does media violence cause violent behavior essay

Does Media Violence Cause Violent Behavior?

The link between violent media and aggression, the cyclical nature of violent media, modern violence, the positive impact of violent media.

Looking at the recent trends, one can note that the public is becoming desensitized to seeing blood on screen. With films becoming continuously gorier and the rise in popularity of violent video games in the past couple of decades, even young kids have most likely encountered such media in their lives. Due to this trend, there have been public debates about the effect such media has on peoples’ minds, often linking something as innocuous as an individual’s preferences in entertainment with aggression and proclivity for the crime. On the other side, many people argue that there is little to no correlation between the consumption of violent media and the expression of destructive tendencies in real life. The purpose of this paper is to outline these two opinions and analyze which of them can be scientifically backed up.

The fact that media is becoming more prone to showing violence on screen is undisputable. In terms of the film industry, many people have noted that today’s standards are for PG-13 films significantly differ from those implemented a couple of decades ago. This ensures that even teenagers are allowed to see gory content that would have been restricted for them a couple of decades ago, advancing the trend of normalizing violent content. In regards to video games, one can notice that most of the most popular computer and console games belong to the action or horror genres, which often contain bloody imagery. People, advocating for thof e cease this trend, justify this extreme measure by linking violent media with aggressive tendencies in individuals who consume it due to “the deception of perceptions” (Feldman, 2012, p. 117). Adherents of this theory hypothesize this trend is cyclical, with current media influencing future creators to conceive even gorier concepts. However, many others claim that aggression is not rooted in an individual’s hobbies, and there is no scientific data to back up an existing correlation between the two phenomena.

Most critics of violent media use the relatively rapid increase of offensive content in the past couple of decades to prove that a problem exists in this area. This trend, according to this vocal section of the public, demonstrated that the people who consume such materials become desensitized to violence, adopt aggressive tendencies themselves and grow to make even gorier content. However, logically the reason behind the increase of violent imagery lies not with the changing inclinations of creators but instead with the rapidly evolving technology. When the first films appeared, there were no feasible means for their directors to bring violence to screen. That being said, a lot of cinema works back then included fights and scenes with weaponry with only bloody imagery missing as there were no effects to employ for it. Likewise, the earliest video games’ mostly consisted of pixels that were insufficient in bringing the gory scenes of today to screen.

Individuals, calling for the cease of violent media, state that due to the nature of the entertainment people consume, the world is experiencing an increased rate of aggressive crimes. This logic implies that society becomes desensitized to seeing horrific imagery, their moral compass becomes skewed, and they are bound to repeat similar offenses in real life. However, there is no data to back this up as nowadays society “is enjoying, at least statistically, the safest times our species has known since we evolved 300,000 years ago” (Salopek, 2020, para. 14). The reality is that people no longer experience certain horrors like witch trials and excessive legal tortures, and tragedies like mass genocide and death by nuclear weapons occur at a lower rate. A lot of the crimes mentioned above occurred during the years when media did not exist to influence individuals to act on their aggressive urges.

With the outcries against violent media, researchers started collecting scientific data relating to this topic. Most of the findings discover a correlation between gory content and aggressive tendencies. However, this correlation was revealed to be inverse, which not only disproves peoples’ theories on the topic but establishes the positive impact violent media has on an individual’s mind and life in general. For instance, a study revealed that the televised Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), which showcases quite bloody imagery, has caused “systematic and economically meaningful reductions in violent crime” (Lindo et al., 2019, p. 22). This effect increases proportionally with the runtime allotted to the show. Likewise, “long-term exposure to violent videovideo gamesssociated with reduced hostile feelings and depression” (Villani, 2018, p. 90). This is achieved due to the catharsis of stress relief through the means of media.

With easy access to news, people learn about violent crimes committed all over the world. As a way of rationalizing this reality, many individuals turn to blablamedia for the effect they can have on one’s mind. However, there is no data backing up an increase in crime in comparison to the past when films and video games did not yet exist. Likewise, while research shows that there is an existing correlation between aggression and violent content, it is inverse with such media having a positive effect on people.

Feldman, R. S. (2012). Psychology and your life. McGraw-Hill Education.

Lindo, J. M., Swensen, I. D, & Waddell, G. R. (2019). Persistent effects of violent media content . The University of Oregon. 

Salopek, P. (2020). Is the world becoming more violent? National Geographic.  

Villani, D., Carissoli, C., Triberti, S., Marchetti, A., Gilli, G., & Riva, G. (2018). Videogames for emotion regulation: A systematic review. Games Health Journal, 7 (2), 85-99.

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The Impact of Electronic Media Violence: Scientific Theory and Research

L. rowell huesmann.

The University of Michigan

Since the early 1960s research evidence has been accumulating that suggests that exposure to violence in television, movies, video games, cell phones, and on the internet increases the risk of violent behavior on the viewer’s part just as growing up in an environment filled with real violence increases the risk of them behaving violently. In the current review this research evidence is critically assessed, and the psychological theory that explains why exposure to violence has detrimental effects for both the short run and long run is elaborated. Finally, the size of the “media violence effect” is compared with some other well known threats to society to estimate how important a threat it should be considered.

One of the notable changes in our social environment in the 20 th and 21st centuries has been the saturation of our culture and daily lives by the mass media. In this new environment radio, television, movies, videos, video games, cell phones, and computer networks have assumed central roles in our children’s daily lives. For better or worse the mass media are having an enormous impact on our children’s values, beliefs, and behaviors. Unfortunately, the consequences of one particular common element of the electronic mass media has a particularly detrimental effect on children’s well being. Research evidence has accumulated over the past half-century that exposure to violence on television, movies, and most recently in video games increases the risk of violent behavior on the viewer’s part just as growing up in an environment filled with real violence increases the risk of violent behavior. Correspondingly, the recent increase in the use of mobile phones, text messaging, e-mail, and chat rooms by our youth have opened new venues for social interaction in which aggression can occur and youth can be victimized – new venues that break the old boundaries of family, neighborhood, and community that might have protected our youth to some extent in the past. These globe spanning electronic communication media have not really introduced new psychological threats to our children, but they have made it much harder to protect youth from the threats and have exposed many more of them to threats that only a few might have experienced before. It is now not just kids in bad neighborhoods or with bad friends who are likely to be exposed to bad things when they go out on the street. A ‘virtual’ bad street is easily available to most youth now. However, our response should not be to panic and keep our children “indoors” because the “streets” out there are dangerous. The streets also provide wonderful experiences and help youth become the kinds of adults we desire. Rather our response should be to understand the dangers on the streets, to help our children understand and avoid the dangers, to avoid exaggerating the dangers which will destroy our credibility, and also to try to control exposure to the extent we can.

Background for the Review

Different people may have quite different things in mind when they think of media violence. Similarly, among the public there may be little consensus on what constitutes aggressive and violent behavior . Most researchers, however, have clear conceptions of what they mean by media violence and aggressive behavior.

Most researchers define media violence as visual portrayals of acts of physical aggression by one human or human-like character against another. This definition has evolved as theories about the effects of media violence have evolved and represents an attempt to describe the kind of violent media presentation that is most likely to teach the viewer to be more violent. Movies depicting violence of this type were frequent 75 years ago and are even more frequent today, e.g., M, The Maltese Falcon, Shane, Dirty Harry, Pulp Fiction, Natural Born Killers, Kill Bill . Violent TV programs became common shortly after TV became common in American homes about 55 years ago and are common today, e.g., Gunsmoke, Miami Vice, CSI, and 24. More recently, video games, internet displays, and cell phone displays have become part of most children’s growing-up, and violent displays have become common on them, e.g., Grand Theft Auto, Resident Evil, Warrior .

To most researchers, aggressive behavior refers to an act that is intended to injure or irritate another person. Laymen may call assertive salesmen “aggressive,” but researchers do not because there is no intent to harm. Aggression can be physical or non-physical. It includes many kinds of behavior that do not seem to fit the commonly understood meaning of “violence.” Insults and spreading harmful rumors fit the definition. Of course, the aggressive behaviors of greatest concern clearly involve physical aggression ranging in severity from pushing or shoving, to fighting, to serious assaults and homicide. In this review he term violent behavior is used to describe these more serious forms of physical aggression that have a significant risk of seriously injuring the victim.

Violent or aggressive actions seldom result from a single cause; rather, multiple factors converging over time contribute to such behavior. Accordingly, the influence of the violent mass media is best viewed as one of the many potential factors that influence the risk for violence and aggression. No reputable researcher is suggesting that media violence is “the” cause of violent behavior. Furthermore, a developmental perspective is essential for an adequate understanding of how media violence affects youthful conduct and in order to formulate a coherent response to this problem. Most youth who are aggressive and engage in some forms of antisocial behavior do not go on to become violent teens and adults [ 1 ]. Still, research has shown that a significant proportion of aggressive children are likely to grow up to be aggressive adults, and that seriously violent adolescents and adults often were highly aggressive and even violent as children [ 2 ]. The best single predictor of violent behavior in older adolescents, young adults, and even middle aged adults is aggressive behavior when they were younger. Thus, anything that promotes aggressive behavior in young children statistically is a risk factor for violent behavior in adults as well.

Theoretical Explanations for Media Violence Effects

In order to understand the empirical research implicating violence in electronic media as a threat to society, an understanding of why and how violent media cause aggression is vital. In fact, psychological theories that explain why media violence is such a threat are now well established. Furthermore, these theories also explain why the observation of violence in the real world – among the family, among peers, and within the community – also stimulates aggressive behavior in the observer.

Somewhat different processes seem to cause short term effects of violent content and long term effects of violent content, and that both of these processes are distinct from the time displacement effects that engagement in media may have on children. Time displacement effects refer to the role of the mass media (including video games) in displacing other activities in which the child might engage which might change the risk for certain kinds of behavior, e.g. replacing reading, athletics, etc. This essay is focusing on the effects of violent media content, and displacement effects will not be reviewed though they may well have important consequences.

Short-term Effects

Most theorists would now agree that the short term effects of exposure to media violence are mostly due to 1) priming processes, 2) arousal processes, and 3) the immediate mimicking of specific behaviors [ 3 , 4 ].

Priming is the process through which spreading activation in the brain’s neural network from the locus representing an external observed stimulus excites another brain node representing a cognition, emotion, or behavior. The external stimulus can be inherently linked to a cognition, e.g., the sight of a gun is inherently linked to the concept of aggression [ 5 ], or the external stimulus can be something inherently neutral like a particular ethnic group (e.g., African-American) that has become linked in the past to certain beliefs or behaviors (e.g., welfare). The primed concepts make behaviors linked to them more likely. When media violence primes aggressive concepts, aggression is more likely.

To the extent that mass media presentations arouse the observer, aggressive behavior may also become more likely in the short run for two possible reasons -- excitation transfer [ 6 ] and general arousal [ 7 ]. First, a subsequent stimulus that arouses an emotion (e.g. a provocation arousing anger) may be perceived as more severe than it is because some of the emotional response stimulated by the media presentation is miss-attributed as due to the provocation transfer. For example, immediately following an exciting media presentation, such excitation transfer could cause more aggressive responses to provocation. Alternatively, the increased general arousal stimulated by the media presentation may simply reach such a peak that inhibition of inappropriate responses is diminished, and dominant learned responses are displayed in social problem solving, e.g. direct instrumental aggression.

The third short term process, imitation of specific behaviors, can be viewed as a special case of the more general long-term process of observational learning [ 8 ]. In recent years evidence has accumulated that human and primate young have an innate tendency to mimic whomever they observe [ 9 ]. Observation of specific social behaviors around them increases the likelihood of children behaving exactly that way. Specifically, as children observe violent behavior, they are prone to mimic it. The neurological process through which this happens is not completely understood, but it seems likely that “mirror neurons,” which fire when either a behavior is observed or when the same behavior is acted out, play an important role [ 10 , 4 ].

Long-term Effects

Long term content effects, on the other hand, seem to be due to 1) more lasting observational learning of cognitions and behaviors (i.e., imitation of behaviors), and 2) activation and desensitization of emotional processes.

Observational learning

According to widely accepted social cognitive models, a person’s social behavior is controlled to a great extent by the interplay of the current situation with the person’s emotional state, their schemas about the world, their normative beliefs about what is appropriate, and the scripts for social behavior that they have learned [ 11 ]. During early, middle, and late childhood children encode in memory social scripts to guide behavior though observation of family, peers, community, and mass media. Consequently observed behaviors are imitated long after they are observed [ 10 ]. During this period, children’s social cognitive schemas about the world around them also are elaborated. For example, extensive observation of violence has been shown to bias children’s world schemas toward attributing hostility to others’ actions. Such attributions in turn increase the likelihood of children behaving aggressively [ 12 ]. As children mature further, normative beliefs about what social behaviors are appropriate become crystallized and begin to act as filters to limit inappropriate social behaviors [ 13 ]. These normative beliefs are influenced in part by children’s observation of the behaviors of those around them including those observed in the mass media.

Desensitization

Long-term socialization effects of the mass media are also quite likely increased by the way the mass media and video games affect emotions. Repeated exposures to emotionally activating media or video games can lead to habituation of certain natural emotional reactions. This process is called “desensitization.” Negative emotions experienced automatically by viewers in response to a particular violent or gory scene decline in intensity after many exposures [ 4 ]. For example, increased heart rates, perspiration, and self-reports of discomfort often accompany exposure to blood and gore. However, with repeated exposures, this negative emotional response habituates, and the child becomes “desensitized.” The child can then think about and plan proactive aggressive acts without experiencing negative affect [ 4 ].

Enactive learning

One more theoretical point is important. Observational learning and desensitization do not occur independently of other learning processes. Children are constantly being conditioned and reinforced to behave in certain ways, and this learning may occur during media interactions. For example, because players of violent video games are not just observers but also “active” participants in violent actions, and are generally reinforced for using violence to gain desired goals, the effects on stimulating long-term increases in violent behavior should be even greater for video games than for TV, movies, or internet displays of violence. At the same time, because some video games are played together by social groups (e.g., multi-person games) and because individual games may often be played together by peers, more complex social conditioning processes may be involved that have not yet been empirically examined. These effects, including effects of selection and involvement, need to be explored.

The Key Empirical Studies

Given this theoretical back ground, let us now examine the empirical research that indicates that childhood exposure to media violence has both short term and long term effects in stimulating aggression and violence in the viewer. Most of this research is on TV, movies, and video games, but from the theory above one can see that the same effects should occur for violence portrayed on various internet sites (e.g., multi-person game sites, video posting sites, chat rooms) and on handheld cell phones or computers.

Violence in Television, Films, and Video Games

The fact that most research on the impact of media violence on aggressive behavior has focused on violence in fictional television and film and video games is not surprising given the prominence of violent content in these media and the prominence of these media in children’s lives.

Children in the United States spend an average of between three and four hours per day viewing television [ 14 ], and the best studies have shown that over 60% of programs contain some violence, and about 40% of those contain heavy violence [ 15 ]. Children are also spending an increasingly large amount of time playing video games, most of which contain violence. Video game units are now present in 83% of homes with children [ 16 ]. In 2004, children spent 49 minutes per day playing video, and on any given day, 52% of children ages 8–18 years play a video game games [ 16 ]. Video game use peaks during middle childhood with an average of 65 minutes per day for 8–10 year-olds, and declines to 33 minutes per day for 15–18 year-olds [ 16 ]. And most of these games are violent; 94% of games rated (by the video game industry) as appropriate for teens are described as containing violence, and ratings by independent researchers suggest that the real percentage may be even higher [ 17 ]. No published study has quantified the violence in games rated ‘M’ for mature—presumably, these are even more likely to be violent.

Meta-analyses that average the effects observed in many studies provide the best overall estimates of the effects of media violence. Two particularly notable meta-analyses are those of Paik and Comstock [ 18 ] and Anderson and Bushman [ 19 ]. The Paik and Comstock meta-analysis focused on violent TV and films while the Anderson and Bushman meta-analysis focused on violent video games.

Paik and Comstock [ 18 ] examined effect sizes from 217 studies published between 1957 and 1990. For the randomized experiments they reviewed, Paik and Comstock found an average effect size ( r =.38, N=432 independent tests of hypotheses) which is moderate to large compared to other public health effects. When the analysis was limited to experiments on physical violence against a person, the average r was still .32 (N=71 independent tests). This meta-analysis also examined cross-sectional and longitudinal field surveys published between 1957 and 1990. For these studies the authors found an average r of .19 (N=410 independent tests). When only studies were used for which the dependent measure was actual physical aggression against another person (N=200), the effect size remained unchanged. Finally, the average correlation of media violence exposure with engaging in criminal violence was .13.

Anderson and Bushman [ 19 ] conducted the key meta-analyses on the effects of violent video games. Their meta-analyses revealed effect sizes for violent video games ranging from .15 to .30. Specifically, playing violent video games was related to increases in aggressive behavior ( r = .27), aggressive affect ( r =.19), aggressive cognitions (i.e., aggressive thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes), ( r =.27), and physiological arousal ( r = .22) and was related to decreases in prosocial (helping) behavior ( r = −.27). Furthermore, when studies were coded for the quality of their methodology, the best studies yielded larger effect sizes than the “not-best” studies.

One criticism sometimes leveled at meta-analyses is based on the “file drawer effect.” This refers to the fact that studies with “non-significant” results are less likely to be published and to appear in meta-analyses. However, one can correct for this problem by estimating how many “null-effect” studies it would take to change the results of the meta-analysis. This has been done with the above meta-analyses, and the numbers are very large. For example, Paik and Comstock [ 18 ] show that over 500,000 cases of null effects would have to exist in file drawers to change their overall conclusion of a significant positive relation between exposure to media violence and aggression.

While meta-analyses are good of obtaining a summary view of what the research shows, a better understanding of the research can be obtained by examining a few key specific studies in more detail.

Experiments

Generally, experiments have demonstrated that exposing people, especially children and youth, to violent behavior on film and TV increases the likelihood that they will behave aggressively immediately afterwards. In the typical paradigm, randomly selected individuals are shown either a violent or non-violent short film or TV program or play a violent or non-violent video game and are then observed as they have the opportunity to aggress. For children, this generally means playing with other children in situations that might stimulate conflict; for adults, it generally means participating in a competitive activity in which winning seems to involve inflicting pain on another person.

Children in such experiments who see the violent film clip or play the violent game typically behave more aggressively immediately afterwards than those viewing or playing nonviolence (20, 21, 22). For example, Josephson (22) randomly assigned 396 seven- to nine-year-old boys to watch either a violent or a nonviolent film before they played a game of floor hockey in school. Observers who did not know what movie any boy had seen recorded the number of times each boy physically attacked another boy during the game. Physical attack was defined to include hitting, elbowing, or shoving another player to the floor, as well as tripping, kneeing, and other assaultive behaviors that would be penalized in hockey. For some children, the referees carried a walkie-talkie, a specific cue that had appeared in the violent film that was expected to remind the boys of the movie they had seen earlier. For boys rated by their teacher as frequently aggressive, the combination of seeing a violent film and seeing the movie-associated cue stimulated significantly more assaultive behavior than any other combination of film and cue. Parallel results have been found in randomized experiments for preschoolers who physically attack each other more often after watching violent videos [ 21 ] and for older delinquent adolescents who get into more fights on days they see more violent films [ 23 ].

In a randomized experiment with violent video games, Irwin & Gross [ 24 ] assessed physical aggression (e.g., hitting, shoving, pinching, kicking) between boys who had just played either a violent or a nonviolent video game. Those who had played the violent video game were more physically aggressive toward peers. Other randomized experiments have measured college students’ propensity to be physically aggressive after they had played (or not played) a violent video game. For example, Bartholow &Anderson [ 25 ] found that male and female college students who had played a violent game subsequently delivered more than two and a half times as many high-intensity punishments to a peer as those who played a nonviolent video game. Other experiments have shown that it is the violence in video games, not the excitement that playing them provokes, that produces the increase in aggression [ 26 ].

In summary, experiments unambiguously show that viewing violent videos, films, cartoons, or TV dramas or playing violent video games “cause” the risk to go up that the observing child will behave seriously aggressively toward others immediately afterwards. This is true of preschoolers, elementary school children, high school children, college students, and adults. Those who watch the violent clips tend to behave more aggressively than those who view non-violent clips, and they adopt beliefs that are more “accepting” of violence [ 27 ].

One more quasi-experiment frequently cited by game manufacturers should be mentioned here. Williams and Skoric [ 28 ] have published the results of a dissertation study of cooperative online game playing by adults in which they report no significant long-term effects of playing a violent game on the adult’s behavior. However, the low statistical power of the study, the numerous methodological flaws (self-selection of a biased sample, lack of an adequate control group, the lack of adequate behavioral measures) make the validity of the study highly questionable. Furthermore, the participants were adults for whom there would be little theoretical reason to expect long-term effects.

Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies

Empirical cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of youth behaving and watching or playing violent media in their natural environments do not test causation as well as experiments do, but they provide strong evidence that the causal processes demonstrated in experiments generalize to violence observed in the real world and have significant effects on real world violent behavior. As reported in the discussion of meta-analyses above, the great majority of competently done one-shot survey studies have shown that children who watch more media violence day in and day out behave more aggressively day in and day out [ 18 ]. The relationship is less strong than that observed in laboratory experiments, but it is nonetheless large enough to be socially significant; the correlations obtained are usually are between .15 and .30. Moreover, the relation is highly replicable even across researchers who disagree about the reasons for the relationship [e.g., 29 ] and across countries [ 30 , 31 ].

Complementing these one-time survey studies are the longitudinal real-world studies that have shown correlations over time from childhood viewing of media violence to later adolescent and adult aggressive behavior [ 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 ]; for reviews see [ 4 , 27 , 33 ]. This studies have shown that early habitual exposure to media violence in middle-childhood predicts increased aggressiveness 1 year, 3 years, 10 years, 15 years, and 22 years later in adulthood, even controlling for early aggressiveness. On the other hand, behaving aggressively in childhood is a much weaker predictor of higher subsequent viewing of violence when initial violence viewing is controlled, making it implausible that the correlation between aggression and violent media use was primarily due to aggressive children turning to watching more violence [ 31 , 32 , 33 ]. As discussed below the pattern of results suggests that the strongest contribution to the correlation is the stimulation of aggression from exposure to media violence but that those behaving aggressively may also have a tendency to turn to watching more violence, leading to a downward spiral effect [ 13 ].

An example is illustrative. In a study of children interviewed each year for three years as they moved through middle childhood, Huesmann et al. [ 31 ] found increasing rates of aggression for both boys and girls who watched more television violence even with controls for initial aggressiveness and many other background factors. Children who identified with the portrayed aggressor and those who perceived the violence as realistic were especially likely to show these observational learning effects. A 15-year follow-up of these children [ 33 ] demonstrated that those who habitually watched more TV violence in their middle-childhood years grew up to be more aggressive young adults. For example, among children who were in the upper quartile on violence viewing in middle childhood, 11% of the males had been convicted of a crime (compared with 3% for other males), 42% had “pushed, grabbed, or shoved their spouse” in the past year (compared with 22% of other males), and 69% had “shoved a person” when made angry in the past year (compared with 50% of other males). For females, 39% of the high-violence-viewers had “thrown something at their spouse” in the past year (compared with 17% of the other females), and 17% had “punched, beaten, or choked” another adult when angry in the past year (compared with 4% of the other females). These effects were not attributable to any of a large set of child and parent characteristics including demographic factors, intelligence, parenting practices. Overall, for both males and females the effect of middle-childhood violence viewing on young adult aggression was significant even when controlling for their initial aggression. In contrast, the effect of middle-childhood aggression on adult violence viewing when controlling for initial violence viewing was not-significant, though it was positive.

Moderators of Media Violence Effects

Obviously, not all observers of violence are affected equally by what they observe at all times. Research has shown that the effects of media violence on children are moderated by situational characteristics of the presentation including how well it attracts and sustains attention, personal characteristics of the viewer including their aggressive predispositions, and characteristics of the physical and human context in which the children are exposed to violence.

In terms of plot characteristics, portraying violence as justified and showing rewards (or at least not showing punishments) for violence increase the effects that media violence has in stimulating aggression, particularly in the long run [ 27 , 36 , 37 ]. As for viewer characteristics that depend on perceptions of the plot, those viewers who perceive the violence as telling about life more like it really is and who identify more with the perpetrator of the violence are also stimulated more toward violent behavior in the long run [ 27 , 30 , 33 , 38 ]. Taken together these facts mean that violent acts by charismatic heroes, that appear justified and are rewarded, are the violent acts most likely to increase viewer’s aggression.

A number of researchers have suggested that, independently of the plot, viewers or game players who are already aggressive should be the only one’s affected. This is certainly not true. While the already aggressive child who watches or plays a lot of violent media may become the most aggressive young adult, the research shows that even initially unaggressive children are made more aggressive by viewing media violence [ 27 , 32 , 33 ]. Long term effects due appear to be stronger for younger children [ 3 , 14 ], but short term affects appear, if anything, stronger for older children [ 3 ] perhaps because one needs to have already learned aggressive scripts to have them primed by violent displays. While the effects appeared weaker for female 40 years ago [ 32 ], they appear equally strong today [ 33 ]. Finally, having a high IQ does not seem to protect a child against being influenced [ 27 ].

Mediators of Media Violence Effects

Most researchers believe that the long term effects of media violence depend on social cognitions that control social behavior being changed for the long run. More research needs to completed to identify all the mediators, but it seems clear that they include normative beliefs about what kinds of social behaviors are OK [ 4 , 13 , 27 ], world schemas that lead to hostile or non-hostile attributions about others intentions [ 4 , 12 , 27 ], and social scripts that automatically control social behavior once they are well learned [ 4 , 11 , 27 ].

This review marshals evidence that compelling points to the conclusion that media violence increases the risk significantly that a viewer or game player will behave more violently in the short run and in the long run. Randomized experiments demonstrate conclusively that exposure to media violence immediately increases the likelihood of aggressive behavior for children and adults in the short run. The most important underlying process for this effect is probably priming though mimicry and increased arousal also play important roles. The evidence from longitudinal field studies is also compelling that children’s exposure to violent electronic media including violent games leads to long-term increases in their risk for behaving aggressively and violently. These long-term effects are a consequence of the powerful observational learning and desensitization processes that neuroscientists and psychologists now understand occur automatically in the human child. Children automatically acquire scripts for the behaviors they observe around them in real life or in the media along with emotional reactions and social cognitions that support those behaviors. Social comparison processes also lead children to seek out others who behave similarly aggressively in the media or in real life leading to a downward spiral process that increases risk for violent behavior.

One valid remaining question is whether the size of this effect is large enough that one should consider it to be a public health threat. The answer seems to be “yes.” Two calculations support this conclusion. First, according to the best meta-analyses [ 18 , 19 ] the long term size of the effect of exposure to media violence in childhood on later aggressive or violent behavior is about equivalent to a correlation of .20 to .30. While some might argue that this explains only 4% to 9% of the individual variation in aggressive behavior, as several scholars have pointed out [ 39 , 40 ], percent variance explained is not a good statistic to use when predicting low probability events with high social costs. For example, a correlation of 0.3 with aggression translates into a change in the odds of aggression from 50/50 to 65/35 -- not a trivial change when one is dealing with life threatening behavior[ 40 ].

Secondly, the effect size of media violence is the same or larger than the effect size of many other recognized threats to public health. In Figure 1 from Bushman and Huesmann [ 41 ], the effect sizes for many common threats to public health are compared with the effect that media violence has on aggression. The only effect slightly larger than the effect of media violence on aggression is that of cigarette smoking on lung cancer.

The Relative Strength of Known Public Health Threats.

In summary, exposure to electronic media violence increases the risk of children and adults behaving aggressively in the short-run and of children behaving aggressively in the long-run. It increases the risk significantly, and it increases it as much as many other factors that are considered public health threats. As with many other public health threats, not every child who is exposed to this threat will acquire the affliction of violent behavior, and many will acquire the affliction who are not exposed to the threat. However, that does not diminish the need to address the threat.

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How Violent Media Can Impact Your Mental Health

Cynthia Vinney, PhD is an expert in media psychology and a published scholar whose work has been published in peer-reviewed psychology journals.

Steven Gans, MD is board-certified in psychiatry and is an active supervisor, teacher, and mentor at Massachusetts General Hospital.

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• Violent Media & Aggresssion
• Controversy
• Violent Media & Mental Health
• How to Help Your Child

When to Seek Therapy

One of the most studied—and most controversial—topics in media psychology is the impact of violent media on consumers, especially children. Violence in is movies, on television, in video games, and on the internet. It's also included in content aimed at kids, tweens, and teens, and therefore, it's no surprise that psychologists, parents, and media consumers, in general, are concerned about the impact it has on people.

As a result, ever since the advent of television decades ago, psychologists have investigated the possibility of a link between the consumption of violent media and increases in real-life aggression.

This article will explore the research on this topic including arguments for and against an association. In addition, this article will examine newer research that has found a relationship between exposure to violent content, especially via news media, and mental health issues, such as depression and anxiety .

Does Consuming Violent Content Lead to Increased Aggression?

Studies have consistently shown that media violence has an impact on real-life aggression . These studies use a diverse set of methods and participants, leading many experts on the impact of media violence to agree that aggression increases as a result of media violence consumption.

However, that doesn't mean exposure to media violence drives consumers to murder or other particularly violent acts. These studies explore different kinds of aggression, making the association the research has established between violent media and aggression more nuanced than it initially appears.

Evidence for a Link Between Violent Content and Aggression

Many experiments in labs have provided evidence that demonstrates that short-term exposure to violent media increases aggression in children, teenagers, and young adults. However, aggression doesn't always mean physical aggression. It can also mean verbal aggression , such as yelling insults, as well as thinking aggressive thoughts or having aggressive emotions.

There Varying Degrees of Aggression

Moreover, even physical aggression exists on a continuum from a light shove to something far more dangerous. As a result, people may become more aggressive immediately following exposure to media violence but that aggression manifests itself in a variety of different ways, a majority of which wouldn't be considered particularly dangerous.

Consuming Violent Media During Childhood May Result in Adult Aggression

More disturbing are the few longitudinal studies that have followed people over decades and have shown that frequent exposure to media violence in childhood results in adult aggression even if people no longer consume violent media as adults.

For example, one study found that frequent exposure to violent television at age 8 predicted aggressive behavior at ages 19 and 30 for male, but not female, participants. This effect held even after controlling for variables like social class, IQ , and initial aggressiveness.

Similarly, another study that surveyed 329 participants between the ages of 6 and 9 found that 15 years later the exposure of both males and females to television violence in childhood predicted increased aggression in adulthood. In particular, the 25% of study participants who viewed the most media violence in childhood were the most likely to be much more aggressive in adulthood.

These individuals exhibited a range of behaviors including:

• Shoving their spouses
• Beating people up
• Committing crimes

This was especially true if they identified with aggressive characters and felt that television violence was realistic when they were children.

These findings suggest that frequent early exposure to television violence can have a powerful impact on individuals over time and well into their adult lives.

Why Is This Topic So Controversial?

So if there's so much research evidence for a link between media violence and real-world aggression, why is the debate over this topic ongoing? Part of the issue is one of definition.

Studies often define violence and aggression in very different ways and they use different measures to test the association, making it hard to replicate the results. Moreover, many researchers edit together media for lab experiments , creating a situation where participants must watch and react to media that bears minimal resemblance to anything they'd actually consume via TV, movies, or the internet.

As a result, even when these experiments find media violence causes aggression, the extent to which it can be generalized to the population as a whole is limited.

Of course, it would be naïve to think that consuming media violence has no impact on people, but it appears it may not be the most powerful influence. The effect of media violence is likely to vary based on other factors including personality traits, developmental stage, social and environmental influences, and the context in which the violence is presented.

It's also important to recognize that not all aggression is negative or socially unacceptable. One study found that a relationship between exposure to television violence and an increase in positive aggression, or aggression that isn't intended to cause harm, in the form of participation in extreme or contact sports.

Does Consuming Violent Media Lead to Mental Health Issues?

While psychologists have been studying the association between the consumption of violent media and increased aggression for well over 50 years, more recently, some have turned their attention to the impact of media violence on mental health concerns.

Consumption of Violent Media May Lead to Anxiety

Studies have demonstrated that there's a correlation between exposure to media violence and increased anxiety and the belief that the world is a scary place. For instance, an experimental investigation found that late adolescents who were exposed to a violent movie clip were more anxious than those who watched a nonviolent clip.

These findings suggest that the regular consumption of violent media could lead to anxiety in the long-term .

Constant Exposure to Violent Media Via Technology May Lead to Poorer Mental Health

Today, the violence shown on the news media may especially impact people's mental health. New technology means that violent events, including terrorist attacks, school shootings , and natural disasters, can be filmed and reported on immediately, and media consumers all over the world will be exposed to these events almost instantly via social media or news alerts on their smartphones and other devices.

Moreover, this exposure is likely to be intense and repeated due to the need to fill a 24-hour news cycle. Studies have shown that this kind of exposure, especially to acts of terrorism, has the potential to lead to depression , anxiety, stress reactions, substance use, and even post-traumatic stress (PTSD).

Plus, those who take in more images of a disaster tend to be more likely to experience negative mental health consequences. For example, in a study conducted shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001, people who viewed more television news reports about what happened in the seven days after the event had more symptoms of PTSD than those who had viewed less television news coverage.

How to Cope With the Impact of Media Violence

Violence will continue to be depicted in the media and, for most adults, there's nothing wrong with watching a violent horror or action movie or playing a violent video game, as long as it doesn't impair your mental health or daily functioning.

However, if you feel you're being negatively impacted by the violence depicted in the media, especially after a disaster that's getting constant coverage on the news, the first solution is to stop engaging with devices that could lead to further exposure.

This means turning off the TV, and for anyone who frequently looks at the news on their computers or mobile devices, adjusting any settings that could lead you to see more images of a violent event.

How You Can Help Your Child

For parents concerned about children's exposure to violent media, the solution isn't to attempt to prevent children from consuming violence altogether, although limiting their exposure is valuable.

Instead, parents should co-view violent media with their children and then talk about what they see. This helps children become discerning media consumers who can think critically about the content they read, watch, and play.

Similarly, when a disturbing event like a school shooting happens it's valuable to discuss it with children so they can express their emotions and parents can put the incident in the context of its overall likelihood.

If a parent notices their child seems depressed or anxious after frequent exposure to media violence or an adult notices their mental health is suffering due to regular consumption of violent media, it may be valuable to seek the help of a mental health professional .

Anderson CA, Berkowitz L, Donnerstein E et al. The Influence of Media Violence on Youth .  Psychological Science in the Public Interest . 2003;4(3):81-110. doi:10.1111/j.1529-1006.2003.pspi_1433.x

Huesmann LR, Eron LD.  Television And The Aggressive Child: A Cross-National Comparison . Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.; 1986.

Huesmann LR, Moise-Titus J, Podolski C-L, Eron LD. Longitudinal relations between children's exposure to TV violence and their aggressive and violent behavior in young adulthood: 1977-1992 .  Dev Psychol . 2003;39(2):201-221. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.39.2.201

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Slotsve T, del Carmen A, Sarver M, Villareal-Watkins RJ. Television Violence and Aggression: A Retrospective Study.  Southwest Journal of Criminal Justice . 2008;5(1):22-49.

Madan A, Mrug S, Wright RA. The Effects of Media Violence on Anxiety in Late Adolescence .  J Youth Adolesc . 2013;43(1):116-126. doi:10.1007/s10964-013-0017-3

Pfefferbaum B, Newman E, Nelson SD, Nitiéma P, Pfefferbaum RL, Rahman A. Disaster Media Coverage and Psychological Outcomes: Descriptive Findings in the Extant Research .  Curr Psychiatry Rep . 2014;16(9). doi:10.1007/s11920-014-0464-x

Ahern J, Galea S, Resnick H, Vlahov D. Television Images and Probable Posttraumatic Stress Disorder After September 11: The Role of Background Characteristics, Event Exposures, and Perievent Panic .  Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease . 2004;192(3):217-226. doi:10.1097/01.nmd.0000116465.99830.ca

The Conversation. Here's How Witnessing Violence Harms Children's Mental House .

By Cynthia Vinney, PhD Cynthia Vinney, PhD is an expert in media psychology and a published scholar whose work has been published in peer-reviewed psychology journals.

The Facts on Media Violence

By Vanessa Schipani

Posted on March 8, 2018

In the wake of the Florida school shooting, politicians have raised concern over the influence of violent video games and films on young people, with the president claiming they’re “shaping young people’s thoughts.” Scientists still debate the issue, but the majority of studies show that extensive exposure to media violence is a risk factor for aggressive thoughts, feelings and behaviors.

The link between media violence and mass shootings is yet more tenuous. Compared with acts of aggression and violence, mass shootings are relatively rare events, which makes conducting conclusive research on them difficult.

President Donald Trump first raised the issue during a meeting on school safety with local and state officials, which took place a week after the shooting  at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The shooter, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, reportedly obsessively played violent video games.

Trump, Feb. 22: We have to look at the Internet because a lot of bad things are happening to young kids and young minds, and their minds are being formed. And we have to do something about maybe what they’re seeing and how they’re seeing it. And also video games. I’m hearing more and more people say the level of violence on video games is really shaping young people’s thoughts. And then you go the further step, and that’s the movies. You see these movies, they’re so violent.

Trump  discussed the issue again with members of Congress on Feb. 28 during another meeting on school safety. During that discussion, Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn claimed mothers have told her they’re “very concerned” that “exposure” to entertainment media has “desensitized” children to violence.

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley also said during the meeting: “[Y]ou see all these films about everybody being blown up. Well, just think of the impact that makes on young people.”

The points Trump and members of Congress raise aren’t unfounded, but the research on the subject is complex. Scientists who study the effect of media violence have taken issue with how the popular press has portrayed their work, arguing that the nuance of their research is often left out.

In a 2015 review of the scientific literature on video game violence, the American Psychological Association elaborates on this point.

APA, 2015: News commentators often turn to violent video game use as a potential causal contributor to acts of mass homicide. The media point to perpetrators’ gaming habits as either a reason they have chosen to commit their crimes or as a method of training. This practice extends at least as far back as the Columbine massacre (1999). … As with most areas of science, the picture presented by this research is more complex than is usually depicted in news coverage and other information prepared for the general public.

Here, we break down the facts — nuance included — on the effect of media violence on young people.

Is Media Violence a Risk Factor for Aggression?

The 2015 report by the APA on video games is a good place to start. After systematically going through the scientific literature, the report’s authors “concluded that violent video game use has an effect on aggression.”

In particular, the authors explain that this effect manifests as an increase  in aggressive behaviors, thoughts and feelings and a decrease  in helping others, empathy and sensitivity to aggression. Though limited, evidence also suggests that “higher amounts of exposure” to video games is linked to “higher levels of aggression,” the report said.

The report emphasized that “aggression is a complex behavior” caused by multiple factors, each of which increases the likelihood that an individual will be aggressive. “Children who experience multiple risk factors are more likely to engage in aggression,” the report said.

The authors came to their conclusions because researchers have consistently found the effect across three different kinds of studies: cross-sectional studies, longitudinal studies and laboratory experiments. “One method’s limits are offset by another method’s strengths,” the APA report explains, so only together can they be used to infer a causal relationship.

Cross-sectional studies find correlations between different phenomena at one point in time. They’re relatively easy to conduct, but they can’t provide causal evidence because correlations can be spurious . For example, an increase in video game sales might correlate with a decrease in violent crime, but that doesn’t necessarily mean video games prevent violent crime. Other unknown factors might also be at play.

Longitudinal panel studies collect data on the same group over time, sometimes for decades. They’re used to investigate long-term effects, such as whether playing video games as a child might correlate with aggression as an adult. These studies also measure other risk factors for aggression, such as harsh discipline from parents, with the aim of singling out the effect of media violence. For this reason, these studies provide better evidence for causality than cross-sectional studies, but they are more difficult to conduct.

Laboratory experiments manipulate one phenomenon — in this case, exposure to media violence — and keep all others constant. Because of their controlled environment, experiments provide strong evidence for a causal effect. But for the same reason, laboratory studies may not accurately reflect how people act in the real world.

This brings us to why debate still exists among scientists studying media violence. Some researchers have found that the experimental evidence backing the causal relationship between playing video games and aggression might not be as solid as it seems.

Last July, Joseph Hilgard , an assistant professor of psychology at Illinois State University, and others published a study  in the journal Psychological Bulletin that found that laboratory experiments on the topic may be subject to publication bias. This means that studies that show the effect may be more likely to be published than those that don’t, skewing the body of evidence.

After Hilgard corrected for this bias, the effect of violent video games on aggressive behavior and emotions did still exist, but it was reduced, perhaps even to near zero. However, the effect on aggressive thoughts remained relatively unaffected by this publication bias. The researchers also found that cross-sectional studies weren’t subject to publication bias. They didn’t examine longitudinal studies, which have shown that youth who play more violent video games are more likely to report aggressive behavior over time.

Hilgard looked at a 2010 literature  review  by Craig A. Anderson , the director of the Center for the Study of Violence at Iowa State University, and others. Published in Psychological Bulletin,  this review influenced the APA’s report.

In response, Anderson took a second look at his review and found that the effect of violent video games on aggression was smaller than he originally thought, but not as small as Hilgard found. For this reason, he argued the effect was still a “societal concern.”

To be clear, Hilgard is arguing that there’s more uncertainty in the field than originally thought, not that video games have no effect on aggression. He’s also  not the first  to find that research on video games may be suffering from publication bias.

But what about movies and television? Reviews of the literature on these forms of media tend to be less recent, Kenneth A. Dodge , a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, told us by email.

Dodge, also one of the authors of the 2015 APA study, pointed us to one 1994 review of the literature on television published in the journal Communication Research that concluded that television violence also “increases aggressiveness and antisocial behavior.” Dodge told us he’s “confident” the effect this analysis and others found “would hold again today.”

Dodge also pointed us to a 2006 study that reviewed the literature on violent video games, films, television and other media together. “Most contemporary studies start with the premise that children are exposed [to violence] through so many diverse media that they start to group them together,” said Dodge.

Published in  JAMA Pediatrics , the review found that exposure to violent media increases the likelihood of  aggressive behavior, thoughts and feelings. The review also found media decreases the likelihood of helping behavior. All of these effects were “modest,” the researchers concluded. 

Overall, most of the research suggests media violence is a risk factor for aggression, but some experts in the field still question whether there’s enough evidence to conclusively say there’s a link.

Is Violent Media a Risk Factor for Violence?

There’s even less evidence to suggest media violence is a risk factor for criminal violence.

“In psychological research, aggression is usually conceptualized as behavior that is intended to harm another,” while, “[v]iolence can be defined as an extreme form of physical aggression,” the 2015 APA report explains . “Thus, all violence is aggression, but not all aggression is violence.”

The APA report said studies have been conducted on media violence’s relationship with “criminal violence,” but the authors “did not find enough evidence of sufficient utility to evaluate whether” there’s a solid link to violent video game use.

This lack of evidence is due, in part, to the fact that there are ethical limitations to conducting experiments on violence in the laboratory, especially when it comes to children and teens, the report explains. That leaves only evidence from cross-sectional studies and longitudinal studies. So what do those studies say?

One longitudinal study , published in the journal Developmental Psychology in 2003, found that, out of 153 males, those who watched the most violent television as children were more likely 15 years later “to have pushed, grabbed, or shoved their spouses, to have responded to an insult by shoving a person” or to have been “to have been convicted of a crime” during the previous year. Girls who watched the most violent television were also more likely to commit similar acts as young women. These effects persisted after controlling for other risk factors for aggression, such as parental aggression and intellectual ability.

A 2012 cross-sectional  study that Anderson, at Iowa State, and others published in the journal  Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice  did find that the amount of violent video games juvenile delinquents played correlated with how many violent acts they had committed over the past year. The violent acts included gang fighting, hitting a teacher, hitting a parent, hitting other students and attacking another person.

However, a 2008 review of the literature published in the journal Criminal Justice and Behavior concluded that “ the effects of exposure to media violence on criminally violent behavior have not been established.” But the authors clarify: “Saying that the effect has not been established is not the same as saying that the effect does not exist.”

In contrast to the APA report, Anderson and a colleague argue in a 2015 article published in American Behavioral Scientist  that “research shows that media violence is a causal risk factor not only for mild forms of aggression but also for more serious forms of aggression, including violent criminal behavior.”

Why did Anderson and his colleagues come to different conclusions than the APA? He told us that the APA “did not include the research literature on TV violence,” and excluded “several important studies on video game effects on violent behavior published since 2013.”

In their 2015 article, Anderson and his colleague clarify that, even if there is a link, it “does not mean that violent media exposure by itself will turn a normal child or adolescent who has few or no other risk factors into a violent criminal or a school shooter.” They add, “Such extreme violence is rare, and tends to occur only when multiple risk factors converge in time, space, and within an individual.”

Multiple experts we spoke with did point to one factor unique to the United States that they argue increases the risk of mass shootings and lethality of violence in general — access to guns.

For example, Anderson told us by email: “There is a pretty strong consensus among violence researchers in psychology and criminology that the main reason that U.S. homicide rates are so much higher than in most Western democracies is our easy access to guns.”

Dodge, at Duke, echoed Anderson’s point.”The single most obvious and probably largest difference between a country like the US that has many mass shootings and other developed countries is the easy access to guns,” he said.

So while scientists disagree about how much evidence is enough to sufficiently support a causal link between media violence and real world violence, Trump and other politicians’ concerns aren’t unfounded.

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is also based at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center. Hilgard, now at Illinois State, was a post doctoral fellow at the APPC.

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Media Violence Effects on Children, Adolescents and Young Adults

BY: CRAIG A. ANDERSON, MA, PhD

I killed my first Klingon in 1979. It took place in the computer center at Stanford University, where I was playing a new video game based on the Star Trek television series. I was an "early adopter" of the new technology of video games, and continued to be so for many years, first as a fan of this entertainment medium, and later as a researcher interested in the question of what environmental factors influence aggressive and violent behavior.

Of course, like most young men and women of that era, I had grown up witnessing thousands of killings and other acts of aggression in a wide array of television shows and films. Today's youth are even more inundated with media violence than past generations, mostly from entertainment sources but also from news and educational media. And even though the public remains largely unaware of the conclusiveness of more than six decades of research on the effects of exposure to screen media violence, the scientists most directly involved in this research know quite a bit about these effects.

The briefest summary of hundreds of scientific studies can be boiled down to two main points. First, exposure to media violence is a causal risk factor for physical aggression, both immediately after the exposure and months, even years, later. Second, in the absence of other known risk factors for violence, high exposure to media violence will not turn a normal well-adjusted child or adolescent into a mass killer.

SOME DEFINITIONS One reason for much of the confusion and debate among even highly educated citizens, health care professionals and even a few scientists is that when media violence researchers use certain terms and concepts, they have somewhat different meanings than when the general public uses the same words.

By "aggression," researchers mean "behavior that is intended to harm another person who does not wish to be harmed." Thus, hitting, kicking, pinching, stabbing and shooting are types of physical aggression.

Playing soccer or basketball or even football with energy and confidence are not usually considered acts of aggression, even though that is what most coaches mean when they exhort their charges to "play aggressively." Somehow, the phrase "play assertively" doesn't have the same ring to it.

By "violent behavior," most modern aggression and violence scholars mean "aggressive behavior (as defined above) that has a reasonable chance of causing harm serious enough to require medical attention." Note that the behavior does not have to actually cause the harm to be classified as violent; shooting at a person but missing still qualifies as a violent behavior.

By "media violence" we mean scenes and story lines in which at least one character behaves aggressively towards at least one other character, using the above definition of "aggression," not the definition of "violence." Thus, television shows, movies, and video games in which characters fight (Power Rangers, for example), or say mean things about each other (often called relational aggression), or kill bad guys, all are instances of media violence, even if there is no blood, no gore, no screaming in pain. By this definition, most modern video games rated by the video game industry as appropriate for children — up to 90 percent, by some estimates — are violent video games.

AGGRESSION AND VIOLENCE Short-term and long-term effects of violent media use on aggressive behavior have been demonstrated by numerous studies across age, culture, gender, even personality types. Overall, the research literature suggests that media violence effects are not large, but they accumulate over time to produce significant changes in behavior that can significantly influence both individuals and society.

For example, one of the longest duration studies of the same individuals found that children exposed to lots of violent television shows at age 8 later became more violent adults at age 30, even after statistically controlling for how aggressive they were at age 8.

Similar long-term effects (up to three years, so far) on aggressive and violent behavior have been found for frequent exposure to violent video games. One six-month longitudinal study found that frequent violent video game play at the beginning of a school year was associated with a 25 percent increase in the likelihood of being in a physical fight during that year, even after controlling for whether or not the child had been in a fight the previous year.

Short-term experimental studies, in which children are randomly assigned to either a violent or nonviolent media exposure condition for a brief period, conclusively demonstrate that the media violence effects are causal. In one such study, for example, children who played a child-oriented violent video game (i.e., no blood, gore, screaming …) later attempted to deliver 47 percent more high-intensity punishments to another child than did children who had been randomly assigned to play a nonviolent video game. Even cartoonish media violence increases aggression.

In recent years, there have been several intervention studies designed to test whether reducing exposure to screen violence over several months or longer can reduce inappropriate aggressive behavior. These randomized control experiments have found that, yes, children and adolescents randomly assigned to the media intervention conditions show a decrease in aggression relative to those in the control conditions.

HOW MEDIA VIOLENCE INCREASES AGGRESSION How does exposure to media violence lead to increased aggressive behavior? Media violence scholars have identified several basic psychological processes involved. They differ somewhat for short-term versus long-term effects, but they all involve various types of learning.

Short-term effects are those that occur immediately after exposure. The main ways that media violence exposure increases aggression in the short term are:

• Direct imitation of the observed behavior
• Observational learning of attitudes, beliefs and expected benefits of aggression
• Increased excitation
• Priming of aggression-related ways of thinking and feeling

In essence, for at least a brief period after viewing or playing violent media, the exposed person thinks in more aggressive ways, feels more aggressive, perceives that others are hostile towards him or her and sees aggressive solutions as being more acceptable and beneficial.

The short-term effects typically dissipate quickly. However, with repeated exposure to violent media, the child or adolescent "learns" these short-term lessons in a more permanent way, just as practicing multiplication tables or playing chess improves performance on those skills. That is, the person comes to hold more positive beliefs about aggressive solutions to conflict, develops what is sometimes called a "hostile attribution bias" (a tendency to view ambiguous negative events in a hostile way) and becomes more confident that an aggressive action on their part will work.

There also is growing evidence that repeated exposure to blood, gore and other aspects of extremely violent media can lead to emotional desensitization to the pain and suffering of others. In turn, such desensitization can lead to increased aggression by removing one of the built-in brakes that normally inhibits aggression and violence. Furthermore, this desensitization effect reduces the likelihood of pro-social, empathetic, helping behavior when viewing a victim of violence.

Interestingly, these same basic learning and priming effects account for the fact that exposure to nonviolent, pro-social media can lead to increased pro-social behavior.

SCREEN TIME EFFECTS For a number of years, the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended very strict limits on children's exposure to any types of screen media, including TVs and computers, primarily because of concern about attention deficits. For example, they recommend that children under the age of 2 years have no exposure to electronic screens, even nonviolent media. Recent research with children, adolescents and young adults suggests that both nonviolent and violent media contribute to real-world attention problems, such as attention deficit disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Furthermore, these attention problems are strongly linked to aggressive behavior, especially impulsive types of aggression.

Another emerging problem with video game usage goes by various addiction-related labels, such as video game addiction, internet addiction and internet/gaming disorder. Research across multiple countries and various measures of problematic game use suggests that about 8 percent of "gamers" have serious problems with their gaming habit. That is, their gaming activities interfere with significant aspects of their lives, such as interpersonal relationships, school or work activities. This newer research literature suggests that for some individuals, video game problems look much like gambling addiction.

MAGNITUDE OF HARM News media often report exaggerated claims about "the" cause of the most recent violent tragedy, whether it is a school shooting or another mass killing. Sometimes the cause that is hyped by these stories is violent video games; other times it is mental illness, or gun control, or lack of gun control.

Behavioral scientists (and reasonably thoughtful people in general) know that human behavior is complex, and it is affected by many variables. Violence researchers in particular know that such extreme events as homicide cannot be boiled down to a single cause. Instead, behavioral scientists (including violence scholars) rely on what is known as risk and resilience models, or risk and protective factors.

All consequential behavior is influenced by dozens (maybe hundreds) of risk and protective factors. In the violence domain, there are dozens of known risk and protective factors. Growing up in a violent household or seeing lots of violence in one's neighborhood are two such risk factors. Growing up in a nonviolent household and having warm, caring parents who are highly involved with child rearing are protective factors. From this perspective, exposure to media violence is one known risk factor for later inappropriate aggression and violence. It is not the most important risk factor; joining a violent gang is a good candidate for that title. But it also isn't the least important risk factor.

Indeed, some studies suggest that media violence exposure carries about the same risk potential as having abusive parents or antisocial parents. One major difference from other known risk factors for later aggression and violence is that parents and caregivers can relatively easily and inexpensively reduce a child's exposure to media violence.

WHY BELIEVE THIS ARTICLE? It is easy to find very vocal critics of the mainstream summary that I have presented in this article. A simple web search will generate links to any number of them. Many of the critics are supported by the media industries in one way or another, many are heavy users of violent media and so feel threatened by violence research (much like cigarette smokers once felt threatened by cancer research), some are threatened by anything they see as impinging on free-speech rights, and many are simply ignorant about the science. But, a few appear to have relevant scientific credentials. So, a reasonable question for a parent or health care professional to ask is why believe that exposure to media violence creates harmful effects, rather than maintain the much more comfortable position that there are no harmful effects.

The simple answer is this: Every major professional scientific body that has conducted reviews of the scientific literature has come to the same conclusion. This group includes the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the U.S. Surgeon General and the International Society for Research on Aggression, among others. I have posted these and other, similar reports online. 1

In 1972, former U.S. Surgeon General Jesse Steinfeld, MD, testified before the U.S. Senate on his assessment of the research on TV violence and behavior: "It is clear to me that the causal relationship between televised violence and antisocial behavior is sufficient to warrant appropriate and immediate remedial action," he said. "There comes a time when the data are sufficient to justify action. That time has come." 2

In response to one or two vocal critics of the mainstream research community and perhaps to pressure from other groups, the American Psychological Association created a new media violence assessment panel in 2013 to assess the association's 2005 statement and update it. They took a very unusual step to avoid any appearance of bias by excluding all major mainstream media violence scholars from the panel. Instead, the panel was composed of reputable psychological science scholars with expertise in developmental, social and related psychology domains, along with leading meta-analysis statistical experts. Their report, released in 2015, confirmed what the mainstream media violence research community has been saying for years: There are real and harmful effects of violent media.

Violent media are neither the harmless fun that the media industries and their apologists would like you to believe, nor are they the cause of the downfall of society that some alarmists proclaim. Nonetheless, electronic media in the 21st century dominate many children's and adolescents' waking hours, taking more time than any other activity, even time in school and interactions with parents. Thus, electronic media have become important socializing agents, agents that have a measurable impact.

Many of the effects of nonviolent electronic media are positive, but the vast majority of violent media effects are negative. Parents and other caregivers can mitigate the harmful effects of violent media in several ways, such as by increasing positive or "protective" factors in the child's environment, and by reducing exposure to violent media. This is not an easy task, but it can be done with little or no expense. The benefits of doing so are healthier, happier, more successful children, adolescents and young adults.

CRAIG A. ANDERSON is Distinguished Professor, Department of Psychology, and director of the Center for the Study of Violence, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa.

• http://public.psych.iastate.edu/caa/StatementsonMediaViolence.html .
• Jesse Feldman, statement in hearings before Subcommittee on Communications of Committee on Commerce, United States Senate, Serial #92-52 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972) 25-27.

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Essay on Media and Violence

Introduction

Research studies indicate that media causes violence and plays a role in desensitization, aggressive behavior, fear of harm, and nightmares. Examples of media platforms include movies, video games, television, and music. Violence in media has also been associated with health concerns. The youth have been the most common victims of media exposure and thus stand higher chances of exposure to violence (Anderson, 2016). In the contemporary world, violence in media platforms has been growing, reaching heightened levels, which is dangerous for society. When you turn on the television, there is violence, social media platforms; there is violence when you go to the movies; there is violence. Studies indicate that an average person in the United States watches videos for nearly five hours in a day. In addition, three-quarters of television content contain some form of violence, and the games being played today have elements of violence. This paper intends to evaluate the concept of media messages and their influence on violent and deviant behaviors. Television networks and video games will be considered.

The Netflix effect involves the behavior of staying home all day, ordering food, and relaxing the couch to watch Netflix programs (McDonald & Smith-Rowsey, 2016). Netflix and binge-watching have become popular among the younger generation and thus are exposed to different kinds of content being aired. Studies indicate that continuous exposure to violent materials has a negative effect on the aggressive behavior of individuals. Netflix is a global platform in the entertainment industry (Lobato, 2019). Although, the company does not have the rights to air in major countries such as China, India, and Japan, it has wide audience. One of the reasons for sanctions is the issues of content being aired by the platform, which may influence the behaviors of the young generation. The primary goal of Netflix is entertainment; it’s only the viewers who have developed specific effects that affect their violent behaviors through imitation of the content.

Television Networks

Television networks focus on feeding viewers with the latest updates on different happenings across the globe. In other instances, they focus on bringing up advertisements and entertainment programs. There is little room for violent messages and content in the networks unless they are airing movie programs, which also are intended for entertainment. However, there has been evidence in the violence effect witnessed in television networks. Studies called the “Marilyn Monroe effect” established that following the airing of many suicidal cases, there has been a growth in suicides among the population (Anderson, Bushman, Donnerstein, Hummer, & Warburton, 2015). Actual suicide cases increased by 2.5%, which is linked to news coverage regarding suicide. Additionally, some coverages are filled with violence descriptions, and their aftermath with may necessitate violent behaviors in the society. For instance, if televisions are covering mass demonstrations where several people have been killed, the news may trigger other protests in other parts of the country.

Communications scholars, however, dispute these effects and link the violent behaviors to the individuals’ perception. They argue that the proportion of witnessing violent content in television networks is minimal. Some acts of violence are associated with what the individual perceives and other psychological factors that are classified into social and non-social instigators (Anderson et al., 2015). Social instigators consist of social rejection, provocation, and unjust treatment. Nonsocial instigators are physical objects present, which include weapons or guns. Also, there are environmental factors that include loud noises, overcrowding, and heat. Therefore, there is more explanation of the causes of aggressive behaviors that are not initiated by television networks but rather a combination of biological and environmental factors.

Video games

Researchers have paid more attention to television networks and less on video games. Children spend more time playing video games. According to research, more than 52% of children play video games and spend about 49 minutes per day playing. Some of the games contain violent behaviors. Playing violent games among youth can cause aggressive behaviors. The acts of kicking, hitting, and pinching in the games have influenced physical aggression. However, communication scholars argue that there is no association between aggression and video games (Krahé & Busching, 2015). Researchers have used tools such as “Competition Reaction Time Test,” and “Hot Sauce Paradigm” to assess the aggression level. The “Hot Sauce Paradigm” participants were required to make hot sauce tor tasting. They were required to taste tester must finish the cup of the hot sauce in which the tester detests spicy products. It was concluded that the more the hot sauce testers added in the cup, the more aggressive they were deemed to be.

The “Competition Reaction Time Test” required individuals to compete with another in the next room. It was required to press a button fast as soon as the flashlight appeared. Whoever won was to discipline the opponent with loud noises. They could turn up the volume as high as they wanted. However, in reality, there was no person in the room; the game was to let individuals win half of the test. Researchers intended to test how far individuals would hold the dial. In theory, individuals who punish their opponents in cruel ways are perceived to be more aggressive. Another way to test violent behaviors for gamer was done by letting participants finish some words. For instance, “M_ _ _ ER,” if an individual completes the word as “Murder” rather than “Mother,” the character was considered to possess violent behavior (Allen & Anderson, 2017). In this regard, video games have been termed as entertainment ideologies, and the determination of the players is to win, no matter how brutal the game might be.

In this paper, fixed assumptions were used to correlate violent behaviors and media objects. But that was not the case with regards to the findings. A fixed model may not be appropriate in the examination of time-sensitive causes of dependent variables. Although the model is applicable for assessing specific entities in a given industry, the results may not be precise.

Conclusion .

Based on the findings of the paper, there is no relationship between violent behaviors and media. Netflix effect does not influence the behavior of individuals. The perceptions of the viewers and players is what matters, and how they understand the message being conveyed. Individuals usually play video games and watch televisions for entertainment purposes. The same case applies to the use of social media platforms and sports competitions. Even though there is violent content, individuals focus on the primary objective of their needs.

Analysis of sources

The sources have been thoroughly researched, and they provide essential information regarding the relationship between violent behaviors and media messages. Studies conducted by various authors like Krahé & Busching did not establish any relationship between the two variables. Allen & Anderson (2017) argue that the models for testing the two variables are unreliable and invalid. The fixed assumptions effect model was utilized, and its limitations have been discussed above. Therefore, the authors of these references have not been able to conclude whether there is a connection between violence and media messages.

Allen, J. J., & Anderson, C. A. (2017). General aggression model.  The International Encyclopedia of Media Effects , 1-15.

Anderson, C. A. (2016). Media violence effects on children, adolescents and young adults.  Health Progress ,  97 (4), 59-62.

Anderson, C. A., Bushman, B. J., Donnerstein, E., Hummer, T. A., & Warburton, W. (2015). SPSSI research summary on media violence.  Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy ,  15 (1), 4-19.

Krahé, B., & Busching, R. (2015). Breaking the vicious cycle of media violence use and aggression: A test of intervention effects over 30 months.  Psychology of Violence ,  5 (2), 217.

Lobato, R. (2019).  Netflix nations: the geography of digital distribution . NYU Press.

McDonald, K., & Smith-Rowsey, D. (Eds.). (2016).  The Netflix effect: Technology and entertainment in the 21st century . Bloomsbury Publishing USA.

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The Effects of Media Violence on People Argumentative Essay

Despite the fact that there is some evidence that, lengthy exposure to violent media increases aggressive behavior in people, this exposure alone cannot cause people to become violent and aggressive for there is no established connection between violent entertainment and violent behavior.

On the contrary, there is substantial evidence that violent, belligerent, and emotionally delinquent environments lead to aggressive behavior more than watching violent films does. This may be a contentious issue with numerous people linking violent media to aggressive behavior. Nevertheless, there are other people, as the writer, who think that exposure to violent media alone does not lead to increase in aggressive behavior. I strongly refute the claims that exposure to violent media leads to increase in violent behavior.

First, the research methodologies used to study and analyze the link between violent media exposure and aggressive behavior are more than often flawed. According to Gauntlett, mainstream researchers approach the issue of violent media from the perspective that media causes violence (23).

With this ingrained deeply in researchers’ minds, they seek to establish violent reactions only in the context of media consumption. The anticipated results in such a case would obviously place blame increase in aggressive behavior on exposure to violent media. This should not be the case as research should start by focusing on the violence itself; regardless of the cause, and then try to mire its causes.

This approach would work better to produce results that are more credible. Moreover, most of the studies focus on children without using controls like adults. Most of these studies seek to qualify a “barely-concealed conservative ideology” (Gauntlett 45). To complicate the whole issue, what researchers may consider as ‘violent’ in research premises, may not be violent in context of the viewer. Additionally, the research objects are based on former studies that used blemished methodologies not founded on theory.

Supporters of allegations that exposure to violent media leads to aggressive behavior may be quick to point out cases like the media attention generated by Michael Johnson case. It is true that this case attracted much publicity but these critics forget to indicate that this is not always the case.

Human beings are not copycats and they will draw a clear line between what is good and bad. It is true that there are copycat violent acts like murder and suicide among others. However, Barker posits that, these copycat violent acts occur mostly in abnormal fostering (56). Research indicates that, raising people in violent or aggressive environments will have great impact in life than mere watching of given movies or listening to some music. There is enough evidence to show that most of copycat murderers are mentally unstable.

It beats logic to assume that simply because people have seen violent acts, they will go ahead and commit them. Millions of people watch violent movies all over the world; therefore, if exposure to violent media increases aggressive behaviors then we would have millions of aggressive people world allover.

This is not the case and research indicates that, only few people engage in aggressive behaviors as a direct result of watching violent movies. Moreover, people who watch these movies in their childhood grow up to be normal responsible people (Ward 87). Therefore, to claim that exposure to violent media leads to increased aggressive behavior hold no substance to qualify it.

People like Elizabeth Newson have drawn a strong link between violent media and violent lifestyle. For instance, in 1994, Elizabeth made reported that the movie Child’s Play 3 caused two boys, aged 10, to murder James Bulger. Nevertheless, in response to these allegations, Barker indicates that, Elizabeth’s accounts relied greatly on opinions and press instead of relying on results from an independent research (63).

This points out how flawed research on media violence can be. In the murder of James Bulger, there was no evidence that the two boys had watched the alleged film. Unfortunately, after something pops into the media, people accept it without taking a step further to investigate the credibility of the information. Ward posits that, many researches on violent media have failed to establish adverse effects and that most of the hypotheses have proved to be null (12).

There are cases whereby people have reacted violently even without watching violent scenes in the media. For instance, after watching the evening news, a father kills his entire family using a gun; he is arrested and brought before the judge; he explains that his actions emanated from the ‘bad’ news he watched.

He claims that, the news was too bad that he saw no need of anyone living. Is this case different from any other violent behaviors arising from violent media? The answer is of course no! In this incidence, the man must have been abnormal and his actions cannot be explained entirely under the pretext of ‘bad news’ he watched.

Similarly, the few cases of violent behavior arising from watching violent films cannot be explained by the fact that the assailant had watched a violent film. There has to be something more than watching violent films and this is where researchers fail in their work.

According to Barker, there are other factors as socio-cultural issues in criminal cases. These factors cannot be dictated by watching of violent media only. “We must look beyond a specific film to think about the specific context in which it has been consumed, and the wider social background of the people” (29).

We cannot explicitly say that this issue on media can cause or cannot cause aggressive behavior. The best thing is to probe what other factors as social issues make some people perceive and use media in a way that will bring aggression to them. The bottom line is; influence from violent media alone cannot lead to increase in aggressive behavior.

To cap it all, the research on violent media is minimal and often utilizes flawed methodologies. Questioning the credibility of these methodologies, Ward said, “The real puzzle is that anyone looking at the research evidence in this field could draw any conclusions about the pattern let alone argue with such confidence and even passion that it demonstrates the harm of violence on television, in film and in video games” (34).

According to Barker, if exposure to violent media leads to increase in aggressive behavior, then America would be a violent state (68) because in contemporary times, the media is littered with violent scenes of sundry and diversity. In the US, crime up surged between 1965 and 1980 and this was attributed to violent media. The authorities responded appropriately and crime rates leveled around 1992. Since then, violent media is allover and there is no equal increase in crime rates.

The way out of this long-standing misconception about violent media is to conduct more conclusive research works. Research should be independent and should use credible sources not just opinions and sentiments from the press.

Most of the films that are violent have political themes and this may explain in part why many people do not like them. Nevertheless, people should be informed about what is happening around them. In this regard, we should not criminalize some informative and entertaining sentiments in the media like violent films or movies.

Therefore, we can see that, although evidence suggests prolonged exposure to violent media increases aggressive behavior in people, that exposure alone does not cause people to become violent and aggressive for two main reasons. First, there is no established connection between violent entertainment and violent behavior. Additionally, there is enough evidence to show that violent environment leads to violent behaviors more than violent media does.

Works Cited

Barker, Mitchell. The Newson Report: a Case Study in Common Sense in III Effects in The Media /Violence Debate. London: Routledge, 2001.

Gauntlett, Dean. Ten Things Wrong with the ‘Effects Model’, Approaches to Audiences – A Reader , 1998. Web.

Ward, Michael. Video games, Crime & Violence, 2007. Web.

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Violent Media and Aggressive Behavior in Children

Does watching violence on tv, in movies, or video games promote aggression.

Posted January 8, 2018 | Reviewed by Lybi Ma

With recent worry about mass shootings and gun violence in the U.S., one of the questions that always comes up is whether violent media promotes violent or aggressive behavior. This is something that is especially important to think about for parents, as violent content is common on television and in movies, on the Internet, and in some of the most popular children’s video games.

Although the issue is often presented as controversial in the media, we have pretty good evidence that exposure to violent media does make children more aggressive. And we’ve known it for decades. In one of the most well-known studies on this topic (published back in the 1960s), researchers showed preschoolers a video of an adult playing with an inflatable doll. In the video, the children watched as the adult sat on the doll, punched it in the nose, hit the doll on the head with a mallet, and kicked it repeatedly. After watching the video, the children were brought into a playroom with the same doll and lots of other toys.

As predicted, the kids who watched the aggressive video imitated what they saw—they beat the doll with a mallet, and they punched and kicked it. What was most surprising was that the children found new and creative ways to beat up the doll, and they played more aggressively with the other toys in the room as well. Children didn’t just imitate the aggressive behaviors they saw; seeing aggressive behaviors caused these kids to play more aggressively in general (Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1963).

Very recent research suggests that these effects can become particularly problematic when guns are involved. Researchers from Ohio State University brought pairs of 8- to 12-year-old children into a lab and showed them a 20-minute version of a popular PG-rated movie—either the Rocketeer (1991) or National Treasure (2004). In the edited movie, the children either saw that actual movie footage, which contained characters using guns, or they watched a version where the guns were edited out. They were then presented with a large room that contained various toys including Legos, nerf guns, and games.

Not surprisingly, the children who watched the movie with the guns played more aggressively than children who watched the movie with the guns edited out, consistent with previous research.

But that wasn’t all; the study had a bit of a twist. The playroom also contained a closed cabinet, wherein one of the drawers was a real 0.38-caliber handgun. The gun was not loaded, and it was modified so that it couldn’t fire bullets. It was also modified so that it kept track of the number of times the trigger was pulled hard enough that the gun would have gone off.

The children weren’t told that there was a gun in the room, the researchers were simply interested in whether the children would find the gun on their own, and if they did, what they’d do with it.

About 83 percent of the kids in the study found the gun, and most of them played with it. Of the kids who found it, 27 percent immediately gave it to the experimenter and the experimenter took it out of the room. Of the remaining 58 percent of kids who found the gun, 42 percent played with it in various ways. Importantly, almost none of the kids who watched the movie clip without guns ever pulled the trigger.

The kids who watched the movie that contained gun footage were more likely to pull the trigger of the real gun; on average, they pulled it about two to three times and spent four to five times longer holding it when compared to kids who watched the movie with no gun footage. What’s scarier is that some of these kids pulled the trigger more than a few times; in fact, they pulled it quite a lot. Some pulled the trigger over 20 times; one child pointed the gun out the window at people walking down the street; and another child pressed the gun to another child’s temple and pulled the trigger (Dillon, & Bushman, 2017).

This research suggests that violent media can cause aggressive behavior in children and that this behavior can be incredibly problematic if violent media includes guns. Indeed, children are incredibly curious about guns, and they can have difficulty understanding the difference between real and toy guns (Benjamin, Kepes, & Bushman, 2017).

In fact, there is research suggesting that guns don’t need to be featured in the media to cause aggression ; the mere presence of a gun is enough to elicit aggressive behavior. For example, having a gun sitting on a table makes people behave more aggressively (Berkowitz & LePage, 1967), and recent work shows that having a gun in the car makes people (even non-gun owners) more aggressive drivers (Bushman, Kerwin, Whitlock, & Weisenberger, 2017). These effects even exist in children, whether or not the gun is real or is just a toy (Benjamin Kepes, & Bushman, 2017).

So can viewing violent media cause more aggression in children? The answer based on this research is a very clear yes. And it’s worth pointing out that the videos children saw in the studies I described were pretty mild; they either saw a homemade video of someone playing roughly with a doll, or 20-minute clips of movies that were rated PG. The violence in these videos pales in comparison to the violence in other full-length movies and in video games, which have also been linked to increases in aggressive behavior (Anderson & Bushman, 2001).

The clear implication from here is that if you don’t want your children to be aggressive or violent, keep them away from violent media, and even away from toy weapons that might encourage aggressive behavior all on their own. That doesn’t mean you won’t end up with an aggressive child—some children are just naturally more aggressive than others—but it’s certainly a start.

Anderson, C. A., & Bushman, B. J. (2001). Effects of violent video games on aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, aggressive affect, physiological arousal, and prosocial behavior: A meta-analytic review of the scientific literature. Psychological Science, 12 , 353-359.

Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S. A. (1963). Imitation of film-mediated aggressive models. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 66, 3-11.

Berkowitz, L., & LePage, A. (1967). Weapons as aggression-eliciting stimuli. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 7(2p1 ), 202-207.

Dillon, K. P., & Bushman, B. J. (2017, in press). Effects of Exposure to Gun Violence in Movies on Children’s Interest in Real Guns. JAMA pediatrics.

Bushman, B. J., Kerwin, T., Whitlock, T., & Weisenberger, J. M. (2017). The weapons effect on wheels: Motorists drive more aggressively when there is a gun in the vehicle. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 73, 82-85.

Benjamin Jr, A. J., Kepes, S., & Bushman, B. J. (2017, in press). Effects of weapons on aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, hostile appraisals, and aggressive behavior: a meta-analytic review of the weapons effect literature. Personality and Social Psychology Teview.

Vanessa LoBue, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology at Rutgers University-Newark.

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The role of media violence in violent behavior

Affiliation.

• 1 Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106-1248, USA. [email protected]
• PMID: 16533123
• DOI: 10.1146/annurev.publhealth.26.021304.144640

Media violence poses a threat to public health inasmuch as it leads to an increase in real-world violence and aggression. Research shows that fictional television and film violence contribute to both a short-term and a long-term increase in aggression and violence in young viewers. Television news violence also contributes to increased violence, principally in the form of imitative suicides and acts of aggression. Video games are clearly capable of producing an increase in aggression and violence in the short term, although no long-term longitudinal studies capable of demonstrating long-term effects have been conducted. The relationship between media violence and real-world violence and aggression is moderated by the nature of the media content and characteristics of and social influences on the individual exposed to that content. Still, the average overall size of the effect is large enough to place it in the category of known threats to public health.

Publication types

• Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.
• Aggression / psychology*
• Mass Media*
• Public Health*
• United States
• Video Games
• Violence / psychology*

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