Media Influences - Desensitisation, Disinhibition and Cognitive Priming Flashcards
Desensitisation
the consequence of repeated exposure to violent or aggressive acts, particularly in the media. This causes individuals to be less empathic towards victims and increasingly accept aggression as the ‘social norm’, with reduced physiological responses from
the sympathetic nervous system. This idea was supported by Funk et al (2004), who was concerned about the increasingly common trend in the media to minimise the consequences of aggression.
Weisz and Earls
Found that men who had watched the film Straw Dogs (which includes a graphic and
distressing rape scene) were more accepting of rape myths and less likely to find the defendant guilty when watching
a rape trail re-enactment.
Disinhibition
The process whereby our restraints
towards violence and aggression are lowered, through direct or indirect learning during the process of social learning. The
media is a particularly important influence due to rewarding aggressive behaviour and minimising its negative consequences. This results in new social norms and attitudes towards aggression being developed.
Huesmann - cognitive priming
Suggests that ‘cognitive priming’ describes the idea that, through exposure to a repeated number of aggressive acts being rewarded/vicariously reinforced (SLT), we develop a mental framework to make predictions about how aggression will ‘play out’ in the real world.
The subsequent changes in memory means that we are automatically cognitively primed to anticipate the consequences of aggression.
Greitemeyer
Found that male participants who’d listened
to aggressive songs featuring derogatory comments about women, behaved more aggressively towards a female confederate, compared to those who’d heard gender-neutral lyrics. This suggests that the media may cognitively prime audiences to develop an increasing tolerance and disinhibition towards violence.
+ P - RS for desensitisation
E - Krahe investiagted individuals who
have a history of regularly viewing aggressive acts on TV.
E- He found that they experienced more positive arousal and less anxious arousal when watching examples of aggressive media in a laboratory experiment,
compared to those without such regular viewing.
+ P - Improved understanding of cognitive priming
E - This may increase the effectiveness of treatments tackling the increasing rates of disinhibition towards aggression, as provoked by the media.
E - Bushman and Anderson suggested that regularly watching violent media
reinforces the cognitive scripts within the brain, as well as causing permanent changes within our memory of such events where we sympathise less with the victims and minimise the event’s emotional significance.
L - By challenging these cognitive hostile attribution biases and minimalisation, we are more likely to combat these changing social norms towards aggression.
- P - Does not form a complete explanation of how children learn violence
E - Most children understand that, when watching cartoon violence, it is not possible to punch someone so that their eyes burst out of their sockets.
E - Instead, as Krahe suggested, children observe that these aggressive acts are not
punished, and therefore prepare their own cognitive scripts, through the process of cognitive priming, about what is socially acceptable behaviour.
L - Therefore, cartoon violence is a useful example of how neither social learning theory, nor disinhibition and desensitisation can form complete explanations of how children learn violence.
