Explanations of Media Influences on Anti-Social Behaviour Flashcards
Discuss research evidence for SLT on anti-social behaviour - Huesmann et al
Huesmann et al
-Procedure:
Carried out a longitudinal study of 557 boys and girls in Chicago. Children were studies in 1977 when they were aged 5-8 and asked about their favourite programmes and television characters. Popular shows in the 1970s included starsky and hutch, the six million dollar man and the bionic woman. The children were asked which characters they most identified with. In 1991, 398 were followed up in their early twenties. They were asked to identify their three favourite programmes and to say how often they watched them. They were also asked to name three people who knew them well and the researchers carried out a face-to-face or phone interview with one of those people. the friend was asked to comment on how often the participant lost their temper and whether or not they grabbed, hit or shoved other people. Official recors were examined to assess which of the sample has been involved in crimes of all kinds.
-Findings:
The viewing of violent television programmes when children were between 6 and 9 years old correlated significantly with measure of adult aggression in both men and women 15 years later. This correlation was significant for physical aggression in both men and women for ‘indirect’ aggression in women only. The more a child had identified with same sex-violent models, the more likely they were to be aggressive in later life. Men classed as high violence viewers in boyhood had three times the crime conviction rate of low violence viewers.
-Methodological Issues:
Longitudinal studies of this nature are to be commended for the lengthy follow up into adulthood, although participant’s attrition is often an issue.
The use of a range of methods to assess aggressive behaviour in adulthood is also to be commended. Particularly notable use of interviews with named individuals close to the participant.
Sampling bias, this only tells us about children of this age in 1977
-Ethical Issues:
As a correlation study, this avoids many of the ethical issues associated with experimentation in this areas.
Discuss research evidence for SLT on anti-social behaviour - Gunter et al
Procedure:
-Investigated the impact of the introduction of television to a geographically remote community to St Helena, a British colony in the south atlantic with a population of 6,000. In 1993, 2 years before the introduction of TV, Gunter et al studied the children to provide a baseline measure of aggressive behaviour, 23 boys and 24 girls were sampled. Teachers were asked to comment on the levels of antisocial behaviour using a pre-school behaviour checklist. The incidence of anti-social behaviour at this point was very low - “the best behaved children in the world”. In 1995 TV was introduced in the form of CNN, which broadcasts news. Cartoon network was introduced in 1996 and in 1998 the island began to receive Movie Magic, the BBC, Discovery and Supershot. In 1998 children were asked to keep a diary of how much TV they had watched - this was to assess the amount of violence they had been exposed to. Their teachers were again asked to assess the children but this time using the Rutter’s Behaviour Questionnaire.
Findings:
Although Gunter et al found that there was no overall increase in aggressive behaviour post television, specific relationships existed between programme content and anti-social behaviour, this was more noticeable when a large number of cartoons were watched. Children with higher antisocial behaviour scores before television was introduced were most likely to watch a large number of cartoons, implying that children with an interest in violence may select programmes with that sort of content.
Evaluation Issues:
There are a number of issues that need to be considered in relation to this study including: Type of Experiment - Naturalistic (advantages/disadvantages); data collection - Teacher Reports and Behaviour Scale; Ethnocentrism - Other cultural differences which prevent generalisation of results; Reductionism - Other factors that may impact on the results; Sample size; Ethical Issues
Explain cognitive priming in terms of anti-social behaviour
this refers to the activation of existing aggressive thoughts and feelings, and explains why children observe one kind of aggression on television and commit another kind of aggressive act afterwards. Immediately after viewing violent programme, the viewer is primed to respond aggressively because a network of memories involving aggression is retrieved. Frequent exposure to scenes of violence may lead children to store scripts for aggressive behaviour in their memories, and these may be recalled in a later situation if any aspect of the original situation (even a superficial one) is present.
Discuss Research evidence into cognitive priming
Murray et al - Used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to compare the active brain areas, when a sample of eight children watched both violent and non-violent television programmes. In both conditions, the regions that process visual motions were active as would be expected. However when these children watched the violent film, a network of right hemisphere regions was activated. these included the posterior congulate, the amygdala, the interior parietal and the pre-frontal and motor cortices, a network of brain regions that regulate emotion, arousal and attention. As well as this the areas of the brain responsible for storing episodic memories were active, implying that the acts seen may be stored as aggressive scripts for later use.
Discuss desensitisation in terms of anti social behaviour
An alternative explanation for the link between viewing antisocial behaviour and repeating it lies in the effect of viewing on our sensitivity to the suffering of others. It has been suggested that repeated exposure to violence leaves us less sensitive to the state of victims. Anderson et al - define desensitisation as ‘a reduction in distress-related physiological reactivity to observations or thoughts of violence’
One of the reasons we are not more aggressive than we are is because we experience an unpleasant emotional response to seeing people hurt. This is part of our capacity for empathy. Our empathy for people in pain inhibits us from acting aggressively. However if constantly exposed to aggressive acts, physical violence etc then empathetic responses may become dulled and people wouldn’t feel inhibited in the same way.
Discuss research evidence into desensitisation
1) Drabman and Thomas - Children ages 8-10 years were shown a video then placed in a situation where they saw younger children apparently fighting. Those who had seen a violent video took significantly longer to break up the fight.
2) Mullin and Linz - Questioned adult males about their response to sexual and domestic violence and then showed them violent pornography. Three days later their attitudes were assessed again and they showed significantly less empathy with female victims of violence. However 2 days later their attitudes had returned to the same level as the start of the study. Studies like this suggest desensitisation does occur but leave it unclear whether it can have a long-term effect.
Evaluate explanations of Media influence on Antisocial behaviour
1) Research evidence - as outlined above
2) Ecological Validity - The imitation demonstrated in Bandura’s famous bobo doll study is said to be actually quite rare outside of the bandura-style studies using specially prepared videos. there have been anecdotal claims of copycat acts of violence but no real evidence for this. for example, the two boys who murdered James Bulgar were said to be inspired by the video Child’s Play, but Cumberbatch reports that no known link was ever found.
3) Cause and Effect - Many studies report association or correlation between exposure to media violence and anti-social behaviours; such findings can’t show that there is a causal link.
4) Simplistic - Much of the research has focused on people reaction to media violence when they watch it on their own, these studies do not allow for impact that friends and family have on a person’s experience
AID explanations of media influence on anti-social behaviour
Gender Bias:
Research into the effects of the media on aggressive behaviour has focused on acts of male on male physical violence frequently viewed within the artificial setting of the psychology laboratory. There is also no conception of how this focus on on-screen violence may affect male and female viewers responses to the characters and situations depicted. Research has frequently used unrepresentative samples (i.e. male students) and then made generalisations about all viewers. The inherent gender bias is these studies is often hidden behind gender-neutral terms such as ‘college students’ or ‘viewers’ when describing the population from which the sample is drawn.
Simplistic:
Explanations focus on social factors (e.g. SLT) that impact on responses to media violence, therefore they fail to consider the role of other factors that may impact on behaviour such as brain chemistry and genetics.
Ethics:
In testing explanations of the effects of exposure to media violence, ethical considerations have greatly limited the amount of ‘violence’ to which participants may be exposed, particularly if any resultant aggression is believed to persist beyond the time spent within the laboratory. Clearly it would be unacceptable to put people in situations where actual physical violence may be elicited as a result of their participation in this study.
