Studies that support the idea that media can cause violence

The Bo-bo doll study Bandura and RossSee A/S notes

Aim:To discover whether television can cause aggressive

behaviour in a natural experiment. Method: • A small community in Canada had only recently been

introduced to television. • The town was observed before television was installed

and then again, two years later. A school was observed and also the town on a whole.

• There were two other towns near by where different numbers of channels were introduced.

• Aggression was measured in school by two class room assistants that were brought into the class. After a week they recorded all violent acts they saw.

Williams 1986

Conclusions:

• Violent incidents increased after television had been introduced.

• Children's levels of aggression had increased for both boys and girls.

Aims:• To discover if violent films can affect aggression

in Belgium and American juvenile delinquents in a low security institution.

Method:• Their normal rates of aggressive behaviour were

assessed before exposure to 5 films.• Boys in one cottage were exposed to 5

commercial films involving violence over a period of a week.

• Boys in a second cottage were exposed to 5 non-violent films during the same period

Creating violence a cottage industry. Park et al (1977)

Results:

• For the boys who were exposed to aggressive films their aggressive behaviour increased in some categories, but aggression in other categories was confined to boys who already had a high level of aggression.

Conclusion:

• Aggression was increased by the violence observed by participants in the violent films condition.

Aim: • To see if high levels of media violence in children

correlates with aggressive behaviour as adults. Method: • Eron studied 856 grade 3 students (8 year olds) in 1960.

He measured how much violent television they were exposed to and then how aggressive they were at school.

• In 1971 when the participants were 19 years old he revisited the participants to see if they had gotten into trouble with the law when they were older.

• In 1982 he also revisited when they were 30 years old to see the effect watching violence on television had caused.

Eron (1986)

Results: • In 1960 children who were exposed to violent

television at home behaved more aggressively in school.

• In 1971 he found that boys who watched violent television when they were 8 were more likely to get in trouble with the law as teenagers.

• In 1982 The participants that watched violent television were more likely to be convicted of serious crimes. They were also more likely to use violence to discipline their own children and to treat their spouse aggressively.

Do Violent Video Games Cause Aggressive Thoughts And Behaviour?

Anderson, C.A. and Dill, K.E. (2000) Video games and aggressive thoughts, feelings and behaviour in the laboratory

and in life

Aim

To investigate the effects of video game violence, and broaden the understanding

of media violence in general.

The aim was specifically to find evidence to test the GAAM formulation (General

Affective Aggressive Model)

Method

There were two studies used. Each used different methods (a correlation and an experiment).

They did this because each method was considered to have strengths that would compliment the other’s weaknesses.

Correlation There were two sets of variables correlated. 1. long term exposure to video game violence and 2. aggressive

behaviour and delinquency. There were 227 participants: 78 males All Psychology 149 females Students

The participants completed self-report questionnaires to measure: Aggressive behaviour Delinquency Irritability and trait aggressiveness Amount of time playing video games in general Amount of time spent playing violent video games

Pilot Study

• Pilot was conducted to select two video games; one violent and one non violent.

• The games were Wolfenstein 3D and Myst.• These games were chosen because they

produced no difference in physiological measurements as well as in terms of Difficulty, Enjoyment, Frustration and Action Speed.

• It was important to control physiological arousal to avoid this becoming an extraneous variable.

Games

• Wolfenstein 3D• Has an obvious violent

content, realism and human characters.

• The human hero can choose from an array of weaponry.

• The goal is to kill Nazi guards, advance through the levels and finally kill Hitler.

• Myst• An interactive adventure

game designed to be non violent.

• A fast paced thinking game in which players attempt to align geometric figures as they fall down the computer screen.

The Experiment210 Participants: • 104 Females All Psychology• 106 Males Undergraduates

Participants were matched on high or low irritability scores, then divided by gender. Each group was given either violent or non violent video games to play.

Each game was played 3 times. In the first session the games were played twice. In the second session a week later the games were played once. In the first session they completed an active measure (how they felt) and a world view measure and cognitive measure (what they were thinking).

After playing the game for the third time the participants played a game where they were allowed to give their opponent a blast of noise. The games were played where the participants won and lost the same number of games. The noise level was used to measure aggression.

ResultsResults

• Study 1• There was a positive

correlation between the amount of time spent playing violent video games and aggressive personality and delinquent behaviour.

• Study 2• The participants who

played a violent video game behaved more aggressively towards an opponent than those who played a non-violent video game.

ConclusionConclusion

Playing a violent video game increases aggression probably by encouraging aggressive thoughts.

Researchers suggest that long term exposure might alter behaviour, making them more likely to have more aggressive thoughts and feelings and behave aggressively.

The active nature of these games is stronger than that of watching violent television, parents should be aware of these potential risks.

Now read your handout on the St.Helena study to get a different viewpoint.

The limitations of the methods used to study the effects of TV on violence

How do you define media?

Media is a subjective word as some people see video games, music, DVDs as media as well as the obvious things like radio, newspapers, TV and magazines. This

is a problem for most of the methods

Laboratory studies

A lab study is a study carried out in a controlled environment. You manipulate the I.V. and measure the D.V. to establish cause and effect

Good points • IV can be isolated and manipulated in order to actually establish a

causal link. It is the only methodology in science that can do this.

Bad points • Low E.V – measures tend to be removed from every day life. The

environment/task tend to be artifical• As it’s normally middle class people carrying out these experiments

it is likely to be their view of what aggression is.• Mostly experiments have small unrepresentative samples- so not

good to generalise to the public.

Correlation studies• A correlation study is where they look if there is a link between two

separate sets of statistics.• Weaknesses

• Doesn’t show cause and effect

• Violent people may choose to watch violent TV instead of the other way round

• Such studies are normally inconsistent because different peoples’ studies contradict each other.ie one study suggests a link another says there is no link

• If the pp’s are made to complete self reports this is not valid as psychologists say people see violence as subjective as it means different thingsto different people.

• Strengths

• Correlations point to areas that need further research so once a correlation is found experiments can be designed to eliminate possible causal factors

• They are valid in so far as they are usually conducted on real people about their perceptions of their real experiences and are not artificially set up situations

Field experiments• Field experiments are experiments carried out in the pps natural

setting but they are a set up situation unlike a natural experiment

• Strengths • High E.V as conducted in a natural environment • Can establish causal links to an extent due to control of some

extraneous variables

• Weaknesses• Hard to isolate IV as there are lots of variables. So you cannot not

be certain that IV has caused DV• In case of Parks’ study this was a closed community of young

juvenile offenders.- this means that they were already violent, and also this isn't a representative view of the society this study shows you cant always generalise from field experiments.

Natural experiments• Natural experiments are where the researcher does not manipulate

the IV but takes advantage of a naturally occurring IV.

Good points• High in E.V as IV hasn’t been manipulated by experimenter• Often a chance to study a unique situation you may not have even

thought of setting upBad points• Hard to isolate IV as there are many variables E.g. in the William’s

and St Helena studies.- the type of people who live there. If the minister or teacher had a bias against some programs then people may not watch them as community leaders have social power. violent behaviour would be easily detected and could be socially punished

• Both these experiments had small populations ( poor sample) and unusual communites so we cannot generalise. E.g. violent behaviour would be easily detected and socially punished more than in large cities

Longitudinal studies• These are usually studies involving the same PP’s over a long

period of time.Good points• Representative samples• See a full developmental picture not possible in any other wayBad points• People may drop out over time (attrition) giving a biased result ( also

these are normally the most interesting people.)• studies contradict each other- some found that there was a link

between TV and the aggression that exists, however some studies found there was no link and that other variables were better predictors of aggressiveness.

• Often one of the other methods are used alongside e.g. self report questionnaires or observations and so you have the validity issues you always have with these methods