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Violence in media

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Violence in media is the fictional and non fictional portrayal of violent subject matter.

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Though movies (Taxi Driver for John Hinckley Jr., would-be assassin of Ronald Reagan), books (The Catcher in the Rye for Mark David Chapman, John Lennon’s murderer) and songs (Helter Skelter” for Tate-LaBianca murders mastermind Charles Manson) may articulate specific criminals acts, they don’t inspire the person’s desire for violence. Science has proven that in numerous studies. It’s tempting to blame movies, video games and rap music because they often express humanity’s worst impulses, but impulses are not actions for most of us. And for the mentally ill seeking violence, anything can set them off. ~ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
In the summer of 1941 DC instituted a formal code for all its comics perhaps a response to early comic critics. The company declared: "A deep respect for our obligation to the young people of America and their parents and our responsibility as parents ourselves combine to set out standards of wholesome entertainment." Henceforth, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and DC Comics other superheroes would never take a life. Focusing on the market of young readers and their parents, the company did not go deeply into the horror and crime comics that outsold superheroes in the late 1940s. ~ J. L. Bell
For several years now, various groups have urged the banning of crime pictures on the ground that they influence youths to turn to crime. When Jimmy Walker was minority leader of the New York legislature, there was a censorship fight on the floor of the House. A powerful group of pious bluenoses wanted to bar from circulation good books that dared to mention certain well-known facts of life. The bluenoses said the books were indecent, bawdy, lascivious and would lead their young and innocent daughters astray. Jimmy stood the debate as long as he could, then he said, "I have been around a good deal, but I have never heard of a woman's being seduced by a book." That killed the censorship bill. ~ Humphrey Bogart
I have never heard of any youngster going wrong, turning to crime, because of the movies. It simply isn't possible. Our relation to crime is, in a sense, the same as the prison warden's. We don't create it. We deal with it after it has happened, and we always make the criminal look bad. ~ Humphrey Bogart
The violent anti-police lyrics appear to have acted as command hallucinations which influenced his behavior. This young man insists that certain passages in these songs are so much a part of his consciousness that it was as if they just kept playing over and over in his head that night. ~ Ann T. Bowe
I look back on some films that I’ve made, and I don’t know if I would want to make that film now. I don’t know if I would want to fetishize the gun, like I did on a couple of Terminator movies 30+ years ago, in our current world. What’s happening with guns in our society turns my stomach. ~ James Cameron
Ain't nothin to it, gangsta rap made me do it. ~ Ice Cube
Review of the research indicates that there are mixed results regarding the influence of the news media on creating an attitude of fear among the general public (Surette, 1998). In an early study, Gerbner et al (1980) hypothesized that heavy viewing of television violence leads to fear rather than aggression. Gerbner et al (1980) find that individuals who watch a large amount of television are more likely to feel a greater threat from crime, believe crime is more prevalent than statistics indicate, and take more precautions against crime. They find that crime portrayed on television is significantly more violent, random, and dangerous than crime in the "real" world. ~ Kenneth Dowler
I find it amoral if you're making a movie where the problem is solved with a guy standing in the back of a pickup truck firing a machine gun at the bad guys. The morality of it is questionable because the repercussions of violence are incredibly far-reaching. ~ David Fincher
What are we afraid of? Are we afraid of our own children? Do we forget that they are citizens, too, and entitled to select what to read or do? Do we think our children are so evil, so simple minded, that it takes a story of murder to set them to murder, a story of robbery to set them to robbery? Jimmy Walker once remarked that he never knew a girl to be ruined by a book. Nobody has ever been ruined by a comic." ~ William Gaines
I feel that nonviolence coupled with some kind of sustaining influence can work in comics. I don't feel that you have to show blood and gore and guts. I think it's repellent. I've seen enough of it in its reality, and it's just as repellent when it's drawn as in reality. I see nothing of any value in anything that has what you call shock value. I see nothing in that except using that sort of thing to prove a point. In other words if you're making an anti-war document or if you're trying to tell the truth about a certain subject, and the blood and gore was a part of that subject, I wouldn't omit it. If I were going to make an exposé on anything I would show anything connected with it. For instance, in a gangster movie I would show the results of being a gangster-the life activities as well as the end and death. I would show exactly how it is they ended. ~ Jack Kirby
One such affective reaction may be a positive response to violence that would otherwise have been inhibited by anxious arousal. Huesmann and Kirwil (2007) have called this process sensitization. They argued that, for some individuals, watching violence is enjoyable, and, whereas it may provoke anger, it does not produce anxious arousal. On the contrary, the more such individuals watch violence, the more they like watching it. They are experiencing a “sensitization” of positive feelings. ~ Barbara Krahé, Ingrid Möller, L. Rowell Huesmann, Lucyna Kirwil, Juliane Felber, and Anja Berger
There are one or two rules of thumb which are useful in distinguishing sadism from exciting adventure in the comics. Threat of torture is harmless, but when the torture it’s self is shown it becomes sadism. When a lovely heroine is show bound to the stake, comics followers are sure that the rescue will arrive just in the nick of time. The readers wish is to save the girl, not to see her suffer. A bound or chained person does not suffer even embarrassment in the comics, and the reader, therefore is not being taught to enjoy suffering. ~ William Moulton Marston
Trigger warnings are alerts that professors are expected to issue if something in a course might cause a strong emotional response. For example, some students have called for warnings that Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart describes racial violence and that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby portrays misogyny and physical abuse, so that students who have been previously victimized by racism or domestic violence can choose to avoid these works, which they believe might “trigger” a recurrence of past trauma. ~ Greg Lukianoff, Jonathan Haidt
Watching violence in movies or in TV programs stimulates the spectators to imitate what they see much more than if seen live or on TV news. ~ Steven Spielberg
  • I saw six films along with about two dozen trailers for the autumn releases. Not a single one of the trailers (not to mention the features themselves) was devoid of considerable firepower. I’m not speaking of just action excitement, but of a veritable litany of handgun and automatic weapons discharges, incendiary effects, stabbings, and throat slittings. There were also, of course, a few garrotings and numerous beatings of women. This is studio entertainment, after all.
    • John Bailey, (1994); qtd. in Kendrick, James. Film Violence: History, Ideology, Genre, “Introduction”, New York: Wallflower, ‘’Columbia University Press’’, 2009.
  • For several years now, various groups have urged the banning of crime pictures on the ground that they influence youths to turn to crime. When Jimmy Walker was minority leader of the New York legislature, there was a censorship fight on the floor of the House. A powerful group of pious bluenoses wanted to bar from circulation good books that dared to mention certain well-known facts of life. The bluenoses said the books were indecent, bawdy, lascivious and would lead their young and innocent daughters astray. Jimmy stood the debate as long as he could, then he said, "I have been around a good deal, but I have never heard of a woman's being seduced by a book." That killed the censorship bill.
  • The screen renders experience both less and more real in its own right. It both mediates violence and makes it seem more immediate, exposing viewers to levels and forms of violence they might never otherwise encounter. It helps cross boundaries between real and re-enacted, between art and entertainment between being near the violence and being at a distance…Questions about degrees of reality and about the role of real-life, imagined, and reenacted violence in our lives are crucial to our learning to understand and to deal with violence. But these questions cannot be dismissed, much less resolved, by making tidy distinctions between the real and the not real.
    • Sissela Bok, (1998: 37) as qtd. in Kendrick, James, Film Violence: History, Ideology, Genre, Ch.1 “WHAT DO WE MEAN BY ‘FILM VIOLENCE’?”, New York: Wallflower, Columbia University Press, 2009.
  • Crime and the processing of offenders offers an opportunity for the celebration of conformity and respectability by redefining the moral boundaries of communities and drawing their members together against the threat of chaos … Crime news may serve as the focus for the articulation of shared morality and communal sentiments. A chance not simply to speak to the community but for the community, against all that the criminal outsider represents, to delineate the shape of the threat, to advocate a response, to eulogise on conformity to established norms and values, and to warn of the consequences of deviance. In short, crime news provides a chance for a newspaper to appropriate the moral conscience of its readership […] The existence of crime news disseminated by the mass media means that people no longer need to gather together to witness punishments. They can remain at home for moral instruction.
  • There have been four decades of research on the effect of media violence on our kids and it all points to the same conclusion -- media violence leads to more aggression, anti-social behavior, and it desensitizes kids to violence. The American Academy of Pediatrics summed up this point in a report entitled Media Exposure Feeding Children's Violent Acts. "Playing violent video games is to an adolescent's violent behavior what smoking tobacco is to lung cancer," it said. This isn't about offending our sensibilities -- it is about protecting our children.
  • We know that violent video games have an impact on children. Just recently there was cutting edge research conducted at Indiana University School of Medicine, which concluded that adolescents with more exposure to violent media were less able to control and to direct their thoughts and behavior, to stay focused on a task, to plan, to screen out distractions, and to use experience to guide inhibitions.
  • Laboratory experiments in psychology find that media violence increases aggression in the short run. We analyze whether media violence affects violent crime in the field. We exploit variation in the violence of blockbuster movies from 1995 to 2004, and study the effect on same-day assaults. We find that violent crime decreases on days with larger theater audiences for violent movies. The effect is partly due to voluntary incapacitation: between 6 p.m. and 12 a.m., a one million increase in the audience for violent movies reduces violent crime by 1.1% to 1.3%. After exposure to the movie, between 12 a.m. and 6 a.m., violent crime is reduced by an even larger percent. This finding is explained by the self-selection of violent individuals into violent movie attendance, leading to a substitution away from more volatile activities. In particular, movie attendance appears to reduce alcohol consumption. The results emphasize that media exposure affects behavior not only via content, but also because it changes time spent in alternative activities. The substitution away from more dangerous activities in the field can explain the differences with the laboratory findings. Our estimates suggest that in the short run, violent movies deter almost 1,000 assaults on an average weekend. Although our design does not allow us to estimate long-run effects, we find no evidence of medium-run effects up to three weeks after initial exposure.
  • Karyn Riddle, a professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who researches the effects on children and adolescents of viewing violent media, echoes Ms. Murphy’s concerns. “Watching sexual violence could be traumatizing,” she explains, “and that fear could stay with you for many years.”
    If you suspect that your teenager has already encountered a rape scene on television, look for an opening to talk about it. You might get the conversation started by addressing the fact that depictions of sexual violence have not always been a regular part of television.
    When “13 Reasons Why” first aired, I found myself talking about the sexual assault scenes with a group of 14-year-old girls at the school where I routinely consult. “You know,” I said, “we never used to show rape on T.V.” One girl quickly replied, “That’s what my dad said!” Another girl chimed in: “Good. Because it was the most upsetting thing I have ever seen.”
  • When I was a kid, we watched the Vietnam War on the six o'clock news, and it was desensitizing. You felt you were watching a war film; meanwhile you were really watching these guys getting blown to bits. Parents need to protect their kids from watching that stuff.
  • It was Plato's contention that works of dramatic sensationalism encouraged men to be irrational or hysterical, to lose control of their feelings. These philosophers were writing of poetry and theater, not animated skin flicks. And the "feelings" they referred to were those you have in your heart, not the ones that rise in your loins. Regardless, this ancient sparring of theses is the foundation of a very modern debate. Does violent art and entertainment instill in each of us a greater need or desire for real violence? Or do such works offer a healthy, harmless, and periodic outlet for anti-social behavior, a play fantasy way to get all those messy impulses out of our system?
    The latter notion, referred to today as the Theory of Catharsis, was revived and popularized for the Media Age by Seymour Feshbach. His 1955 essay, "The Drive-Reducting Function of Fantasy Behavior," offered a fervent defense of television and movie violence, suggesting that such materials defuse latent aggression by placating viewers with small and safe doses of vicarious violence. In other words, those that occasionally stoke their own biological bloodlust with the power of make-believe are then less likely to take it out on the "real world." Sounds reasonably convincing, except a number of theories spring up afterwards that actively challenged Feshbach's finding. There was Leonard Berkowitz's Theory of Disinhibition, which stated, in affect, that violent media lessens our inhibitions about behaving aggressively and can also confuse our sense of what is or is not "aggressive behavior." This is somewhat related to the Theory of Desensitization, wherein prolonged exposure to fake violence conditions us to think of real violence as "normal" or "natural." And then there's Social Learning Theory,a.k.a. the hypothesis that since we all learn how to behave from observing others, watching dollops of violent media-especially at a young and impressionable age-teaches violence as an acceptable mode of interpersonal relations (Nancy Signorielli, Violence in the Media: A Reference Handbook, pp 16-22).
    Those last three, roundly summarized as the Anti-Violent Media theories, have gained a lot of traction in the last few decades. Catharsis, on the other hand, has been rather roundly dismissed by psychologists and cultural theorists alike. B.J. Bushman and L.R. Huesmann, two vocal proponents of the Disinhibition Theory rather brashly asserted that "there is not a thread of convincing scientific data" to support the Catharsis theory ("Effects of Televised Violence on Aggression," Handbook of Children and the Media, p. 236). What they meant, of course, is that controlled group studies of catharsis, the kind that virtually "proved" the Anti-Violent Media theories yielded no such accreditation from the medical or psychiatric community. As far as most of academia is concerned, catharsis just doesn't fly. And yet it still routinely pops up in the critical conversation, a few rogue theorists fighting the good fight on behalf of this (mostly) discredited theory.
    Most of those "successful" studies looked at same groups, tracking the various reactions of various individuals in a controlled environment. Few of them examined "real world" data. And almost none of them measured the effect's positive or' negative, of violent sexual media-"rough" pornography.
    • Andrew A. Dowd, ch. 17, “Everything You Never Wanted to Know about Sex and Were Afraid to Watch, Textually Transmitted Diseases, in “Anime and Philosophy: Wide Eyed Wonder” edited by Josef Steiff, Tristan D. Tamplin, (2010)
  • Hentai won't transform a "normal" person into a slicing and dicing rapist, nor will it transform a disturbed sex offender into a health, productive member of society. This kind of stuff isn't an "On" or "Off" switch for deviant sexual behavior. It doesn't affect your actions so much as, potentially and quite harmfully, your attitudes. Its influence is insidious, subtle even. If there is, at last, a theory that explains the likely consequences of excessive hentai consumption, it is that of Cultivation. Developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s Larry Gross and George Gerbner's hotly debated social theory explores the long-term effects of modern media on the viewing public, on its general ideologies and given assumptions. Michael Morgan, who joined the Gross-Gerbner research team years later, summarizes the theory as such:
    Cultivation researchers have argued that these messages of power, dominance, segregation, and victimization cultivate relatively restrictive and intolerant views regarding personal morality and freedoms, women's roles, and minority rights. Rather than stimulating aggression, cultivation theory contends that heavy exposure to television violence cultivates insecurity, mistrust, and alienation, and a willingness to accept potentially repressive measures in the name of security, all of which strengthens and helps maintain the prevailing hierarchy of social power. ("Audience Research: Cultivation Analysis," The Museum of Broadcast Communications; emphasis mine)
    Hentai as a tool for status quo preservation? Might seem like a stretch, except that, in the lionization of manly power trips, these films cultivate gender identities as rigid as...well, as the pitched tents they inspire.
    • Andrew A. Dowd, ch. 17, “Everything You Never Wanted to Know about Sex and Were Afraid to Watch, Textually Transmitted Diseases, in “Anime and Philosophy: Wide Eyed Wonder” edited by Josef Steiff, Tristan D. Tamplin, (2010)
  • Research on the effect that the media has on the public revolves around two interconnected issues. Does coverage of sensationalistic and violent crime create fear among the general public and does this fear influence criminal justice policy attitudes? Review of the research indicates that there are mixed results regarding the influence of the news media on creating an attitude of fear among the general public (Surette, 1998). In an early study, Gerbner et al (1980) hypothesized that heavy viewing of television violence leads to fear rather than aggression. Gerbner et al (1980) find that individuals who watch a large amount of television are more likely to feel a greater threat from crime, believe crime is more prevalent than statistics indicate, and take more precautions against crime. They find that crime portrayed on television is significantly more violent, random, and dangerous than crime in the "real" world. The researchers argue that viewers internalize these images and develop a "mean world view" or a scary image of reality. This view is characterized by "mistrust, cynicism, alienation, and perceptions of higher than average levels of threat of crime in society" (Surette, 1990:8). Further studies on the relationship between fear and television viewing indicate a direct and strong relationship (Barille, 1984; Bryant, Carveth and Brown, 1981; Hawkins and Pingree, 1980; Morgan, 1983; Williams, Zabrack and Joy, 1982, Weaver and Wakshlag, 1986). Conversely, Rice and Anderson (1990) find a weak, positive association between television viewing and fear of crime, alienation and distrust. However, multiple regression analysis fails to support the hypothesis that television viewing has a direct, substantial effect on fear of crime.
  • A primary issue with the media’s inaccurate depiction of crime and the criminal justice system is that it socially constructs people’s perceptions about the nature of crime and how the criminal justice system works. Since most people rely on the media for their information about these topics, their perceptions about the system are skewed by this inaccurate information. Additionally, we know that people may act on their perceptions, such as by supporting certain crime and justice programs over others programs that do not fit with their perceptions, but which may be based on more accurate information. Several studies indicate that the images of crime and justice in the media impact the criminal justice system (Duwe, 2000; Hansen, 2001; Potter & Kappeler, 2006; Surette, 2007). For example, Hansen (2001) explains how news coverage of selected high profile juvenile crimes, in combination with coverage of drug and violent crimes in the 1980s and 1990s impacted the creation of get-tough policies for juvenile offenders (e.g., waivers to adult court, longer sentences, etc.).More specifically, the extant literature demonstrates that fictional crime dramas influence viewers’ attitudes towards the criminal justice system (Dowler, 2002; Kort-Butler & Sittner-Hartshorn, 2011), its actors (Dowler & Zawilski, 2007;Huey,2010),and increases fear of crime (Eschholz, Chiricos, & Gertz, 2003). One particular concern specific to fictional crime dramas, often referred to as the ‘CSI Effect,’ postulates viewers develop expectations for police and courtroom settings regarding the collection, evaluation, and presentation of physical evidence, including DNA evidence (Dowler, Fleming, & Muzzatti, 2006;Goodman-Delahunty & Tait,2006). Much of the general publics’ exposure to crime and the criminal justice system comes from fictional crime dramas. Since it is possible that the majority of people’s exposure to the criminal justice system is largely through crime fictional dramas, it is important to understand how the system, police specifically, are portrayed in these dramas.
  • Violence shouldn't be presented as drama. I think people looking for an easy way out often write scenes where characters come into violent conflict as opposed to looking for the true drama in the situation. That's a shortcoming of a lot of films and television shows. I think certain presentations of violence are not immoral, but amoral.
  • There is in fact no one thing, no chemically isolatable and analyzable substance, that is violence any more than there is one thing that is sex, even though it is easy to slip into talking as if there were.
    • John Frasier, Violence in the Arts (1974: 9); as qtd. in Kendrick, James, ‘’Film Violence: History, Ideology, Genre’’, Ch.1 “WHAT DO WE MEAN BY ‘FILM VIOLENCE’?”, New York: Wallflower, Columbia University Press, 2009.
  • The cinema is a peculiarly violent form of entertainment, developed in an catering for what we have come to think of as an age of violence.
    • Philip French, “Violence in the Cinema” (1968: 59); qtd. in Kendrick, James. Film Violence: History, Ideology, Genre, “Introduction”, New York: Wallflower, Columbia University Press, 2009.
  • "Entertaining reading has never harmed anyone. Men of good will, free men should be very grateful for one sentence in the statement made by Federal Judge John M. Woolsey when he lifted the ban on Ulysses. Judge Woolsey said, 'It is only with the normal person that the law is concerned.' May I repeat, he said, "It is only with the normal person that the law is concerned." Our American children are for the most part normal children. They are bright children, but those who want to prohibit comic magazines seem to see dirty, sneaky, perverted monsters who use the comics as a blueprint for action. Perverted little monsters are few and far between. They don't read comics. The chances are most of them are in schools for retarded children.
    What are we afraid of? Are we afraid of our own children? Do we forget that they are citizens, too, and entitled to select what to read or do? Do we think our children are so evil, so simple minded, that it takes a story of murder to set them to murder, a story of robbery to set them to robbery? Jimmy Walker once remarked that he never knew a girl to be ruined by a book. Nobody has ever been ruined by a comic."
    As has already been pointed out by previous testimony, a little healthy, normal child has never been made worse for reading comic magazines. The basic personality of a child is established before he reaches the age of comic-book reading. I don’t believe anything that has ever been written can make a child overaggressive or delinquent. The roots of such characteristics are much deeper. The truth is that delinquency is the product of real environment, in which the child lives and not of the fiction he reads.
    There are many problems that reach our children today. They are tied up with insecurity. No pill can cure them. No law will legislate them out of being. The problems are economic and social and they are complex. Our people need understanding; they need to have affection, decent homes, decent food. Do the comics encourage delinquency? Dr. David Abrahamsen has written: “Comic books do not lead into crime, although they have been widely blamed for it. I find comic books many times helpful for children in that through them they can get rid of many of their aggressions and harmful fantasies. I can never remember having seen one boy or girl who has committed a crime or who became neurotic or psychotic because he or she read comic books.”
  • Research on women in print advertisements has shown that pictures of women's bodies and body parts ("body-isms") appear more often than pictures of men's bodies. Men's faces ("face-isms") are photographed more often than their bodies. This present study is the first to confirm this finding for television commercials. Results showed that men appear twice as often as women in beer commercials. The body-isms of women significantly outnumbered the body-isms of men. Women also appeared in swimwear more often than men, thus increasing the photo opportunities for body-isms. This study raises concerns about the dehumanizing influence of these images in beer commercials, and their association with alcohol use and the violence in the televised sporting events during which beer commercials are frequently aired.
  • A great deal of research has accumulated applying social learning theory to analyzing the impact of crime and violence in media and pop culture. Early studies (called the Payne Fund Studies) conducted in the 1930s found that many in a sample of 2,000 respondents were conscious of having directly imitated acts of violence they saw in films. This research spawned decades of controversy and research on the subject of media violence (Sparks & Sparks, 2002). A more recent study found that 25% of juvenile offenders got ideas about how to commit their crimes from popular culture (Surette, 2002). From the perspective of social learning theory, expectations and ideas are conveyed through television, film, music, computer games, and other forms of popular culture and are mimicked by youth in particular. Although there is some disagreement in the literature about whether or not media violence is criminogenic (crime producing) or cathartic (crime reducing) or both, a large and growing body of research suggests media violence triggers the occurrence of criminal behavior and shapes its form (Surette, 1998). Most of the studies on the effects of TV and computer game violence, however, have been conducted in laboratory settings and measured levels of aggression in response to violent stimuli (rather than actual criminal behavior), which is problematic for drawing conclusions.
    Beyond anecdotal accounts of media-mediated violence, little empirical research supports a direct criminalizing effect of violent media. Findings suggest that media depictions of violence are more likely to shape criminal behavior than trigger it (Surette, 1998). People already inclined to commit a crime get ideas about how to commit the crime from media images, but few otherwise law-abiding citizens will be influenced by media to commit a crime. On the other hand, compelling case study evidence suggests that the behavior of small group of “media junkies” may be unduly influenced by media violence though the potential for violent media to trigger criminal behavior is very small.
  • As I sat in my office last evening, waiting to speak, I thought of the many times each week when television brings the war into the American home. No one can say exactly what effect those vivid scenes have on American opinion. Historians must only guess at the effect that television would have had during earlier conflicts on the future of this Nation during the Korean war, for example, at that time when our forces were pushed back there to Pusan or World War II, the Battle of the Bulge, or when our men were slugging it our in Europe or when most of our Air Force was shot down that day in June 1942 off Australia.
  • The implied semantic equivalency in using the term ‘’violence’’ to describe both actual events and their mediated representations suggests an inherent connection, and some would argue that film violence is a form of actual violence in that it can cause psychological distress and even act directly upon the body, causing revulsion, involuntary muscle spasms and even physical illness. Many of the most infamous violent films are associated with stories, mostly exaggerated, about initial audience members’ extreme physical responses. For example, when Sam Pechinpah’s ‘’The Wild Bunch’’ (1969) first screened in a 190-minute rough cut in Kansas City, it was reported that members of the audience left in revulsion and one or two of them vomited in the alleyway behind the theatre (see Harmetz 1969). While I recognize the overlapping of real and re-enacted violence and do not wish to make any overly ‘tidy distinctions’ between the two, it is also important for our purposes here to draw distinctions in order to maintain some semblance of clarity. Fictional film violence in complicated enough.
    • Kendrick, James, ‘’Film Violence: History, Ideology, Genre’’, Ch.1 “WHAT DO WE MEAN BY ‘FILM VIOLENCE’?”, New York: Wallflower, Columbia University Press’’, 2009.
  • As John Frasier argues in ‘’Violence in the Arts’’, the complexity of mediated violence is immense, and it can and has fulfilled numerous and varied functions: ‘violence as release, violence as communication, violence as play, violence as self-affirmation, or self-defense, or self-discovery, or self-destruction, violence as a a flight from reality, violence as the truest sanity in a particular situation, and so on’ (1974: 9). That is essentially Martin Barker’s argument when he writes, ‘There simply isn’t a “thing” called “violence in the media”’ (199: 10). Barker has further noted that the expression ‘media violence’ is ‘one of the most commonly repeated, and one of the most ill-informed, of all time…’’There simply is no category “media violence” which can be researched’ (1997: 27-28; emphasis in original), which is why Barker argues that seventy years of social-scientific effects research has been largely useless: It has been constructed on the faulty logic that there is some such all-encompassing category as ‘media violence’ that can contain everything from movies, to television shows, to comic books, to newspaper photographs, to video games, to televised news reports and documentary footage.
    • Kendrick, James, ‘’Film Violence: History, Ideology, Genre’’, Ch.1 “WHAT DO WE MEAN BY ‘FILM VIOLENCE’?”, New York: Wallflower, Columbia University Press, 2009.
  • I feel that nonviolence coupled with some kind of sustaining influence can work in comics. I don't feel that you have to show blood and gore and guts. I think it's repellent. I've seen enough of it in its reality, and it's just as repellent when it's drawn as in reality. I see nothing of any value in anything that has what you call shock value. I see nothing in that except using that sort of thing to prove a point. In other words if you're making an anti-war document or if you're trying to tell the truth about a certain subject, and the blood and gore was a part of that subject, I wouldn't omit it. If I were going to make an exposé on anything I would show anything connected with it. For instance, in a gangster movie I would show the results of being a gangster-the life activities as well as the end and death. I would show exactly how it is they ended. I would show the bullet holes because it's part of the picture, but I wouldn't exploit it for its value alone. I see no entertainment in that sort of thing.
  • The concern that violent video games may promote aggression or reduce empathy in its players is pervasive and given the popularity of these games their psychological impact is an urgent issue for society at large. Contrary to the custom, this topic has also been passionately debated in the scientific literature. One research camp has strongly argued that violent video games increase aggression in its players , whereas the other camp repeatedly concluded that the effects are minimal at best, if not absent. Importantly, it appears that these fundamental inconsistencies cannot be attributed to differences in research methodology since even meta-analyses, with the goal to integrate the results of all prior studies on the topic of aggression caused by video games led to disparate conclusions. These meta-analyses had a strong focus on children, and one of them reported a marginal age effect suggesting that children might be even more susceptible to violent video game effects.
    At present, almost all experimental studies targeting the effects of violent video games on aggression and/or empathy focussed on the effects of short-term video gameplay. In these studies the duration for which participants were instructed to play the games ranged from 4 min to maximally 2 h (mean = 22 min, median = 15 min, when considering all experimental studies reviewed in two of the recent major meta-analyses in the field) and most frequently the effects of video gaming have been tested directly after gameplay.
  • Taken together, the findings of the present study show that an extensive game intervention over the course of 2 months did not reveal any specific changes in aggression, empathy, interpersonal competencies, impulsivity-related constructs, depressivity, anxiety or executive control functions; neither in comparison to an active control group that played a non-violent video game nor to a passive control group. We observed no effects when comparing a baseline and a post-training assessment, nor when focussing on more long-term effects between baseline and a follow-up interval 2 months after the participants stopped training. To our knowledge, the present study employed the most comprehensive test battery spanning a multitude of domains in which changes due to violent video games may have been expected. Therefore the present results provide strong evidence against the frequently debated negative effects of playing violent video games. This debate has mostly been informed by studies showing short-term effects of violent video games when tests were administered immediately after a short playtime of a few minutes; effects that may in large be caused by short-lived priming effects that vanish after minutes. The presented results will therefore help to communicate a more realistic scientific perspective of the real-life effects of violent video gaming. However, future research is needed to demonstrate the absence of effects of violent video gameplay in children.
  • Violent media has often been blamed for severe violent acts. Following recent findings that violence in movies has increased substantially over the last few decades, this research examined whether such increases were related to trends in severe acts of violence. Annual rates of movie violence and gun violence in movies were compared to homicide and aggravated assault rates between the years of 1960 and 2012. Time series analyses found that violent films were negatively, although nonsignificantly, related to homicides and aggravated assaults. These nonsignificant negative relations remained present even after controlling for various extraneous variables. Results suggest that caution is warranted when generalizing violent media research, conducted primarily in laboratories and via questionnaires, to societal trends in violent behavior.
  • There are one or two rules of thumb which are useful in distinguishing sadism from exciting adventure in the comics. Threat of torture is harmless, but when the torture it’s self is shown it becomes sadism. When a lovely heroine is show bound to the stake, comics followers are sure that the rescue will arrive just in the nick of time. The readers wish is to save the girl, not to see her suffer. A bound or chained person does not suffer even embarrassment in the comics, and the reader, therefore is not being taught to enjoy suffering.
  • As regards the female characters thing, I'm afraid I think it's giving male creators a bum deal. The list does read pretty shocking at first until you think of everything the male heroes have gone through, too, in terms of deaths/mutilations/etc. Granted, the female stuff has more of a sexual violence theme and this is something people should probably watch out for, but rape is a rare thing in comics and is seldom done in an exploitative way.
  • Why should murder be so over-represented in our popular fiction, and crimes of a sexual nature so under-represented? Surely it cannot be because rape is worse than murder, and is thus deserving of a special unmentionable status. Surely, the last people to suggest that rape was worse than murder were the sensitively reared classes of the Victorian era … And yet, while it is perfectly acceptable (not to say almost mandatory) to depict violent and lethal incidents in lurid and gloating high-definition detail, this is somehow regarded as healthy and perfectly normal, and it is the considered depiction of sexual crimes that will inevitably attract uproars of the current variety.
  • Originally, studies on violence in the cinema were connected to particular genres or filmmakers. This scholarship often investigated the patterns and tropes of violence as it was identified with genres, such as the western, the gangster film, and horror—or filmmakers such as Sam Peckinpah or Arthur Penn. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, however, there was a wave of new scholarship on violence in the cinema that often focused on how the form of violence created meaning. And since then, there has been steady publication of new scholarship every year investigating violence in the cinema. This bibliography is organized to represent the different paths of investigation that scholars have taken. A certain segment of the scholarship is still concerned with figuring out the relationship of violent spectacle to the narrative structure, while others investigate how violence impacts racial or gender identities. Still other scholarship considers the aesthetic qualities of violence in “ultraviolence,” specifically depicted in war films and apocalyptic films. Recent scholarship has also been addressing the rise in a new abundance of torture scenes in film often linking them to post-9/11 fears and issues. This contemporary scholarship has also led to some reinvestigations of genre, the Production Code, and various filmmakers associated with violence, all interpreted through this new lens concerning the aesthetics and structural impact of violence itself.
  • As for some characters being dead and then alive again -- that happens to both genders in comics. Look at Wonder Man. The thing that, to my mind, separates the male and female characters are the sex crimes. Only the female characters are victims of sex crimes; male characters are never subjected to that. (There may be one or two exceptions when the male character was sexually abused as a child, but that's about it.) It is the number and frequency of THAT which troubles me. (...) A female soldier in battle may suffer wounds; that's different than a woman being stalked, kidnapped, and having violence done to her in civilian life. The former incurs the physical damage because of her occupation; the latter, strictly because of her gender. A female cop may be shot because she is a cop, not because she is a female. That, to me, is part of the difference.
  • "There are no charts, no words, that can convey what these photographs can," argued prosecutor Brian Kelberg in a regent dispute over whether photos of the slashed murder victims could be shown to O.J. Simpson's jurors.
    The defense had argued that the photos were too distressing and sickening, and should not be shown. Charts and diagrams were suggested as an alternative. But the judge allowed the photos.
  • 2) Graphic images of abortion have saved lives. One example is a letter I have from Violet Sherringford of New Jersey, who went to an abortion facility and found pro-life protesters there. "The posters they displayed, though very graphic, did succeed in bringing me back to reality and in conveying the horrible mutilation and dismemberment inflicted on the unborn child.... I decided to have the baby. It was the best decision I ever will make."
    3) We use graphic images to save lives from other kinds of violence - I've seen graphic drawing by first and second graders accompanied by the words "Drugs Kill"." I've seen smashed cars put on public display with the sign, "Drunk Driving Kills." The LA Times 7/8/95 reported an effort at Jefferson High School to stop street violence. Freshmen were shown slide after slide of victims blown apart by bullets. The anti-war movement in America was given momentum in the early '70's by a famous photo of a napalmed girl. Efforts to save the starving have been spurred on by images of malnourished children. The examples can go on and on.
    4) The fact that the use of such images is disturbing does not mean such use is wrong. The free-speech rights guaranteed under the First Amendment apply even to speech which is disturbing, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld (see The Right to Protest, ACLU: Gora et al .). Such disturbance is part of the price we pay for freedom. People might also be disturbed, annoyed, and upset by the blaring sirens of an ambulance rushing through the neighborhood. Yet the noise serves a purpose: People's lives are at stake, and the ambulance must be given the right of way.
    5) I too am concerned about little children who see graphic images. I am also concerned about the littler children those images depict. The key factor that will make the difference in how children react to seeing anything disturbing is the role of their parents, who are present in a loving and comforting way, answering their questions and calming their fears. But to say that the presence of children in a neighborhood forbids the use of graphic images leads to an absurd conclusion, for what neighborhoods have no children? Is free speech to be limited to adult-only communities? And even then, what is to be done for the adults who complain?
  • There is a great streak of violence in every human being. If it is not channeled and understood, it will break out in war and madness.
    • Sam Peckinpah (quoted in Harmetz 1969: D9); qtd. in Kendrick, James. Film Violence: History, Ideology, Genre, “Introduction”, New York: Wallflower, Columbia University Press, 2009.
  • For example, violent video games, television, films, and music have all been found to affect aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behavior (Anderson et al., 2003; 2010), while the introduction of television itself to a rural area of Nepal significantly affected residents' attitudes and behaviors regarding family issues (e.g., contraceptive use; Barber & Axinn, 2004). However, not all media are expected to have the same effects on beliefs and behavior. Intuitively, it seems to follow that media content should tend to influence beliefs that are relevant to that particular content. For example, watching television crime drama is related to oppositional attitudes toward gun control (Dowler, 2002). Similarly, viewing genres of film or television that focus on relationships (e.g., romantic comedies) is associated with idealistic relationship expectations (Segrin & Nabi, 2002). As a final example, watching shows with paranormal content is associated with paranormal beliefs (Tseng, Tsai, Hsieh, Hung, & Huang, 2014). Each of these examples illustrates how specific content is associated with specific attitudes in ways that are consistent with the content. Media may influence attitudes as disparate as our perception of aggression and paranormal beliefs, so there is reason to believe that media may also influence sexist attitudes.
  • Political violence experts say that even if aggressive language by high-profile individuals does not directly end in physical harm, it creates a dangerous atmosphere in which the idea of violence becomes more accepted, especially if such rhetoric is left unchecked.
    “So far, the politicians who have used this rhetoric to inspire people to violence have not been held accountable,” said Mary McCord, a former senior Justice Department official who has studied the ties between extremist rhetoric and violence. “Until that happens, there’s little deterrent to using this type of language.”
  • Gerbner and his colleagues further propose that compared to light television viewers, heavy television viewers are more likely to perceive the world in ways that more closely mirror reality as presented on television than more objective measures of social reality, regardless of the specific programs or genres viewed (Herbner & Gross, 1976).
    Although the complete range of cultivation indicators has not yet been specified (Potter, 1993), individual researchers have tested the cultivation hypothesis in a variety of contexts, including racism (e.g., Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, & Signorielli, 1982; Morgan, 1986), alientation (e.g., Morgan, 1986) and gender stereotypes (Gross & Jeffries-Fox, 1978). However, the most studied issue in the extant cultivation literature is the prevalence of violence on television and its effects on perceptions of real-world incidence of crime and victimization (see review in Potter, 1993). Numerous content analyses of network television programs have demonstrated that the number of violent acts on U.S. television greatly exceeds the amount of real-world violence (Gerbner & Gross, 1976; Gerbner et al., 1977). In turn, research by Gerbner and his colleagues has shown that heavy television viewers: (A) overestimate the incidence of serious crime in our society, and (B) are more likely to believe that the world is a mean place where people cannot be trusted (i.e., the “mean world” syndrome; e.g., Gerbner et al., 1994).
  • By the time Spidey came on, there was a LOT of censorship at Fox. They were having whole countries like Canada ban some of their shows (Power Rangers, for instance) and they were very nervous about violence. When I watch the older episodes of Batman that first aired on Fox, they do all kinds of things that we couldn't do. By the time Spidey came on, Fox wouldn't let us do anything like that. No fists to the face, no realistic guns, no fire, no crashing through glass, no children in peril, no mention of the words death, die, or kill."
  • ’Raises larger questions about whether or how understandings of violence bridge experiences o representations and actual life, about the pleasures of viewing barbarous images or committing actual incidents, and about the necessity to confront destructive tendencies in order to resist or at least comprehend them better.
    • David J. Slocum, 2001, p.3; as qtd. in Kendrick, James. Film Violence: History, Ideology, Genre, “Introduction”, New York: Wallflower, ‘’Columbia University Press’’, 2009.
  • Watching violence in movies or in TV programs stimulates the spectators to imitate what they see much more than if seen live or on TV news. In movies, violence is filmed with perfect illumination, spectacular scenery, and in slow motion, making it even romantic. However, in the news, the public has a much better perception of how horrible violence can be, and it is used with objectives that do not exist in the movies.
    • Steven Spielberg, in an interview by the Brazilian magazine Veja (1993), cited in Awake! magazine, 1993, 3/8, article: Watching the World.
  • In the present study, we examined the association between daily violent video game playing over the past year and depression in a large, ethnically diverse preadolescent sample. We found that playing high-violence video games for ≥2 hours per day is significantly associated with having a higher number of depressive symptoms. This association was consistent across all racial/ethnic subgroups and among boys, and more important, it was observed after controlling for aggression and several violence-related variables. The magnitude of these associations was small (Cohen's d values ranged from 0.12 to 0.25). However, these effect sizes are similar to those reported for the association between playing violent video games and aggression. Overall, our findings indicate that playing violent video games for a substantial amount of time each day over an extended period is significantly associated with depression in preadolescent youth. They also suggest that this association is unique, given that the number of depressive symptoms was not associated either with playing low-violence video games or with time spent playing video games in general.
  • In conclusion, we found that, compared with playing low-violence video games for <2 hours per day, playing high-violence video games for ≥2 hours per day was significantly associated with a higher number of depressive symptoms among preadolescent youth. However, the magnitude of the association was small and a causal relationship cannot be inferred. Nevertheless, it should be noted that even these small effect sizes can be of practical importance considering the large number of preadolescent and adolescent youth who regularly play violent video games. More studies are needed to examine the association between playing violent video games and depression in general and among boys in particular. If this association were confirmed, longitudinal studies would then be needed to investigate its causality, persistence over time, underlying mechanisms, and clinical implications.
  • Mr. Chairman, I am just a doctor. I can’t tell what the remedy is. I can only say that in my opin-ion this is a public-health problem. I think it ought to be possible to determine once and for all what is in these comic books and I think it ought to be possible to keep the children under 15 from seeing them displayed to them and preventing these being sold directly to children.
    In other words, I think something should be done to see that the children can’t get them. You see, if a father wants to go to a store and says, “I have a little boy of seven. He doesn’t know how to rape a girl; he doesn’t know how to rob a store. Please sell me one of the comic books,” let the man sell him one, but I don’t think the boy should be able to go see this rape on the cover and buy the comic book. I think from the public-health point of view something might be done now, Mr. Chairman…
[edit]

Barbara Krahé, Ingrid Möller, L. Rowell Huesmann, Lucyna Kirwil, Juliane Felber, and Anja Berger, “Desensitization to Media Violence: Links With Habitual Media Violence Exposure, Aggressive Cognitions, and Aggressive Behavior”, J Pers Soc Psychol. 2011 Apr; 100(4): 630–646

  • The hypothesis that media violence increases aggressive behavior has been widely studied in experimental research looking at the short-term effects of exposure to violent media stimuli, as well as in cross-sectional and longitudinal studies relating habitual media violence exposure to individual differences in the readiness to show aggressive behavior. Although there is disagreement among some researchers as to whether or not the evidence currently available supports the view that media violence exposure is a risk factor for aggression (Huesmann & Taylor, 2003), most meta-analyses and reviews have reported substantial effect sizes across different media, methodologies, and outcome variables, suggesting that exposure to violent media contents increases the likelihood of aggressive behavior in the short term as well as over time (e.g., Anderson et al., 2003; Bushman & Huesmann, 2006; Huesmann, 1982; Huesmann & Kirwil, 2007; Murray, 2008; Paik & Comstock, 1994). Other authors have questioned both the strength of the evidence and its implications (e.g., Ferguson, 2007; Savage & Yancey, 2008). Ferguson and Kilburn (2009, 2010) concluded from their meta-analysis that there was no support for the claim that media violence increases aggressive behavior. However, they acknowledged that experimental studies using proxy measures of aggression did produce substantive effect sizes and were relatively unaffected by publication bias, and their conclusions have been vigorously disputed by others (Anderson et al., 2010; Bushman, Rothstein, & Anderson, 2010; Huesmann, 2010).
  • Several studies have shown that in the long run, habitual exposure to media violence may reduce anxious arousal in response to depictions of violence. Research has found that the more time individuals spent watching violent media depictions, the less emotionally responsive they became to violent stimuli (e.g., Averill, Malstrom, Koriat, & Lazarus, 1972) and the less sympathy they showed for victims of violence in the real world (e.g., Mullin & Linz, 1995). Bartholow, Bushman, and Sestir (2006) used event-related brain potential data (ERPs) to compare responses by violent and nonviolent video game users to violent stimuli and relate them to subsequent aggressive responses in a laboratory task. Bartholow et al. found that the more violent games participants played habitually, the less brain activity they showed in response to violent pictures and the more aggressively they behaved in the subsequent task. In a series of studies with children age 5 to 12, Funk and colleagues demonstrated that habitual usage of violent video games was associated with reduced empathy with others in need of help (Funk, Baldacci, Pasold, & Baumgardner, 2004; Funk, Buchman, Jenks, & Bechtoldt, 2003).
  • An alternative perspective on the relationship between anxious and pleasant arousal may be derived from the general aggression model extended by Carnagey et al. (2007), to include desensitization. They argued that because repeated exposure to media violence reduces the anxiety reaction to violence, new presentations of violence “instigate different cognitive and affective reactions than would have occurred in the absence of desensitization” (p. 491). One such affective reaction may be a positive response to violence that would otherwise have been inhibited by anxious arousal. Huesmann and Kirwil (2007) have called this process sensitization. They argued that, for some individuals, watching violence is enjoyable, and, whereas it may provoke anger, it does not produce anxious arousal. On the contrary, the more such individuals watch violence, the more they like watching it. They are experiencing a “sensitization” of positive feelings. Because finding violence pleasant is incompatible with experiencing anxious arousal, increased pleasant arousal to depictions of violence in individuals with a high exposure to media violence would constitute indirect evidence of desensitization of “negative feelings” about violence. On the basis of this line of reasoning, we propose that anxious arousal by violent media stimuli is negatively related to pleasant arousal and that habitual exposure to media violence should both decrease negative emotional reactions and increase positive emotional reactions to violence, though the increase in positive emotions may occur for only a subset of individuals. For example, in a recent study of young adults in Poland, Kirwil (2008) found that proactively aggressive individuals tended to respond to violent media stimuli with a reduction in anxious arousal, whereas reactively aggressive individuals tended to respond with an increase in enjoyment.

“Communication Technology And Social Change” (2007)

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Technology And Social Change” Carolyn A. Lin, David J. Atkin – 2007; Ch.4 Computer-Mediated Technology and Children; Marina Krcmar and Yulia Strizhakova

Several theoretical perspectives explain how exposure to computer games, especially violent games, can lead to imitative behavior. It is clear why these theories of TV violence might easily be applied in a gaming environment. Perhaps the most comprehensive theory to date is the general aggression model (GAM), which comprehensively integrates central elements from several earlier aggression theories. Included in the model are elements of social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1994), which focuses on the audience member's attention to the modeled behavior, retention of that behavior, ability to imitate, and motivation to imitate the behavior. Furthermore, social cognitive theory concentrates on the model, noting that admired and rewarded models are more likely to be imitated. As such, the theory focuses on both the contextual cues (e.g., whether violence is rewarded) and the cognitive structures that lead to imitation. Script theory (Huesmann, 1986) is also integrated into the general aggression model. Script theory focuses on learned and activated scripts, arguing that we might learn to respond to situations in particular ways based on situations that have been repeatedly modeled for us. Therefore, in a new situation (e.g., a conflict), we might draw on scripts observed in the media, such as those containing violence.
Also included in the general aggression model is cognitive-neoassociative priming theory (Berkowitz, 1993; Berkowitz & Heimer, 1989), which draws largely on network models of memory. Given that memory is organized through a network, ideas can prime or active related thoughts. Berkowitz argued that exposure to media violence, especially over long periods of time, could serve to create a rich, intricate memory network of hostility and violence for heavy viewers. The result, according to priming theory, is that exposure to media violence could then readily activate hostility and aggressive thoughts. In addition to cognitive-neoassociative priming theory, Green's affective aggression model (1990 explains that increased in aggression after exposure to media violence could result in hostility and negative affect. Furthermore, Zillmann's (1983) excitation transfer model focuses on the mechanism of physiological arousal as the cause of increases in aggression after exposure to violence.
The research on computer and videogames and children has received considerable research attention in recent years. The earliest work examined the simple relationship between computer game play and aggression, whereas more recent research has utilized an experimental approach in order to test issues of causality between the two. For example, early research found a correlation between overall videogame exposure and real-world aggressive behavior in children from 4th to 12th grade (Dominick, 1984; Fling et al., 1992; Lin & Lepper, 1987). Early experimental work (Cooper & Mackie, 1986; Irwin & Gross, 1995; Schutte, Malouff, Post-Gorden, & Rodasta, 1988; Silvern & Williamson, 1987) also found some support for the notion that violent videogame content can increase aggression; however, technological advanced in the field of electronic gaming have rendered much of the very early research in this area all but obsolete.
What does more recent research tell us? Violent videogames can influence aggressive cognitions (Anderson et al., 2004; Anderson & Dill, 2000; Kirsh, 1998; Tamborini et al., 2001), as well as aggressive affect, leading to feelings of hostility (Anderson & Dill, 2000; Tamborini et al., 2001), and have been found in survey research to be associated with aggressive delinquent behavior, even after controlling for aggressive behavior (Anderson & Dill, 2000; Anderson & Murphy, 2003; Anderson et al., 2004).
  • Several theoretical perspectives explain how exposure to computer games, especially violent games, can lead to imitative behavior. It is clear why these theories of TV violence might easily be applied in a gaming environment. Perhaps the most comprehensive theory to date is the general aggression model (GAM), which comprehensively integrates central elements from several earlier aggression theories. Included in the model are elements of social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1994), which focuses on the audience member's attention to the modeled behavior, retention of that behavior, ability to imitate, and motivation to imitate the behavior. Furthermore, social cognitive theory concentrates on the model, noting that admired and rewarded models are more likely to be imitated. As such, the theory focuses on both the contextual cues (e.g., whether violence is rewarded) and the cognitive structures that lead to imitation. Script theory (Huesmann, 1986) is also integrated into the general aggression model. Script theory focuses on learned and activated scripts, arguing that we might learn to respond to situations in particular ways based on situations that have been repeatedly modeled for us. Therefore, in a new situation (e.g., a conflict), we might draw on scripts observed in the media, such as those containing violence.
    Also included in the general aggression model is cognitive-neoassociative priming theory (Berkowitz, 1993; Berkowitz & Heimer, 1989), which draws largely on network models of memory. Given that memory is organized through a network, ideas can prime or active related thoughts. Berkowitz argued that exposure to media violence, especially over long periods of time, could serve to create a rich, intricate memory network of hostility and violence for heavy viewers. The result, according to priming theory, is that exposure to media violence could then readily activate hostility and aggressive thoughts. In addition to cognitive-neoassociative priming theory, Green's affective aggression model (1990 explains that increased in aggression after exposure to media violence could result in hostility and negative affect. Furthermore, Zillmann's (1983) excitation transfer model focuses on the mechanism of physiological arousal as the cause of increases in aggression after exposure to violence.
    • p.63
  • The general aggression model also explains that exposure to videogame violence can increase aggressive behavior both in the short and long term by noting that aggression is largely based on existing knowledge structures or existing mental scripts that are created by the process of social learning (Anderson et al., 2004). That is, individuals can learn new skills and information by watching the behaviors of others, especially if those behaviors are rewarded, performed by attractive actors, or do not cause pain or suffering fort the victim of aggression (i.e., sanitized violence). In the short term, both personological and situational input variables can lead to aggressive behavior. Personological variables include personality variables such as aggressive disposition, current states, beliefs, attitudes, and so on. Situational variables are found in the environment surrounding the person and include factors such as aggressive cues (e.g., playing a violent videogame), being provoked, or feeling pain. Both of these inputs can impact the present internal state of the person. For example, aggression may become more likely if an individual has an aggressive disposition and also plays an aggressive videogame. This may lead to feelings of hostility. Then, given the opportunity to retaliate against someone who has insulted the person, for example, that individual may behave more aggressively than someone without those personological or situational factors in place.
    • pp.63-64
  • Cantor (1994) has used Piagetian developmental theory in order to explain and predict what images frighten children at different stages of cognitive developmental progress. Wilson and Weiss (1991) have also used Piagetian developmental theory in order to understand children's responses to news media. Kremar and colleagues (Kremar & Cooke, 2001; Kremar & Valkenburg, 1999) have utilized Kohlberg's theories of moral development in order to understand how children of different ages respond to depictions of interpersonal violence in the media. Because Kohlberg argues that judgments about right and wrong are based on a different decision matrix for children of different ages, it makes sense that how children interpret violence, a potentially immoral act, may differ for younger versus older children. For example, children younger than age 5 tend to use the guidance of an authority figure in order to determine between right and wrong or may simply consider the outcome of an action in making such a judgement. Older children, in contrast, may consider the motive of the actor in order to decide whether an act was wrong (Kohlberg, 1984). In summary, child development, whether studied in the context of cognitive development, moral development, or emotional or social development, has provided a solid framework-one that focused on the child more than on the medium-to understand the responses of a group that is qualitatively different from its adult counterparts.
    • pp.65-66
  • The research on computer and videogames and children has received considerable research attention in recent years. The earliest work examined the simple relationship between computer game play and aggression, whereas more recent research has utilized an experimental approach in order to test issues of causality between the two. For example, early research found a correlation between overall videogame exposure and real-world aggressive behavior in children from 4th to 12th grade (Dominick, 1984; Fling et al., 1992; Lin & Lepper, 1987). Early experimental work (Cooper & Mackie, 1986; Irwin & Gross, 1995; Schutte, Malouff, Post-Gorden, & Rodasta, 1988; Silvern & Williamson, 1987) also found some support for the notion that violent videogame content can increase aggression; however, technological advances in the field of electronic gaming have rendered much of the very early research in this area all but obsolete.
    What does more recent research tell us? Violent videogames can influence aggressive cognitions (Anderson et al., 2004; Anderson & Dill, 2000; Kirsh, 1998; Tamborini et al., 2001), as well as aggressive affect, leading to feelings of hostility (Anderson & Dill, 2000; Tamborini et al., 2001), and have been found in survey research to be associated with aggressive delinquent behavior, even after controlling for aggressive behavior (Anderson & Dill, 2000; Anderson & Murphy, 2003; Anderson et al., 2004).
    • pp.66-67
  • In their narrative review of the empirical literature, Dill and Dill (1998) concluded that short-term exposure to violent videogames increases aggression. Similarly, Bensley and Van Eenwyk (2001) conclude there is evidence that playing violent videogames can increase short-term aggression in young children. Meta-analyses conducted on the research on violent videogames have also supported an effect of game play on aggression. The first such comprehensive study was conducted by Anderson and Bushman (2001). Across all studies included in their meta-analysis, the authors found that exposure to violent videogames was positively associated with increased levels of aggression. Anderson (2004) recently updated with original meta-analysis and concluded that when only those studies with the soundest methodological approaches were used, results showed even stronger effect sizes, suggesting that methodologically weaker studies actually underestimate the true effects of exposure to volent videogames. Another meta-analysis by Sherry (2001) using 25 studies found evidence for a small effect of videogame play on aggression. However, Sherry also found that effect sizes have increased over time, with more current studies producing stronger effects, presumably due to the greater realism of today's games. Game type was also important, as games classified as human violence or fantasy violence were found to be more strongly related to aggression than sports games.
    • p.67

"The Coddling of the American Mind" (September 2016)

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(Greg Lukianoff, Jonathan Haidt, "The Coddling of the American Mind", The Atlantic, (September 2016)

  • Something strange is happening at America’s colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense. Last December, Jeannie Suk wrote in an online article for The New Yorker about law students asking her fellow professors at Harvard not to teach rape law—or, in one case, even use the word violate (as in “that violates the law”) lest it cause students distress.
  • Trigger warnings are alerts that professors are expected to issue if something in a course might cause a strong emotional response. For example, some students have called for warnings that Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart describes racial violence and that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby portrays misogyny and physical abuse, so that students who have been previously victimized by racism or domestic violence can choose to avoid these works, which they believe might “trigger” a recurrence of past trauma.
  • The idea that words (or smells or any sensory input) can trigger searing memories of past trauma—and intense fear that it may be repeated—has been around at least since World War I, when psychiatrists began treating soldiers for what is now called post-traumatic stress disorder. But explicit trigger warnings are believed to have originated much more recently, on message boards in the early days of the Internet. Trigger warnings became particularly prevalent in self-help and feminist forums, where they allowed readers who had suffered from traumatic events like sexual assault to avoid graphic content that might trigger flashbacks or panic attacks.
  • The expansive use of trigger warnings may also foster unhealthy mental habits in the vastly larger group of students who do not suffer from PTSD or other anxiety disorders. People acquire their fears not just from their own past experiences, but from social learning as well. If everyone around you acts as though something is dangerous—elevators, certain neighborhoods, novels depicting racism—then you are at risk of acquiring that fear too. The psychiatrist Sarah Roff pointed this out last year in an online article for The Chronicle of Higher Education. “One of my biggest concerns about trigger warnings,” Roff wrote, “is that they will apply not just to those who have experienced trauma, but to all students, creating an atmosphere in which they are encouraged to believe that there is something dangerous or damaging about discussing difficult aspects of our history.”
  • In an article published last year by Inside Higher Ed, seven humanities professors wrote that the trigger-warning movement was “already having a chilling effect on [their] teaching and pedagogy.” They reported their colleagues’ receiving “phone calls from deans and other administrators investigating student complaints that they have included ‘triggering’ material in their courses, with or without warnings.” A trigger warning, they wrote, “serves as a guarantee that students will not experience unexpected discomfort and implies that if they do, a contract has been broken.” When students come to expect trigger warnings for any material that makes them uncomfortable, the easiest way for faculty to stay out of trouble is to avoid material that might upset the most sensitive student in the class.

Dialogue

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Why don’t they go after the gun manufacturers and gun dealers instead of people who make video games, it doesn’t make sense.
  • Huey: Why don’t they go after the gun manufacturers and gun dealers instead of people who make video games, it doesn’t make sense. ...
Riley: Who would you rather start a beef with – some nerd who makes video games, or some dude with a warehouse full of AK-47s?

See also

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