Drench Effects From Video Games

Conceptualizing the linkage between the drench hypothesis, proposed by Bradley S. Greenberg in 1988, and violent content in video games requires a modest examination of each phenomenon. The primary purpose of the original statement of the drench hypothesis was to offer an alternative to the cultivation hypothesis posited by George Gerbner and colleagues. The cultivation hypothesis proposed that the construction of social reality from television fiction occurs from repeated, persistent, and consistent portrayals of specific demographics (e.g., gender) or specific behaviors (e.g., violence). Such repetitious images account over time for the social beliefs attached to the content entities. This conception treats all occurrences as roughly equivalent and constitutes the cumulative drip-drip-drip effect. In contrast, the drench hypothesis poses that it would be more useful to ...