Discussion of the View that Violence on Screen Can Cause Violence in Society

Discussion of the View that Violence on Screen Can Cause Violence in Society

The screening of violence and the effects it has on the media ahs been

a controversial issue for a long time. Many researches have been

carried out to prove or disprove the hypothesis that violence in the

media can cause violence in society and as a result many theories have

been formed. A theory that supports this hypothesis is the Hypodermic

syringe model developed by Vance Packard in 1957 and a reflection of

the popular belief at the era. The hypodermic syringe model sees the

audience as a homogenous mass without any background experiences and

therefore immediately affected by what they see in the media. Even

though this view is very deterministic and ignores the fact that

people may interpret things in different ways, some of the research

carried out to find the relationship between violence portrayed in the

media and violence in society supports this model. In 1963, Bandura,

Ross and Ross showed three groups of children real, film and cartoon

examples of a self righting doll known as the bobo doll being attacked

by mallets, whilst a fourth group saw no violent activity. After being

shown into a room full of toys there were then told that the toys were

not for them and thus made feel frustrated. They were then led into a

room containing a bobo doll and were observed through a one way

mirror. The three groups who were shown violence behaved more

aggressively towards the doll than the fourth group. Nevertheless the

correlation doesn’t prove causation and more importantly the

experiment was carried out on children who are prone to imitate what

they see, howe...

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...ged children and boarding schools, the staff were told to

allow one group to watch programmes with scenes of violence and

another group had to watch non violent programmes. Later it was found

that boys who had watched violence became less aggressive than before.

The experimenters felt that one reason for this might have been that

those who had watched violence felt privileged and those who were not

allowed to resented it. As always such experiments are conducted under

what might not be lab conditions but still not a real life situation.

Also the research was carried out only on boys and therefore

unrepresentative of the population as a whole.

The research carried out and their findings are contradictory to such

a degree that it remains largely inconclusive whether violence in the

media has a direct effect in society.