Chapter 5: Media Violence and Aggression

Question 1

What are copycat crimes?

Answer 1

Copycat crimes from media are a significant problem
- real people copy scenes from movies and TV shows, ex. a man stabbed a girl 20 times in a scream mask
There are copycat crimes following highly publicized news reports such as murder-suicides and school shootings
The problem is “The contagion effect”; killers are often motivated by fame, publicizing/glorifying crime fuels individuals who desire notoriety

Question 2

What are rates of media saturation?

Answer 2

The average North American child (ages 8-18) spends over 7 hours a day using one or more forms of media
Wilson found that TV shows aimed at kids 12 and younger have more violence and positive reinforcement for violence than shows for adults.
TV shows, movies, video games containing violence are highly popular
- 94% of top 100 video games contain violence
Even “G” rated movies contain many types of physical and indirect aggression
- there is a symbol of aggression every 3 minutes on tv, or 42.5 acts per hour

Question 3

What is the problem when studying media violence and which hypothesis’ have been formed?

Answer 3

Correlational studies can’t answer what causes aggression from media exposure: are naturally aggressive children more likely to watch violent media, or does violent media makes children more aggressive?

1. Socialization hypothesis: viewing violent media makes people more aggressive
2. Selection hypothesis: violent people watch violent media

Question 4

What did Huesmann find in his longitudinal study of media volence? Which hypothesis did the results support?

Answer 4

They conducted a longitudinal study where he followed a group of participants from age 8 to age 30
From age 8-11 they found that more aggressive children watched more violent TV shows and identified more strongly with violent characters
Watching violent TV at age 8 predicted aggressive behaviour at age 18 and age 30, even after controlling for levels of initial aggression
- this finding was only significant for boys
This provides support for the socialization hypothesis

Question 5

What did Coyne (2008) find when participants watched an aggressive film?

Answer 5

Studied how viewing an aggressive film affected participants aggression towards others
IV. type of film:
- Physically aggressive (Kill Bill)
- Relationally aggressive (Mean girls)
- Control: Nonaggressive
Found that compared to the control condition, participants who watched the aggressive films were more aggressive to two targets

Question 6

When TV was introduced in a town, what did Macbeth (2006) discover?

Answer 6

Studied the effect of TV when it was introduced into a remote community in Northern Canada (“Notel”)
Measures: ratings of physical and verbal aggressiveness provided by teachers, observers, and children themselves
They found that aggressive behaviour increased significantly in “Notel” following the introduction of TV

Question 7

What did Bushman and Anderson find the effect size of violent media exposure and aggression to be?

Answer 7

They found it to have a moderate effect; there is a link between the use of media violence and aggression.

• smoking + lung cancer; 0.4
• TV violence + aggression; 0.3
• second hand smoke + cancer; 0.1

Question 8

What has a survey found on video game usage?

Answer 8

The Pew Research Centre Poll (2008) found that 97% of teens (12-17) said they play violent video games, and 31% play every day
- boys were more likely than girls to have a preference for games rated M

Question 9

Why is it thought that video games could have a higher impact on aggressive behaviour than TV? How does Greitemeyer and McLatchie (2011) explain this?

Answer 9

Video games might have more of an impact than TV violence because players are:

• actively involved in planning and carrying out aggressive acts
• reinforced for successful symbolic violence

They claimed that video games make us see others as less humans, especially when the video game is more violent/realistic, the bigger the effects

Question 10

What did Anderson (2010) find in his meta-analysis on video game violence?

Answer 10

Conducted a meta-analysis combining data from 381 studies (including over 130 000 participants)
They found that playing violent video games increased aggression:
- for children, teens, and young adults (stronger for children than it was for other age groups)
- across all three research designs (correlational, experimental, and longitudinal)

Question 11

What are video games thought to increase?

Answer 11

Violence in video games cause increase in:

• Aggressive thoughts (see world through “blood-tinted glasses”)
• Aggressive feelings (anger, hostility, revenge)
• Aggressive behaviour (even among participants low in trait hostility)
• Causes a decrease in empathy and helping others

Question 12

What did Bushman and Anderson (2009) find in their study of reaction time in relation to video games?

Answer 12

Experimental approach:
IV: participants played violent video game or non-violent video game for 20 minutes
Researchers staged a fight in the hallway; the injured confederate calls out for help (diffusion of responsibility was decreased by no one else being around)
DV: length of time until participants went out into hallway to help confederate
Found that it took non-violent video game players only 15 seconds to respond, where as violent video game players took over 70 seconds to respond

Question 13

What is violent pornography? How popular is it? What is is associated with?

Answer 13

Pornographic material that includes an element of violence against women.
In analyzing the top 50 porn videos in 2004, it was found that of the 304 scenes:
- 88% showed physical aggression
- 48% showed verbal aggression
- 95% of targets responded with pleasure
- only 10% contained positive behaviours
Regular viewing is associated with greater acceptance of sexual violence toward women (ex. rape myths)

Question 14

What has research found in relation to violent pornography and aggression?

Answer 14

• Among university students, high violent pornography consumption predicts sexual aggressiveness
• Boys and girls age 10-15 who have seen violent sexual content online are six times more likely to be sexually aggressive to others
• Rapists, serial killers & child molesters are frequently high users of violent pornography, such as Paul Bernardo
• Those who watched pornographic film gave higher chocks to female confederate who had angered them that were twice as intense as the men in the other conditions

Question 15

What some reasons why media violence might affect viewer’s aggression?

Answer 15

1. Weakened inhibitions and increased arousal:
   - “if they can do it, so can I.”
   - being in a state of increased arousal allows for easier reaction with aggression if provoked
2. Imitation:
   - “oh, so that’s how you do It.”
   - especially if actor is rewarded and seems justified
3. Priming:
   - “I think it must be aggressive feelings that I’m experiencing.”
4. Desensitization:
   - “ho-hum – another brutal beating.”
   - reduced physiological/emotional response to viewing violence and suffering
5. “Mean world” syndrome:
   - “the world sure is a violent place”
6. The uses and gratifications approach: views people as active media consumers

Question 16

What is the uses and gratifications approach?

Answer 16

The uses and gratifications approach: views people as active media consumers
Recognizes:
- people are different (not everyone likes the same media products)
- people consuming the same media product will react in different ways

Note: there is stronger evidence that media violence causes aggression in children (12 and under) than in adolescents or adults

Viewing media violence best conceived of as a “risk factor” for aggression, but there are other important risk and protective factors play an important role
ex. family and neighbourhood environment

Question 17

What are some proposed solutions for violence in the media? What are their problems?

Answer 17

1. Censorship
   - Problem: psychological reactance (banning something makes it more attractive)
   - freedom of choice is a basic need in humans, reactance arises when restrictions placed on our freedoms
2. Rating systems
   - Problems: parents unfamiliar/ don’t pay attention
   - substantial violence even in movies/games rated “suitable” for children
   - mismatch between ratings and consumer perceptions, make ratings seem bogus
   - increased appeal
3. Education
   - Restricted consuming: overall reduction in media exposure and substitution of violent with non-violent media
   - Critical consuming: the promotion of an understanding of how violence influences users
   - very mixed results

Interventions should start early when aggressive scripts have not yet consolidated and can change easier.

Question 18

What did Smith et al. (2004) find when studying gun related violence in TV and video games?

Answer 18

Analyzed 2586 hours of TV that contained 4284 gun-related violent interactions; and 10 hours of the 60 most popular video games.

• almost all scenes involve lethal violence
• video games present almost all violence as justified
• very few acts were followed by retaliation

Question 19

What are the three main methodologies used to study media violence and aggression?

Answer 19

1. Cross-sectional studies
   - observation, peer nominations, self-reports
2. Experimental studies
   - violent or non-violent media condition
3. Longitudinal studies
   - long term effects of violence in media on aggression

Question 20

What is a cross-sectional study that looked at media violence and aggression?

Answer 20

Krahe and Moller (2011) studied 1688 seventh and eighth graders who reported using differing levels of media. Class teachers provided ratings of aggressive and prosocial behavior of the students.
The more media violence participants used, the higher their aggressive behaviour and the lower their prosocial behaviour as rated by their teacher.

Question 21

What did Fischer and Greitemeyer (2006) find when studying degrading song lyrics?

Answer 21

They had male participants listen to degrading music towards females.
These men recalled more negative attributes about women and behaved more aggressively towards a female experimenter.
This can be found when you switch genders as well.

Question 22

What traits do habitual video game users show?

Answer 22

• more aggression on a competitie reaction task
• score lower in empathy
• higher on trait hostility
• greater pleasant arousal in response to violent film clips
• the more one plays video games, the more positive feelings they elicit

Question 23

How does similarity to a video game avatar affect aggression?

Answer 23

Participants who play violent video games with similar avatars show significantly more anger.
The more realistically violence is presented in video games, the more likely it is to promote aggressive behaviour.

Question 24

How are girls and boys affected differently by violent media?

Answer 24

There is no gender differences, they are affected equally.

Question 25

What is the impact of habitual media violence on aggressive behavior?

Answer 25

1. Observational learning
   - models are imitated, they are a powerful source of learning
   - violent characters can act as models
2. Aggressive knowledge structures (scripts)
   - repeated exposure to violent media promotes the learning, rehearsal and reinforcement of pro-aggression beliefs and attitudes
3. Disinhibition
   - exposure to violent media weakens viewers’ inhibitions against aggression by making aggression appear common and accepted
4. Desensitization
   - the gradual reduction in responsiveness to an arousal-eliciting stimulus as a function of repeated exposure

Question 26

What did Yao (2010) find when men played a sexually oriented video game?

Answer 26

Participants were significantly higher on a measure of sexual harassment and were faster at responding to words that sexually objectify women (ex. slut, bitch).

Question 27

Does the pornography have to be violent to increase aggression?

Answer 27

Allen et al. (1995) performed a meta-analysis and examined:
a. violent sexual behaviour
b. non-violent sexual behaviour
c. presentations of nudity
Nudity was found to produce a small decrease in aggression.
Both violent and non-violent pornigraphy increased aggressive behaviour.
“violent content, though possibly magnifying the impact of pornography, is unnecessary to producing aggressive behaviour”

Question 28

Is there a difference between pornography and portrayals of non-sexual violence in their effects on aggression?

Answer 28

Donnerstein (1984) had participants watch:
- a non-violent pornographic film
- a violent pornographic film
- a non-sexual violent film
He found that is not the sexual, but the aggressive contents of the material which instigate aggression, since the non-sexual violent film led to significantly more aggression than the non-violent sexual film.

Question 29

Does pornography affect attitudes that are relevant to aggression, in particular rape-supportive attitudes?

Answer 29

Porn may teach that women enjoy aggressive sexual tactics and are usually willing to have sex if they initially reject advances.
It’s been shown that violent pronography led to stronger rape-supportive and antisocial attitudes than non-violent sexual material.
- meta-analysis have found differing results

Question 30

What did Robinson (2001) find in their restricted consuming test?

Answer 30

Third and fourth grades restricted their media use for six months.
The began with 10 days of no media use at all, and then for the rest of the six months, they were allowed 7 hours of screen time per day.
They showed a reduction in media use, and a significant decrease in peer-rated and verbal aggression.

Question 31

What did Byrne (2009) find in their critical consuming test?

Answer 31

Basic condition: students received a lesson on the negative effects of media violence, how to avoid these effects, and to critically evaluate the aggressive behaviour of characters
Activity condition: given the same instruction but were required to write a paragraph about what they had learned, and were videotaped reading it aloud
No difference was found between the groups immediate post-intervention or after 6 months; however, the basic condition showed a significant increase in the willingness to use aggression, indicating a boomerang effect.