Studies that support the idea that
media can cause violence
The Bo-bo doll study
Bandura and Ross
See A/S notes
Williams 1986
Aim:
To discover whether television can cause aggressive
behaviour in a natural experiment.
Method:
• A small community in Canada had only recently been
introduced to television.
• The town was observed before television was installed
and then again, two years later. A school was observed
and also the town on a whole.
• There were two other towns near by where different
numbers of channels were introduced.
• Aggression was measured in school by two class room
assistants that were brought into the class. After a week
they recorded all violent acts they saw.
Conclusions:
• Violent incidents increased after
television had been introduced.
• Children's levels of aggression
had increased for both boys and
girls.
Creating violence a cottage
industry. Park et al (1977)
Aims:
• To discover if violent films can affect aggression
in Belgium and American juvenile delinquents in
a low security institution.
Method:
• Their normal rates of aggressive behaviour were
assessed before exposure to 5 films.
• Boys in one cottage were exposed to 5
commercial films involving violence over a
period of a week.
• Boys in a second cottage were exposed to 5
non-violent films during the same period
Results:
• For the boys who were exposed to
aggressive films their aggressive
behaviour increased in some categories,
but aggression in other categories was
confined to boys who already had a high
level of aggression.
Conclusion:
• Aggression was increased by the violence
observed by participants in the violent
films condition.
Eron (1986)
Aim:
• To see if high levels of media violence in children
correlates with aggressive behaviour as adults.
Method:
• Eron studied 856 grade 3 students (8 year olds) in 1960.
He measured how much violent television they were
exposed to and then how aggressive they were at school.
• In 1971 when the participants were 19 years old he
revisited the participants to see if they had gotten into
trouble with the law when they were older.
• In 1982 he also revisited when they were 30 years old to
see the effect watching violence on television had
caused.
Results:
• In 1960 children who were exposed to violent
television at home behaved more aggressively
in school.
• In 1971 he found that boys who watched violent
television when they were 8 were more likely to
get in trouble with the law as teenagers.
• In 1982 The participants that watched violent
television were more likely to be convicted of
serious crimes. They were also more likely to
use violence to discipline their own children and
to treat their spouse aggressively.
Do Violent Video Games Cause
Aggressive Thoughts And Behaviour?
Anderson, C.A. and Dill, K.E. (2000)
Video games and aggressive thoughts,
feelings and behaviour in the laboratory
and in life
Aim
To investigate the effects of video game
violence, and broaden the understanding
of media violence in general.
The aim was specifically to find evidence to
test the GAAM formulation (General
Affective Aggressive Model)
Method
There were two studies used. Each used
different methods (a correlation and an
experiment).
They did this because each method was
considered to have strengths that would
compliment the other’s weaknesses.
Correlation
 There were two sets of variables correlated.
 1. long term exposure to video game violence and 2. aggressive
behaviour and delinquency.
 There were 227 participants:
 78 males
All Psychology
 149 females
Students
The participants completed self-report questionnaires to measure:
 Aggressive behaviour
 Delinquency
 Irritability and trait aggressiveness
 Amount of time playing video games in general
 Amount of time spent playing violent video games
Pilot Study
• Pilot was conducted to select two video games;
one violent and one non violent.
• The games were Wolfenstein 3D and Myst.
• These games were chosen because they
produced no difference in physiological
measurements as well as in terms of Difficulty,
Enjoyment, Frustration and Action Speed.
• It was important to control physiological arousal
to avoid this becoming an extraneous variable.
Games
• Wolfenstein 3D
• Has an obvious violent
content, realism and
human characters.
• The human hero can
choose from an array of
weaponry.
• The goal is to kill Nazi
guards, advance through
the levels and finally kill
Hitler.
• Myst
• An interactive adventure
game designed to be non
violent.
• A fast paced thinking
game in which players
attempt to align geometric
figures as they fall down
the computer screen.
The Experiment
210 Participants:
• 104 Females
• 106 Males
All Psychology
Undergraduates
Participants were matched on high or low irritability scores, then divided
by gender. Each group was given either violent or non violent video
games to play.
Each game was played 3 times. In the first session the games were
played twice. In the second session a week later the games were
played once. In the first session they completed an active measure
(how they felt) and a world view measure and cognitive measure
(what they were thinking).
After playing the game for the third time the participants played a game
where they were allowed to give their opponent a blast of noise. The
games were played where the participants won and lost the same
number of games. The noise level was used to measure aggression.
Results
• Study 1
• There was a positive
correlation between
the amount of time
spent playing violent
video games and
aggressive
personality and
delinquent behaviour.
• Study 2
• The participants who
played a violent video
game behaved more
aggressively towards
an opponent than
those who played a
non-violent video
game.
Conclusion
Playing a violent video game increases aggression
probably by encouraging aggressive thoughts.
Researchers suggest that long term exposure
might alter behaviour, making them more likely to
have more aggressive thoughts and feelings and
behave aggressively.
The active nature of these games is stronger than
that of watching violent television, parents should be
aware of these potential risks.
Now read your handout on the
St.Helena study to get a different
viewpoint.
The limitations of the
methods used to study the
effects of TV on violence
How do you define media?
Media is a subjective word as some people see video
games, music, DVDs as media as well as the obvious
things like radio, newspapers, TV and magazines. This
is a problem for most of the methods
Laboratory studies
A lab study is a study carried out in a controlled environment. You
manipulate the I.V. and measure the D.V. to establish cause and
effect
Good points
• IV can be isolated and manipulated in order to actually establish a
causal link. It is the only methodology in science that can do this.
Bad points
• Low E.V – measures tend to be removed from every day life. The
environment/task tend to be artifical
• As it’s normally middle class people carrying out these experiments
it is likely to be their view of what aggression is.
• Mostly experiments have small unrepresentative samples- so not
good to generalise to the public.
Correlation studies
• A correlation study is where they look if there is a link between two
separate sets of statistics.
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Weaknesses
Doesn’t show cause and effect
Violent people may choose to watch violent TV instead of the other way
round
Such studies are normally inconsistent because different peoples’ studies
contradict each other.ie one study suggests a link another says there is no
link
If the pp’s are made to complete self reports this is not valid as
psychologists say people see violence as subjective as it means different
thingsto different people.
Strengths
Correlations point to areas that need further research so once a correlation
is found experiments can be designed to eliminate possible causal factors
They are valid in so far as they are usually conducted on real people about
their perceptions of their real experiences and are not artificially set up
situations
Field experiments
• Field experiments are experiments carried out in the pps natural
setting but they are a set up situation unlike a natural experiment
• Strengths
• High E.V as conducted in a natural environment
• Can establish causal links to an extent due to control of some
extraneous variables
• Weaknesses
• Hard to isolate IV as there are lots of variables. So you cannot not
be certain that IV has caused DV
• In case of Parks’ study this was a closed community of young
juvenile offenders.- this means that they were already violent, and
also this isn't a representative view of the society this study shows
you cant always generalise from field experiments.
Natural experiments
• Natural experiments are where the researcher does not manipulate
the IV but takes advantage of a naturally occurring IV.
Good points
• High in E.V as IV hasn’t been manipulated by experimenter
• Often a chance to study a unique situation you may not have even
thought of setting up
Bad points
• Hard to isolate IV as there are many variables E.g. in the William’s
and St Helena studies.- the type of people who live there. If the
minister or teacher had a bias against some programs then people
may not watch them as community leaders have social power.
violent behaviour would be easily detected and could be socially
punished
• Both these experiments had small populations ( poor sample) and
unusual communites so we cannot generalise. E.g. violent
behaviour would be easily detected and socially punished more than
in large cities
Longitudinal studies
• These are usually studies involving the same PP’s over a long
period of time.
Good points
• Representative samples
• See a full developmental picture not possible in any other way
Bad points
• People may drop out over time (attrition) giving a biased result ( also
these are normally the most interesting people.)
• studies contradict each other- some found that there was a link
between TV and the aggression that exists, however some studies
found there was no link and that other variables were better
predictors of aggressiveness.
•
Often one of the other methods are used alongside e.g. self report
questionnaires or observations and so you have the validity issues
you always have with these methods