Media influences on aggression Flashcards
What is the link between excessive TV viewing and aggression?
- Aggressive behaviour may be linked to viewing excessive amounts of TV, whether the content is violent or not.
- For example, Lindsay Robertson et al measured the TV viewing hours of over 1000 New Zealanders at regular intervals up to 26 years.
- The researchers found that the more time spent watching TV in childhood and adolescence was a reliable predictor of aggressive behaviour in early adulthood ( defined as convictions for aggressive behaviour).
- Excessive time spent watching TV is associated with reduced social interactions and poorer educational achievement. This means the link between excessive viewing and aggression may be indirect and instead linked by reduced social interaction
What is the link between violent film content and aggressive behaviour?
- Viewing violent content is perhaps the most significant media influence on aggressive behaviour.
- Bandura followed up on earlier research by loooking at the effects of aggression viewed on a screen. They replicated their earlier study, except that the children watched a film about a bobo doll being beaten by an adult model, instead of watching it happen in real life
- The outcome was similar, as children imitated the aggressive behaviour of the model. This shows that the social learning processes identified by Bandura operate through media as well as face to face
How may Tv/film effects seem as not strong?
- Other research has shown that the negative effects of Tv/film violence may not be as strong as assumed
- Paik and Comstock carried out a meta - analysis of about 200 studies. They found a positive correlation between viewing Tv/film violence and antisocial behaviour
- However, they estimated that Tv/violence accounted for between 1-10% of the variance in children’s aggressive behaviour. This implies a relatively minor role for Tv and film compared to other sources of aggression
Why might computer games be more powerful than traditional screen - based media?
This is due to:
- The player takes a more active role compared to a relatively passive viewer
- Game - playing is more directly rewarding for the player due to operant conditioning
What limits the usage of lab experiments
- They have the advantage that they demonstrate cause and effect, however they have an ethical disadvantage as they deliberately expose participants to violence to encourage aggressive behaviour. Therefore other methods of aggression have to be used.
What is the lab experiment that studied the effect of computer games?
- A standard lab measure is the Taylor competitive reaction time task (TCTT).
- Participants deliver blasts of white noise at chosen volumes to punish an opponent.
- Bartholow and Anderson found taht student who played a violent computer game for ten minutes selected higher volumes of white noise than students who played a non - violent golfing game
What correlational studies showed the link between computer games and aggression?
- A common finding is that several measures of aggression are positively correlated with time spent playing violent games
- DeLisi argues that the link is so well established that it should be considered to be a public health issue and computer game violence as a significant risk factor
What is a limitation of media influences?
-One limitation is that aggression is defined in various ways.
- For example, the dependent variable in studies on violent behaviour such as volume of white noise blasted at an opponent (Bartholow and Anderson) and criminal convictions (Robertson’s longitudinal study)
- However, violence and aggression are not the same. All violence is aggression but not all aggression is violence
- Additionally, not all aggression or violence is agaisnt the law which limits Robertsons research
- The variation in definitions means that findings of studies are hard to compare
What is a counterpoint of defining aggression?
- There is a meta - analyses that helps define aggression
- Craig Anderson conducted a meta - analysis which included 136 studies defining aggression in different ways such as thoughts, behaviours and feelings.
- The researcher found that exposure to violent computer games was associated with increases in all outcome measures of aggression, in both women and men
- This shows that meta - analyses includes various definitions of aggression, therefore aggression is defined
What is another limitation of media influences?
- Another limitation is that the research area of media influences have unsupported conclusions
- Most of the studies are methodologically weak such as confounding variables and sampling. Even meta - analyses may be poor quality.
- Many studies are correlational so cause and effect conclusions are unjustified.
- Lastly, the experimental studies may lack external validity and can not be generalised to the real world
- This means that research on media influences may be premature and based on studies that lack validity
What is a strength of media influences?
- One strength is that the findings of media influences can be explained using the social learning theory
- Anderson presents the SLT as a theoretical framework as shown as the Bobo doll, the SLT emphasises that if children are exposed to aggression, they will behave aggressively themselves. This therefore can be used for computer games as sources of social learning.
- Children are more likely to imitate aggressive behaviours when seeing them being rewarded, and even more when children identify with on -screen character
- This enhances the validity of the research