Media Violence and Behavior

Effects of Television and Movie Violence on Aggressive Behavior

Most research on media violence and viewer aggression has focused on viewers who are passively exposed to movies and television portrayals. A relatively large number of laboratory experiments in which subjects are randomly assigned to view film or television violence and compared with control groups have been conducted over the past 50 years. Several types of aggression toward others have been assessed in these studies, including verbal and physical aggression. These experiments have consistently found that young people who watched violent scenes subsequently displayed more aggressive thoughts, emotions, and behaviors than those who did not. Usually, these laboratory studies measure the immediate impact of violence exposure on aggression. Results from these studies have shown that, for example, children who watched television violence were more likely to be rated as high on physical assault (hurting other children, wrestling, as well as other types of aggression) by observers who did not know which type of film the children had seen. Field experiments in which boys at a summer camp had been assigned to view violent or nonviolent films and then observed revealed that boys who had been assigned to the violent film conditions engaged in significantly more physical assaults on fellow campers. This effect was particularly pronounced for boys who were individually higher on trait aggression. Other research has demonstrated that combining violent stimuli with other arousing activities or portrayals can enhance the aggression effect following exposure. For example, college students who have been provoked by others or who have seen sexually arousing films that portray sex and violence exhibit pronounced increases in retaliatory behavior as indexed by their willingness to deliver what they believe are electric shocks to other subjects.

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