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admittedly there is probably a study to support
either side -
III. THE IMPACT OF VIOLENCE IN ENTERTAINMENT MEDIAThe violence to which American children are exposed in the name of entertainment is affecting their values and behavior, according to the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.48 There have been over 3,000 studies assessing the effects of violent entertainment,49 and a majority of the investigations into the impact of media violence on children find that there is a high correlation between exposure to media violence and aggressive and at times violent behavior.50 Researchers have also concluded that a childs exposure to violent entertainment leads to an exaggerated perception of the amount of actual violence in society.51 The studies, however, are less conclusive regarding causation. Most researchers and investigators agree that exposure to media violence alone does not cause a child to commit a violent act, and that it is not the sole, or even necessarily the most important, factor contributing to youth aggression, anti-social attitudes, and violence.52 Although all television and film viewers are inundated with daily doses of violent media, experts say that children are the most likely to be influenced by it.53 Huesmann and Eron identified three psychological processes through which exposure to violent entertainment could lead a child to behave aggressively: observational learning, attitude change, and scripts.54 A discussion of each follows.
A. Observational LearningObservational learning occurs when children act aggressively while imitating violent actions depicted in films and television programs. Children learn to behave aggressively by watching others use violence to their advantage and then imitate what they have seen. This process is called modeling,55 and the Childs Play and Natural Born Killers copycat murders are two real-world examples of observational learning. A majority of experimental investigations undertaken in the laboratory report that exposure to violent programming leads children to act more aggressively.56 For example, one study indicated that children who watched films of adults hitting inflatable bobo dolls acted more aggressively toward the bobo dolls and their playmates than did children who did not see the film.57 Social scientists have also concluded that watching violent movies and television increases a childs appetite to expose himself to the risk of violence. This is known as the self-socialization effect.58 Imitative violence is the most frequent actualization of this effect.
B. Attitude ChangeThe more violent films and television programs a child watches, the more accepting the child becomes of aggressive behavior. Many social scientists argue that violent films and television programs desensitize viewers and create mean world syndrome in which the image of a dangerous and violent world is cultivated among young viewers.59 As one doctor explained, [V]iolence in media is perpetrated by heroes as an acceptable means of conflict resolution . . . . Its our Clint Eastwoods and Arnold Schwarzeneggers, not the bad guys, who are wasting people. So whats happening is [children are] being exposed to violent behavior as an acceptable means of conflict resolution.60 Longitudinal studies, which track and survey sample subjects at different points in their life time, are used to measure and investigate the relation between early exposure to violent entertainment and subsequent aggressive tendencies. Lefkowitz, Eron, and Huesmann conducted one of the most extensive longitudinal studies measuring attitudinal change. For twenty-two years, they closely scrutinized the viewing habits of a selected group of children in upstate New York. The researchers reported that children with a preference for violent programs at age eight were more likely to exhibit aggressive behavior at age 19. Also, preference for violent television viewing at age eight was a predictor of serious crimes engaged in by subjects when they were 30 years old.61 Another study, conducted by Donnerstein and Linz, analyzed the effects that horror movies and slasher films had on young men.62 Male students were divided up into four groups. One group watched no movies, a second group watched nonviolent, X-rated movies, a third group watched teenage sexual innuendo movies, and a fourth group watched the films Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th Part II, Maniac, and Toolbox Murders. The young men were then placed on a mock jury panel and asked a series of question designed to measure their empathy for an alleged female rape victim. The fourth group measured lowest in empathy for the specific victim in the experiment and for rape victims in general. Based on those results, Donnerstein and Linz concluded that depictions of violence, and not sex, desensitized people.63
C. ScriptsSocial behavior is controlled to a great extent by strategies or scripts that people store in memory and use as behavioral guides when they confront particular situations. The Notel Study analyzed how childrens scripts were impacted by the exposure to violent media when television was first introduced into their community.64 In 1973, Notel, a town in Western Canada, was wired for the first time to receive television signals. For the next two years, researchers from the University of British Columbia observed first and second grade students in Notel and compared them to children in two nearby communities that previously had access to television. They measured aggression by observing childrens interactions in the schoolyard, as well as through teacher and peer ratings. According to the researchers, rates of physical aggression and violence increased by 160% in Notel, but did not change significantly among children in the nearby communities.65 The researchers concluded that viewing televised violence elevated the level of aggression in the children from Notel. Among some researchers, [t]he Canadian investigation is considered the best controlled study of its type, and provides some of the most persuasive evidence in support of the hypothesis that violent media content stimulates aggressive behavior in children.66 Despite these assertions, however, some experts contend that the link between violent media and actual violence is unproven and overstated.67 First, they point out that no direct, causal link between exposure to mock violence in the media and subsequent violent behavior has ever been demonstrated.68 Second, they argue that the research studies that have influenced national policy and public opinion are riddled with contradictions, as well as with methodological and data problems that should preclude the finding of any correlation between media violence and actual violence.69 Despite the criticism, there appears to be general agreement among social scientists that the impact of media violence explains at least a small portion of the total variation in aggressive behavior by youths.70 As Huesmann . . . points out: What is important for the investigation of the role of media violence is that no one should expect the learning of aggression from exposure to media violence to explain more than a small percentage of the individual variation in aggressive behavior.71 In 1992, the American Psychological Association Commission on Youth and Violence examined Hollywoods response to this voluminous research.72 The researchers reported that Hollywood executives, screenwriters, producers, and directors widely ignored the evidence of the effects of film and television violence on children. The Commission argued this evidence has for decades been actively ignored, denied, attacked and even misrepresented in presentations to the American public.73 Consequently, the Commission concluded that in America there is an education gap about the dangers of violent media because of the tendency to ignore television and films documented contribution to the problems of violence.74 Overall, the Commission determined that the industry is ignoring verifiable evidence that violent images depicted on screen can affect behavioral patterns of young children.
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Title: Re: [MOPO] HOSTILE TOWARD HOSTEL
