Nowadays, aggressive and violent behaviour have been said to be caused by media violence in many researches. Media violence has been defined as “visual portrayals of acts of physical aggression by one human or human-like character against another” while violent behaviour is defined as overt and intentional physically aggressive behaviour against another person.
I found that PsycINFO database from Ovid is useful and reliable as apart from providing clear reference details for every text, it highlights keywords in search results, and this really raise efficiency. The following three research papers are the most relevant sources for this topic.
The increased public concern about the effects of violence displayed by different media, including television, the Internet, and computer games on children and youth, has raised to the question of whether it affects children’s and adolescents’ attitudes or behaviours bears obvious interest. Thus, this study were interested in how the media might affect deviant behaviour, especially violent and aggressive behaviour, in youth under the age of 18.
This study was aimed to examine the relation between television, computer games, and the Internet use and antisocial aggressive behaviour in teenagers and whether this relationship is different for males and females.
There were two hypotheses included:
1. Media use patterns related to computer video games and the Internet (interactive media) will be different for male and female teenagers.
2. Computer video games and the Internet will have a higher impact than will television on aggressive behaviour.
Participants in this study were 93 students (51 female, 42 male) aged 13 to 18 years , from the same state high school and socioeconomic level.
A brie...
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...ample. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 38(10), 2395–2409. doi:10.1111/j.1559-1816.2008.00397.x
Huesmann, L. R. (2007). The impact of electronic media violence: Scientific theory and research. Journal of Adolescent Health, 41, S6−S13.
Jan Volavka, M. P. (1999). The Neurobiology of Violence: An Update. The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 11(3), 307-314.
Johnson, J. G., Cohen, P., Smailes, E. M., Kasen, S., & Brook, J. S. (2002). Television Viewing and Aggressive Behavior During Adolescence and Adulthood. Science Magazine, 295(5564), 2468-2471. doi:10.1126/science.1062929
Lennings, H. I., & Warburton, W. A. (2011). The effect of auditory versus visual violent media exposure on aggressive behaviour: The role of song lyrics, video clips and musical tone. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47(4), 794–799. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2011.02.006
American society emphasizes violence in the media. Television shows, movies, and video games, are all outlets researchers often place blame when considering the effects media has on violent behavior. Television shows, movies, and video games frequently revolve around violent plots, characters die in gruesome ways, and violence against others is common place. “Social learning is the branch of behavior theory most relevant to criminology. Social learning theorist, most notably Albert Bandura, argue that people are not actually born with the ability to act violently, but that they learned to be aggressive through their life experiences.” (PG. 161)
Johnson, J. G., Cohen, P., Smailes, E. M., Kasen, S., & Brook, J. S. (2002). Television Viewing and Aggressive Behavior During Adolescence and Adulthood. Science, 295(5564), 2468.
All of the sources for this essay contain findings from the experiments that deal with violent video games’ effects on adolescents. The first article, Gabrielle Unsworth’s The effect of playing violent video games on adolescents: Should parents be quaking in their boots?, concurs the types of effects of violent video games on adolescents’ aggression, and that these participants show the different levels of angers during the experiment. The second and third articles, Krcmar’s Retaliatory aggression and the effects of point of view and blood in violent video games and Nicholas Carnagey’s The Effects of Reward and Punishment in Violent Video Games on Aggressive Affect, Cognition, and Behavior, are related to each other since they both have similar results that violent video games increase adolescents’ aggressive cognitions. They are all related to each other except the fourth article, Marjut Wallenius’ Digital Game Playing and Direct and Indirect Aggression in Early Adolesce...
There is a strong agreement among American society that violence in the country is on the rise. It is easy to see why this is a strong argument among the American people, especially because of the rising popularity of violent video games and television programs. However, as these violent video games and television shows are creating their own place in our society, the reports of violence among children are escalating. This correlation has been studied extensively in the scientific community in an attempt to discover whether media violence does negatively impact children but there has yet to be a consensus. There is a split between those that believe that children are becoming more violent because they are exposed to violent media and those that believe that correlation is not causation, who argue that media violence does not have any notable effect the youth.
Media Violence and its negative impact has been discussed and debated for many years As children grow into teens they encounter as vast amount of violence in the media, negatively impacting today’s youth. Teenagers who are exposed to media violence will fail to develop effective socialization strategies and resort more readily to violence, which makes society a more dangerous place.
Media violence is a topic that has warranted much discussion from active citizens, critics, and scientific researchers on both sides of the argument. In order to better understand the media violence debate a clear definition of violence, or aggression, must be established. However, one of the reasons that the heated discussion over media violence even exists is because of the difficulty in accomplishing this task. “Aggression is a highly complex phenomenon, whose etiology includes a wide variety of psychological, social, and circumstantial factors. 'Measuring' aggression in relationship to such an equally complex substance as the media is incredibly difficult” (Trend 45). Various sources offer different interpretations of aggressive behavior. One of the most popular references which excels in organization and categorization is the National Television Violence Study of 1998. “Violence is defined as any overt depiction of a credible threat of physical force or the actual use of such force intended to physically harm an animate being or group of beings. Violence also includes certain depictions of physically harmful consequences against an animate being or group that occur as a result of unseen violent means” (Federman 18). The importance of this study is that it highlights key aspects of media violence: involvement of animate beings, clear intent to harm, and harm that is physical in nature. Although the American society tends to believe that violent images in the media have powerful negative effects on viewers, especially children, which causes people to commit crimes and demonstrate aggressive behaviors, media violence actually produces minor effects at most, and can even prove advantageous.
In this new world of technology, children are exposed and entertained by watching television and playing video games. “One study showed that children spend up to 25 hours a week watching television and 9 hours a week playing video games.” (Polman, de Castro, & van Aken, 2008) 30 years ago, children spent their time doing other things such as going outside, being active, and using their imaginations to make their own entertainment. There is no solid way of determining if children aggression has increased between this day and age, and the days when technology was not a popular form of entertainment for children. The students of Utrecht University; have come up with a study to help determine whether, the violence in video games is affecting the aggression in children's behavior today.
Although previous research focused a lot on the effects of televised physical aggression on children, the effects of socially aggressive content received little attention. However, Martins and Wilson gave a new insight into this field in that they did a correlational study on TV watching in which they surveyed over 500 children and found that social aggression on TV has positive relations with socially aggressive behaviors in children. In addition, they also found that the relations are stronger for girls than boys.
Violent video games increase aggressive behaviour in children. Studies involving around 3000 participants found that aggression has a direct relation with violent video games. Certainly, this effect of violent video games on aggression is as strong as the effect of condom use on risk of HIV infection; furthermore, they found that violent video games increase aggressions in both genders in children and adults in experimental and non-experimental studies (Anderson & Bushman 2001, pp. 353-359). Another study says that violent video games lead children to commit felonies. Craig Anderson of Iowa state university in Ames and his colleague Karen Dill found that people who play violent games are more likely to perpetrate assaults and robberies (Muir 2004, p.26A). Another study was published in the Journal of Adolescence by Barbara Krahe and her ...
Watching Violent TV or Video Games Desensitises Teenagers and May Promote More Aggressive Behaviour." M2presswire, 19 Oct. 2010. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=n5h&AN=16PU1517321048.
Violent video games, aggressive attitudes or behaviors, and societal violence can all be interrelated based on studies and research. The only issue is, there’s not enough evidence to directly link movie and video game violence to societal violence. Several studies in the “Movie Game Violence& Societal Violence” research paper required estimation procedures for data. This can increase the risk of over or underestimating numbers. Due to several other contributing factors, it is unknown whether or not there is a correlation. Numerous factors impact societal violence and cultural influences could also add to the cause. In five to ten years, there potentially could be more evidence to support these claims. Videogame consumption data is only available from 1996 and beyond so over the next few years more and more data will be collected. Looking at the completed historical record, there are not many connections between movie and societal violence. Overall, this is a highly debated topic among criminologists. The important part to take away from this article is the negative affects of early violence viewing in children. Starting at a very young age, children
Television violence causes destructive behavior in children, however; television can be a powerful influence to young viewers in our society. Unfortunately, much of today's television programming are very violent. Many researchers like scientists, pediatricians, and child researchers in many countries have studied to find out what it is about television violence that makes it such a big affect on the way kids act and behave. Sometimes, children think that is a normal thing in our real life, by watching only a single violent program, which can increase aggressiveness on children and become violent, aggressive, and vicious.
Furthermore, television violence causes aggressive behavior in children. Many people believe that children who watch violent television programs exhibit more aggressive behavior than that exhibited by children who do not (Kinnear 23). According to the results of many studies and reports, violence on television can lead to aggressive behavior in children (Langone 50). Also, when television was introduced into a community of children for the first time, researchers observed a rise in the level of physical and verbal aggression among these children (Langone 51). The more television violence viewed by a child, the more aggressive the child is (“Children” 1).
Freedman, Jonathan. "Television Violence Does Not Contribute to Aggressive Behavior in Young People." April 2007. Opposing Viewpoints. .
No single factor can cause children or adults to act aggressively. Instead, it is the accumulation of risk factors that leads to an aggressive act. Hundreds of studies look into the issue of violent media, it always seems to end up the same place with three major effects including increasing aggressive behavior in a variety of forms, desensitization, and spurs fear. Not every viewer will be affected noticeably, but we know that every viewer is affected in some way. Some have argued that violent media are the primary cause of mass shooting. Others have argued that there is no solid evidence of any harmful effects of violent media. But it is clear is that exposure to media violence is one of risk factors increased aggressive behavior, desensitization, and fear.