
71-75% of violent scenes do not have
punishment of perpetrator
 51-58% of violent incidents show no pain or
harm to victim
 39-43% of violent scenes involve humor

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Is there a relationship between
violence on television and real-life
violent behavior?
Meta-analysis
Basic assumption about human
behavior
Much of it is learned
 Learning --the process of acquiring,
through experience including observation,
new and relatively enduring information
or behaviors

Cognition

thoughts, perspectives, and expectations - remembering the past (whether the past
is real or not), relating it to the present,
and making predictions about the future.
Solving problems
Trial and error
 Algorithms

◦ Step by step procedures to solve problems

Heuristically
◦ Mental shortcuts to solve problems
Classical conditioning
learning is about conditioning and
association
 Effects of conditioning increased or
decreased by reward or punishment
 an involuntary response that links stimuli
and anticipates future events
 Reward versus punishment

Albert Bandura
Social Learning Theory

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How many of you are familiar with the
Bobo doll study?
Social Learning Theory (Bandura)
Observational/Social Learning
 Vicarious reinforcement
 Bobo doll study
Priming

Make pieces of your memory temporarily
more accessible (Leonard Berkowitz 1984)
Knife
Blood
Grass
Cheese
violence
Cats
Guns
Dogs
Violence and priming study
Watch violent OR non-violent clip
 Next, watch a cartoon

◦ Fuzzy vs clear

Next, students were interviewed by
researcher.
◦ Microphone vs walkie-talkie
Results
Finally, everyone played hockey
 Conditional effect- Primed boys with high trait
aggression
◦ Showed higher levels of aggression on the
field
 i.e. more hitting, insulting other players, etc.


The effect was greater when….
◦ Students were frustrated by fuzzy cartoon
◦ And when they used a walkie-talkie in the
interview
Modeling

Bandura’s Social Learning/Cognitive
Theory (1977/1986)
◦
◦
◦
◦
Attention- pay attention to media
Retention- retain the story
Production- able to reproduce actions
Reinforcement – positive reinforcement
present
Results

Kids imitated the people they saw on TV
◦ i.e. they performed similar acts of aggression
toward the bobo doll
Kids were more likely to perform similar
acts of violence when model in the short
film was rewarded
 Less likely to imitate when model was
reprimanded

Cultivation
The more time you spend with media, the
more you think it is an accurate
representation of the real world
 George Gerbner (1976)

Mean World

Not that exposure to violence makes you
violent, but it makes you afraid
◦ TV world is mean and violent
◦ Real world must be mean and violent
 makes heavy viewers afraid (Mean World
Syndrome)
Evidence of Cultivation Effects
Desensitization

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Decreases arousal
Indifferent to real-life violence
Less willing to help
How does it work?
◦ Classical conditioning
Outcome: Fear, lack of trust, less reaction
to violence
No one person associated with this theory,
often credited to Gerbner 1976
Explanation

If I were to ask you
◦ What percent of crime is violent?
◦ What’s the percent of violent crime consisting
of murder?
Catharsis
Viewing of violent media content helps to
purge violent impulses
 Exposure to violent television should reduce
aggression
 Almost all evidence is inconsistent with this
theory

No one technique or theory has all
the answers

All hypotheses start with assumptions
◦ Scientific hypotheses start with assumptions
about the world that can be empirically
checked and falsified
◦ Social science hypotheses start with
assumptions about people that usually can’t
be empirically studied and are taken as
axiomatic (they’re true because I think they’re
true and can’t prove it one way or the other)
All are ways to examine the media;
none are the final answer