The Role of Media Violence in Violent Behavior

Huesmann, Rowell; Taylor, Laramie D. “The Role of Media Violence in Violent Behavior.” Annual Review of Public Health 27 (2006)

http://www.thepci.com/articles/The%20Role%20of%20Media%20Violence%20in%20Violent%20Behavior.pdf

By Murielle Alphonse

Children are like human mocking birds, they mimic almost everything they hear and see. So when statistics reveal that there is a 0.15 and 0.30 correlation between media violence and children’s more aggressive behavior after they either watch it, hear about it or play it, doesn’t surprise me. Rowell Huesmann and Laramie Taylor authors of The Role of Media Violence in Violent Behavior quote that children who watch more media violence on a daily basis behave more aggressively on a daily basis. Both researchers attest to the fact that it is not only exposure to real life violence that can lead to violent behavior but also through media exposure. In their research article they give examples of children’s responses after either watching something violent or playing a violent video game and explain why exposure to media violence sometimes leads them to be violent from a psychological stand point. Let’s first examine how detrimental media violence actually is on our youth.

In 1987, researcher WL Josephson conducted a research to see how either watching a violent or nonviolent film would affect adolescent boys before playing a game of floor hockey. He chose 365 boys between the ages of seven to nine and assigned them to groups. Some boys watched violent films while the other half watched nonviolent films. Josephson was also aware of the aggressive or non-aggressive state that each child by their teachers. During the game of floor hockey referees carried around walkie talkies which were cues from the violent film which reminded the boys of the films they had recently watched. The boys who were classified by their teachers as aggressive and were in the violent film group were found to have been more violent than ever. This experiment proved that watching something violent, the violent film, does in fact have an effect on latter behavior, more aggressive behavior displayed by the boys. What is it about media violence that causes our children to behave violently or mock what they see?

Most psychologists today agree that the causes of violent behavior due to the exposure of media violence can be explained through priming, arousal and imitation. The Josephson experiment is a prime example of how the priming process works. The priming process is the process by which the “spreading activation in the brains neural network from the locus representing an external observed stimulus excites another brain node representing a cognition, emotion or behavior. In the Josephson experiment the walkie talkies were the external observed stimulus that reminded the boys of the violent film that than triggered a violent response. Another explanation for violent behavior and its correlation with media violence on youth is arousal. Arousal is the act of awakening or exciting a certain emotion or feeling. A problem that sometimes arises with arousal is excitation transfer and in the case of aggression, it can cause one to react more aggressively. A final explanation for violent behavior and its correlation with media violence on youth is imitation. The article highlights how “in recent years, evidence has accumulated that human and primate young have an innate tendency to imitate whomever they observe. Therefore to correlate the reason’s for a child’s aggressive behavior to either their environment or what they see on television would not be irrational thinking.

To conclude, Huesmann and Taylor attest to our argument that media violence does in fact influence violent behavior. We see this evident in the experiment they represented in their article by WL Josephson. The fact that the young boys who were already classified as aggressive were found to have been even more aggressive after watching a violent film validates our point. Both researchers point out the reasons why and how media violence and violent behavior have such a strong correlation. Violent behavior after taking in media violence can be caused by arousal, priming or imitation. Huesman and Taylor agree that media violence does cause violent behavior, they do not think that it is the only factor or that it alone can cause a person that is non-violent to become violent however they do believe that media can be a trigger.
~ Murielle Alphonse