Media Violence and Aggression

An overview

Media is a huge genesis of the out-turn of aggression!

In 2004, A 14 year teen took his school friend into the bathroom and stabbed him 40 times – that was a murder that got him sentenced to life in prison. After asking him the reason he answered that he wanted to act out the role of serial killer which were shown in the movie “American Psycho”.

Aggression means the action that is designed to harm others. Aggression can be learnt from the society and the tremendous source could be the violent media. Not just Human but the cartoon characters also torment each other in astonishing ways. Both heroes and villains perform aggressive acts on television. Actual violence including arson, shooting, stabbing, beating are majorly influenced by the violent television programs and video games. Yet establishing the link between exposure to media and aggression has been highly controversial.

There are five process that explain why exposure to media is responsible for rise in aggression

1. Imitation: Viewers learn specific techniques of aggression by watching media models. Learning aggressive acts by imitating played an important role in increasing violent crimes.

2. Cognitive Priming: Portrayals of violence activate the aggressive thoughts and induce aggressive attitudes.

3. Justification: Violent scenes in media showing attainment of goals and positive outcomes justify the aggression in real life and make it more acceptable.

4. Desensitization: After watching the aggressive content on media repeatedly, makes individual less sensitive to aggression. Due to which individual become less reluctant to hurt others.

5. Arousal: Viewing aggressive content on media produce excitements and arousal which may rise the aggressive response in any situation that could be resolved by milder anger.

Scientific study that demonstrates the link between violent media and aggression

Children and adult exposed to violent television shows, programs and video games have been found to show more aggression than others exposed to non-violent films and shows. To address this question a famous psychologist Albert Bandura and his colleagues performed a research in 1960. Instead of using actual programs they constructed their own televisions shows that were shown to two groups of children. One show in which an adult models was shown aggression towards an inflated toy clown (bobo doll). For instance, the model was sat on the toy and repeatedly punching on its nose and kicked it about the room. The other television show was shown to other group of children in which the adult model was sitting quiet in the room and did not harm the inflated toy clown.

After showing two different kind of shows to different group of children, all kids were allowed to went into the room containing various toys including that inflated toy clown for 20 minutes. The kids were being observed by the researchers. It was observed that children exposed to the actions of an aggressive adult models showed strong tendencies to imitate these behaviours. In contrast, those exposed to a non aggressive adult models ( the one who sat quietly in the room and didn’t attacked the inflated doll) did not show similar actions. The conclusions were drawn that the children and adult learn new acts by watching several television shows and films.

Suggestions

There are several changes that television industry could make to reduce violence:

1. Number of violent scenes in television shows especially in cartoon shows should be reduced.

2. Portrayal of negative consequences of an aggressive acts such as pain, social exclusion, legal punishment and suffering of victims.

3. When violence is shown, anti-violence themes should be included. for instance, perpetrators could be shown as remorseful in need to resort the violence.

4. Programs should feature more alternatives to resolve interpersonal conflicts such as peaceful discussion and meditation.

These ways will not eliminate from the society but they will help.