Desensitisation

Question 1

What is desensitisation?

Answer 1

Where individuals become habituated to violence which reduces their emotional, cognitive and behavioural response so when it occurs at a similar level next time, their emotional response is reduced

Question 2

How can the media cause desensitisation?

Answer 2

Continual use that exposes the player to violence can reduce the impact and revulsion they may have for violence which makes them more likely to act in a violent way because they have a reduced emotional reaction to it

Question 3

Who conducted the first study to support desensitisation?

Answer 3

Drabman and Thomas

Question 4

What did Drabman and Thomas find?

Answer 4

Children became more tolerant of violence in films as the amount of violence they watched increased which supports the desensitisation effect

Question 5

Who conducted the second study to support the desensitisation theory?

Answer 5

Bushman

Question 6

What did Bushman find?

Answer 6

When individuals who were playing a violent video game for only 20 minutes saw someone injured in a fight, they took longer to help than individuals who were playing a non violent game which suggests that the fight didn’t effect them as much emotionally but only shows the short term effects

Question 7

What are four limitations of the desensitisation theory?

Answer 7

• the research is mixed
• individual differences as everyone is exposed to violence in the media but we are not all violent
• ethical issues as in both studies, the children were exposed to violent TV which can have damaging effects
• Benson found no evidence of desensitisation as no correlation was found