Violence, Effects of

For more than 50 years, social scientists have conducted research on the effects of violent media, including TV programs, films, and video games. Researchers have found evidence of three different effects of media violence:

• 1.
  Bystander effect: The more violent media you consume, the more desensitized you become to violence in the real world.
• 2.
  Aggressor effect: The more violent media you consume, the more aggressive you become.
• 3.
  Victim effect: The more violent media you consume, the more afraid you are of becoming a victim of violence.

The research evidence for each type of effect is described below.

Bystander effect. People who consume a lot of violent media become less sympathetic to victims of violence. People who are exposed to violent media assign less harsh penalties to criminals than those who are not; they also perceive victims as less seriously injured and display less empathy toward them. The bystander effect appears to be an enduring one. Even several days after watching violent sex scenes, men still display an increased tolerance of aggression directed toward women.

The reduced empathy for victims of violence causes people to become less willing to help a victim of violence in the real world. Immediately after exposure to violent media, children are less willing to intervene when they see two younger children fighting. One reason why people may become more tolerant of violence and less sympathetic toward victims is because they become desensitized to violence over time. Research has shown that after exposure to violent media, people are less physiologically aroused by real depictions of violence.

The effects of violent video games on children's attitudes toward violence are of particular concern. Feeling [Page 848]empathy requires taking the perspective of the victim, whereas violent video games encourage players to take the perspective of the perpetrator. Exposure to violent television increases people's pro-violence attitudes, but exposure to violent video games has the additional consequence of decreasing empathy for the victim.

Aggressor effect. More than five decades of scientific data lead to the irrefutable conclusion that exposure to violent media increases aggression. About 300 studies involving more than 50,000 subjects have been conducted on this topic (Anderson & Bushman, 2002). Experimental studies have shown that exposure to media violence causes people to behave more aggressively immediately afterward, whereas longitudinal studies have shown that the long-term effects of exposure to violent media have a significant impact on real-world aggression and violence. In part, this is because exposure to violent media desensitizes people to violence, but it is also because violent media teach children that violent behavior is an appropriate means of resolving problems.

Experimental studies typically expose participants to violent media for relatively short amounts of time (usually 20 minutes) before measuring aggressive thoughts, feelings, and, most important, behaviors (for reviews, see Anderson et al., 2003). For example, research has shown that exposure to violent media makes people more willing to subject others to electric shocks or noise blasts.

Experimental studies have been criticized for their somewhat artificial nature (for reviews and rebuttals of these criticisms, see Anderson, Lindsay, & Bushman, 1999), but field experiments have produced similar results. For example, delinquent boys who were shown violent films every night for 5 nights were more likely than those shown nonviolent films to get into fights with other children or display verbal aggression. Similar effects have been observed with nondelinquent children who saw a single episode of a violent children's television program. It is important to note that aggression may be qualitatively different from criminal violence (Savage, 2004) and that, for the most part, laboratory and field experiments have not addressed the relationship between violent media and violent behavior. A few studies have attempted to address this relationship in a naturalistic setting by tracking changes in the occurrence of violent crime after prize fights are shown on TV or after television is introduced to a community, but these studies are few in number and have methodological flaws.

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