Anyone who watches the news knows how violent America is becoming. One night a high school student sets a car on fire. One morning before dawn a woman throws her child off of a bridge. Cops in Germany descend upon a terrorist group. The most devastating events always seem to be the school shootings, and after each school shooting thee is an outcry against violent media.
You hear a man say, “Marilyn Manson is responsible for these students deaths.” A woman declares with all the fury of an angered preacher, “If it weren't for horror movies, this wouldn't happen. So many guns and violence, it's no wonder our children turn into monsters.” Is this the truth? Is music a medium for violence? Is television? Cinema?
There are two ways of answering these questions: Yes and no. While violent media can cause violent behavior in children and adults, more often, said children and adults have a predisposition to violence. Over the next couple minutes, you will hear a little bit about the correlation of media and violence. It is a combination of the violent media and a person's own predisposition to violence that causes aggressive outbursts from an individual, be they young or old, male or female.
In 2000, scientists Ostrov, Crick, and Gentile performed an experiment on young children. They hypothesized that violent media would show a direct correlation with aggression in children. They chose 38 boys and 38 girls. The average participant was ten years old. They also used their parents and teachers to monitor the children. Most of the participants had married parents.
They were, for the most part, highly educated, middle class, and came from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. The children were tested for both physically aggressive tendencies (Hitting, kicking and such) and relationally aggressive tendencies (intentionally shunning, ignoring, excluding or ostracizing from peer activities, games or interactions. Spreading malicious lies or gossip, etc.).
A MediaQuotient questionnaire was given to the parents. On several occasions, over the course of a year, the parents recalled the last three shows a child watched, the last three movies a child saw, and the last three video games a child played. They were then asked their opinion on the educational value of these shows, movies or games. The teacher then filled out a questionnaire on the childes aggressive tendencies.
Ostrov, Gentile, and Crick reported a positive correlation in many cases. Forty one percent of the participants acted violently when they watched or played violent material. Male participants were more likely to exhibit physical violence while female participants were more likely to exhibit relational violence. There were a few criticisms of their experiment, however. The main criticism being the fact that the experiment took place in children from a relatively high socioeconomic status.
Anderson, another respected psychologist, hypothesized that people of a lower socioeconomic status would watch more television, and thus be more affected by violence in the media.
Between Ostrov, Gentile, and Crick, the results seemed to be proof of their hypothesis. A few years later, however, Anderson would challenge their results. If there truly was a correlation between violent media and aggression, why would only forty one percent of the participants have been affected? Anderson himself designed a study focusing on video games. He took college students from an undergraduate college and monitored their exposure to violent video games and their aggressive and relational tendencies. These students filled out surveys before they were chosen for the study.
These surveys measured the irritability, aggression, delinquency, world view, how often they play video games and the level of violence that said video games contain. The most popular games were from the Super Mario franchise and the Mortal Combat franchise. This survey not only demonstrated that a correlation between violent games and violence in people, it went one step further.
Many of the students had not played games in their youths, and yet had a history of delinquency. These students were much more likely to play violent games. Anderson stated that it was much more likely that, instead of violent media creating violence, violent nature and upbringing led to an attraction to violence.
Thus, while there was a correlation between violent media and violent behavior, violent personalities were more likely to be affected by violent media.
As you have seen, over the past few minutes, the media by itself does not cause violent or aggressive tendencies; It is only when the music, movies or games fall into the hands of a person with an already existing compulsive tendency of violence that a problem occurs. For the vast majority of us, violent movies such as A Clockwork Orange, Television programs such as “24,” or video games such as the Resident Evil franchise will not cause us to go rob the Lawrenceburg bank, kidnap people in the fairgrounds, or turn to murder.
When a compulsive aggressive views such material, the effects can be devastating. What was intended as a work of art or entertainment becomes the trigger of a gun pointed at the first target it catches sight of.
