Mass Media Influence Flashcards
Why are media effects important?
Saturation
What did Huston 1992 estimate about what children had witnessed up to the age of 18?
- Huston 1992 estimated by the age of 18 US children have witnessed 200,000 acts of violence and 8,000 murders on TV alone
- Later estimate up to 40,000 murders (e.g., Crenshaw & Mordock, 2005; Gullotta et al., 2005)
- Does not take into account video games and other media.
Is there an effect of media on aggression and violence?
60 years of research/1000+ papers
- US Supreme Court: Fines selling VVGs to minors
- 2 Amicus Curiae (friend of the court) briefs
- Gruel brief – 13 authors, 102 signees (all scholars)
- Millett brief – 82 signees - scholars, medical scientists, industry representatives, owners, agents
- Deana Pollard Sacks et al (2011) compared track records of the authors/signees for the 2 briefs
What is the Gruel Statement?
Both the American Psychological Association (APA, 2005) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP, 2009) have issued formal statements stating that scientific research on violent video games clearly shows that such games are causally related to later aggressive behavior in children and adolescents.”
Overall, the research data conclude that exposure to violent video games causes an increase in the likelihood of aggressive behavior.
The effects are both immediate and long term. Violent video games have measurable and statistically significant effects on both males and females
What are the psychological processes mentioned in the Gruel statement?
The psychological processes underlying such effects are well understood and include: imitation, observational learning, priming of cognitive, emotional and behavioral scripts, physiological arousal, and emotional desensitization.
In addition to causing an increase in the likelihood of aggressive behavior, violent video games have also been found to increase aggressive thinking, aggressive feelings, physiological desensitization to violence, and to decrease pro-social behavior.”
What are the well researched effects of violent media?
Both short term and long term effects
* Increases in aggressive thoughts, feelings and behaviour
More fearful
* Overestimate likelihood of being a victim
* Age dependent
Emotional desensitisation to violence
* Less concerned about others’ suffering
* Tolerate increasing levels of violence in the world around them
Subtle long-term changes to thinking:
* Hostile attributional bias
* Increase in normative beliefs approving aggression
* Aggressive problem solving scripts for behaviour
Decreased empathy
Decreased prosocial behaviour
What are other factors that may affect violent and aggressive behaviour?
- Violent and fairly aggressive behaviour always has multiple contributing risk factors
- These may include personality traits, type of family and peer environment, access to weapons, mental health issues etc.
- These can be balanced by protective factors
– caring community, warm parenting, peers etc. - No one factor is necessary or sufficient to cause violence BUT
- Media violence exposure is one risk we can change
What are some risk factors for Youth Violence?
What are the correlations between media violence and the public?
The evidence for these links is as strong as that for the contribution of any other studied contributor to community violence - task is not longer to determine effect but to tease out its complexities and develop a process of amelioration and remediation
What are the brain processes for the effect of media?
What was the brain mapping study at the University of Texas?
◦ Pilot fMRI study of 8 children ages 8 to 12
◦ Compared activations of violent and non-violent TV
- 3 video clips tested
- Subjects shown two 3-minute clips of three different types of video: Violent, Non-Violent, and Fixation
What does the brain mapping study at the University of Texas show about impulse control?
- Reduced involvement of prefrontal cortex
- Consistently replicated
- This suggests that when experiencing violent media, the part of the brain that thinks through consequences and inhibits aggressive impulses is ‘turned down’
- See Wang et al 2009; Hummer et al, 2010
What does the brain mapping study at the University of Texas show about the limbic system?
- Activation of limbic system, starting with amygdala
- Increase in emotional responses
- Activation of the ‘old’ parts of brain that respond to threat and prepare us for action, such as fight or flight (do not separate real from virtual)
- Responses may be more automatic, less thought through
What does the brain mapping study at the University of Texas show about memory storage?
- Activation in posterior cingulate
- According to Murray, images of violence seem to be stored in this part of the brain
- Pattern is similar to that found for the storage of trauma memories in PTSD patients
- Such memories are easily recalled and may intrude on thoughts.
What does the brain mapping study at the University of Texas show about emotion processing?
- Significantly more activation in right hemisphere of brain
- Significant emotional processing of seen screen violence emotions
- especially negative emotions (these include anger, jealousy, sadness etc.)
What is the psychological acquisiton related to media violence?
Associative Learning; Pairing of aggressive behaviour with multiple cues
Aggression rewarded and not punished
* Imitation
* Mirror neurons
* Identify with and copy aggressive characters, esp. if attractive, heroic, rewarded, high status etc.
More aggression-related concepts and scripts for behaviour in neural network.
Desensitisation
What is Psychological remediation related to media influence?
- Maximum security forensic hospital.
- Measured aggression in 222 patients for 33 weeks (not guilty by insanity, civil patients with severe behavioural problems, inmates with personality disintegration)
- Removed MTV
- Measured aggression after 22 weeks
- Significant reduction in aggression (see next slide)
