Minor Effects, Major Consequences
Perhaps the largest issue in the field of media violence effects is not whether there is a small-to-moderate effect of media violence on subsequent aggression, but whether this effect is meaningful. A statistically small-to-moderate effect, as found in the existing meta-analyses, can easily lead to misunderstandings in society. That is why it is important to know what such effects mean. A statistically small-to-moderate effect means that there is a small-to-moderate chance of media violence exposure causing aggressive behavior. Based on earlier research, we estimate that 5–10 percent of children are vulnerable to depictions of violence in media.17 Media violence can have other effects, for example, on fear, hyperactivity, creativity, empathy, or impulsive behavior. These effects are not included in our estimated percentages. The question then becomes one of interpretation: is 5–10 percent of children a sufficiently large fraction of all children to warrant concern and potential public policy changes?
A large body of scholars would argue yes—5–10 percent of the population is large enough to warrant concern, certainly when one considers, for example, that 5 percent of American youth (those younger than nineteen) is roughly equivalent to four million American youth who may be affected by media violence. Or similarly, that 10 percent of youth in the UK is roughly equivalent to 1.5 million youth who may act aggressively as a result of media violence.18 These scholars further posit that the effects of media violence are cumulative, and when one considers the risks associated with media violence exposure, societal efforts to mitigate these effects are warranted. On the other hand, there are scholars who argue that these estimates are conflated with other risk factors (for example, an aggressive temperament or harsh familial environments).19 These researchers demonstrate that when holding other risk factors constant, the effect of media violence on aggression is nearly nonexistent. They thus argue that efforts to reduce media violence exposure are misdirected and that, instead, societal efforts should target the “true” risk factors of aggression.
In our own research on media violence and aggression, we interpret the small-to-moderate effect sizes that we usually find for what they are: an aggregate indicator of the relationship between media violence and aggression. We believe that a small-to-moderate statistical effect size may represent two different groups of youth: one that may be strongly influenced by media violence, and another that may be less affected or unaffected. While the group that is strongly influenced is small, it is a minority that we must take seriously; after all, in absolute terms, we could be talking about millions of children worldwide. Simultaneously, we must recognize that most youth are probably unaffected or minimally affected by media violence. It is our role as scholars to provide parents and practitioners with balanced information about media violence effects as well as to counter the moral-panic rhetoric that often accompanies real-world violent tragedies. It is therefore vital for future researchers to investigate which dispositional, developmental, and environmental factors may enhance or reduce children’s vulnerability to media violence effects.
Theories: Why Media Violence Can Lead to Aggression
When triangulating the findings from the majority of existing experimental, correlational, and meta-analytic studies, it becomes clear that there exists—at a minimum—a small relationship between media violence exposure and subsequent direct aggression. The question, however, is why this relationship exists. The scientific literature offers several theories to explain the effects of media violence. We discuss five of these theories below. Some of them predominantly explain the short-term effects of media violence (for example, priming and arousal theories), others the longer term (cognitive script and desensitization theories), and yet others both (social cognitive theory).
Social Cognitive Theory
In chapter 3, we introduced Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory. This theory, with its roots in behaviorism and (later) cognitive psychology, posits that children learn behavior in two ways: by direct experience and by observing others. According to this theory, aggressive behavior, like other behavior, is learned. Young children try out behaviors in their social environment and learn which ones are considered appropriate and which are not. They learn that they can bang away with a hammer in the backyard, but that they are not to hit their sibling with that same hammer. By being punished for undesirable (that is, aggressive) behaviors such as hitting their sibling, as well as by being rewarded for desirable behaviors, they learn what is and is not acceptable and how to control their impulses.
Children can also learn aggressive behavior by observing other people’s behavior and its consequences. In observational learning of this kind, children do not themselves experience reward or punishment, but watch what happens to others. For example, imagine that a child sees his older brother kick the family dog. When the children’s father punishes the brother, the child learns that it is wrong to kick dogs. A different child sees his brother kick the family dog while his friends around him laugh at the yelping dog; that child will acquire a very different set of values. It is not difficult to predict which of the two children is more likely to kick a dog later in life. Every child imitates the role models around him or her. For children, these role models can be found in the family, in their broader social environment, and in the media.
Social cognitive theory (previously known as social learning theory) was developed in the 1960s. Bandura developed and tested his theory in the now-classic “Bobo doll” experiments (see figure 7.1). In one of these experiments, Bandura had a group of preschool-age children watch a movie showing an adult punching and kicking a clownish Bobo doll. As the figure shows, Bobo dolls are life-size plastic dolls with a rounded bottom. They are bottom-weighted so that they always bounce back upright after being knocked down. Bandura divided the preschoolers into three groups. The first group saw the adult male in the movie being rewarded for his aggressive deeds. He was told that he was a “strong champion” and was rewarded with candy and soda. The second group saw the man being punished by being smacked with a rolled-up magazine and told reprovingly “Hey there, you big bully. You quit picking on that clown. I won’t tolerate it.” In the movie shown to the third group, the man was neither punished nor rewarded for his aggressive behavior. Afterward, all children were allowed to play with the Bobo doll featured in the movie. The children in the rewarded condition imitated more aggressive acts than the children who had seen the man being punished and those who had seen the man that experienced no consequences.20
Figure 7.1. The first experiments on the effects of media violence: original pictures of Albert Bandura’s Bobo doll experiments. (Photo courtesy Albert Bandura)
The Bobo experiments, and other comparable studies, tried to explain the process of observational learning, and the importance of whether aggressive behavior in the media is rewarded or punished. Media often portray physical aggression as the only way to resolve problems between people: the “good” guys feel little hesitation about hurting or killing the bad guys, and they are often richly rewarded for their behavior. By depicting aggressive behavior in combination with rewards, social cognitive theory argues that children are more likely to imitate the aggressive behavior they have seen. Furthermore, beyond imitation, Bandura argues that consistent exposure to such content can influence children’s opinions about aggression and shape long-term lessons about the appropriateness of aggression.
Of course, not all children who view rewarded media violence will become aggressive. What might explain individual differences in susceptibility to this type of content? In the 1980s, Bandura updated his theory to place a greater emphasis on youth’s cognitive and self-regulatory processes. While still focusing on the importance of rewarded behaviors, the updated version of social cognitive theory suggests that children’s individual traits (for example, their interest in the content of media, their general level of aggression) and social environment (for example, the attitude toward aggression in the child’s home and peer envir
onment) play an equally crucial role in predicting whether a child is likely to imitate rewarded media violence.21
Desensitization Theory
While social cognitive theory helps explain both short- and long-term effects of media violence, desensitization theory focuses primarily on the long-term effects of media violence on aggressive behavior. According to desensitization theory, youth who are routinely exposed to media violence become habituated to it, and this eventually lowers their inhibitions to displaying aggressive behavior. In other words, the theory assumes that—over time—youth become used to the constant portrayal of violent incidents in the media. As a result, they find the violent content less ethically problematic. And over time, they become indifferent to violence in their everyday surroundings—for example, feeling less upset when other youth fight in the schoolyard, and feeling less inhibited about acting aggressively.22
Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that media violence can dull the responses of children and adults to milder forms of violence (for example, verbal abuse) and more serious ones such as murder. In a study by Daniel Linz and colleagues, a group of young men were shown sexually violent motion pictures for five days in succession. After each showing, the researchers recorded the men’s emotional reactions. The more movies the young men saw, the less intense their emotional response became. They no longer found the movies as objectionable as in the beginning; they also did not find them as violent as they did at first, or as insulting to women.23
More recently, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research has provided evidence to support desensitization. Researchers observed the brain function of boys ages 14–17 in an fMRI scanner while they watched violent film clips. An fMRI scan measures brain activity while a person is performing a task, for example, watching a violent movie. More specifically, it measures oxygen-rich and oxygen-poor blood in different areas of the brain; brighter areas on the images indicate increased oxygen. The argument is that active areas of the brain need more oxygen than less active areas. While the boys viewed the violent film clips, the researchers detected increased oxygen (that is, increased activity) in the brain area assumed to be involved in emotional responses. Interestingly, however, the researchers also found that as the boys saw more violent film clips, the activation diminished. According to the researchers, this was suggestive of a desensitization effect.24
Cognitive Script Theory
Like desensitization theory, cognitive script theory focuses squarely on the long-term effects of media violence. The theory focuses on cognitive scripts, defined as mental structures and sequences for routine activities. By three years of age, children have acquired a large number of scripts. For example, they have scripts to describe how they get ready for bed at night (brush teeth, put on pajamas, read a story, turn off bedroom lights, turn on nightlight) or what happens on someone’s birthday (birthday cake with candles, singing, presents). Although many activities in life vary from occasion to occasion, their basic structure often remains the same. Our familiarity with the basic structure of activities or events is known as a script.
Our cognitive scripts are shaped by everyday events, but also by media experiences. How can media violence influence our scripts? In entertainment media, characters frequently resolve their interpersonal problems by resorting to aggression. Cognitive script theory argues that, over time, consistent exposure to this routine behavior will create an aggressive script in young media users. In other words, for children who consistently view media content that shows aggression to be a means to solving interpersonal problems, over time their own cognitive scripts will indicate that aggression is a common way to solve problems, and these children therefore become more likely to use aggression to solve problems in their everyday life. Cognitive script theory assumes that it takes some time for scripts to form, and so it predicts that aggressive, media-induced scripts that arise in early childhood will stimulate aggressive behavior later in life.25
To date, several studies have been guided by cognitive script theory and have supported predictions arising from it—including a now-classic longitudinal study by Rowell Huesmann and colleagues that examined television violence exposure at ages six and ten and adult aggressive behavior fifteen years later. Using both archival and interview data, the researchers demonstrated a longitudinal association between media violence and later aggression—which was particularly pronounced for those viewers who identified with the television characters and perceived the content to be realistic.26
Priming Theory
Like cognitive script theory, priming theory borrows heavily from cognitive constructs such as scripts and schemata. Schemata are, like scripts, clusters of related concepts in our brains that underpin how we interpret experiences. Scripts consist of one or more schemata associated with a specific routine activity or event. But rather than focusing on long-term effects, priming theory attempts to explain the short-term effects of media violence exposure. Priming theory assumes that the human brain consists of associative networks. Each network is made up of a multitude of nodes (for example, thoughts, ideas, emotions, actions) that are stored in our memory. When an external stimulus (such as a movie scene) stimulates a certain node in an associative network, it may also prime (activate) many other conceptually related nodes.
Leonard Berkowitz posits that media violence exposure may activate certain aggressive nodes such as feelings of pain or frustration, which in turn may activate related nodes such as anger, revenge, and combativeness. In Berkowitz’s view, the aggressive nodes evoked by the media need not be conceptually identical to the observed media content. Because of the brain’s associative network, observed media content can engender a complex set of associations consisting of aggressive ideas, emotions, and actions.27 According to priming theorists, exposure to violent content primes nodes that have a conceptual relationship to violence, and as a result, aggressive nodes in the brain become temporarily more accessible.
A study by Brad Bushman highlights how priming works. Bushman divided participants into two groups. One group watched a nonviolent film clip, and the other watched a clip from Karate Kid III. Afterward, participants were asked to identify whether a set of letters was a real English word or a nonword. Participants were told to press a button as quickly as possible when the letter formed an English word. Half of the English words had aggressive connotations, and the other half did not. Results showed that the participants who watched the Karate Kid III clip had faster reaction times to aggressive words than did the students who saw the nonviolent clip, whose reaction times for aggressive words were the same as for nonaggressive words. In other words, participants who saw the violent clip seemed to recognize aggressive words more quickly. According to Bushman, that was because the violent film had made certain violent nodes temporarily more accessible.28
Importantly, while priming theorists generally focus on the temporary or short-term effects of media violence, the theory posits that short-term effects can eventually lead to long-term change. Initially, a stimulus in the environment (such as watching Karate Kid III) may make an aggressive node temporarily more accessible. This temporary priming, however, can lead to long-lasting effects. Specifically, if certain aggressive nodes are repeatedly primed by a stimulus in our environment, the theory posits that our brain will become increasingly likely to call on these nodes when attempting to understand and interpret media violence. As a result, the aggressive nodes can become chronically accessible, leading to long-term effects of media violence.
Excitation Transfer Theory
Like priming theory, excitation transfer theory attempts to explain the short-term effects of viewing media violence. It assumes that children become physically aroused while watching depictions of violence. This arousal is purely a physical response: increased respiration, elevated heart rate, higher glucose levels, and more active sweat glands. At the most basic level, the theory argues that the physical arousal provoked by a disturbing depiction of violence does not die away
as soon as the movie or program ends. Instead, the arousal functions as a sort of energizer of behavior after viewing—serving to intensify behavior after media use.29 The physical arousal experienced while watching certain types of violent movies may thus cause children to remain agitated afterward, and they will express this agitation in their play and their dealings with other children. Many movies and games combine violence with action, speed, and stirring music. According to excitation transfer theory, children are likely to remain agitated after seeing these movies or playing these games, and as a result, they may play or act aggressively toward others after this media use.
General Aggression Model
Each of the five theories discussed above offers a plausible explanation for how media violence may stimulate aggressive behavior. Unfortunately, we do not know which theory best describes reality. It may be that they are all more or less correct for particular types of media violence and particular types of youth. In 2002, Craig Anderson and Brad Bushman worked to unite these existing theories under a new model—the General Aggression Model (GAM).30 This model encompasses almost all the aforementioned theories on media violence. Moreover, it identifies individual, environmental, and situational factors that may interact to influence three potential routes to aggression: cognitive (for example, aggressive scripts), affective (hostile feelings), and physiological (increases in heart rate). In doing so, the GAM highlights how we process media violence in our brains, how that processing can lead to aggressive behavior, and who is particularly susceptible to media violence.
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