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Discuss media influences on anti-social behaviour

Eron suggests that there is now a clear link between heavy exposure to televised violence and aggressive behaviour, crime and violence in society. Kunkel et al found that 2/3 of children’s programmes sampled in a content analysis contained at least one act of violence.

Whereas Greenberg found that an equal number of anti and pro social acts were shown in children’s programmes in the US. A problem with using content analysis is that it is subjective as opinions on what should be classed as anti-social behaviour vary between people.

There is also experimenter bias, but this can be improved by having several researchers present. Huesmann et al conducted a study which found a strong, positive correlation between exposure to violent TV over the previous 15 years and levels of physical aggression in adults.

A strength of this is that it was a longitudinal study which controlled for socio-economic status, IQ, parental education and initial levels of aggression. This is good as the researchers were able to document the short and long term effects of TV violence. However a problem is that participants may have been exposed to other forms of violence or anti-social behaviour that may have affected their behaviour, but was not taken into account by the researchers.

Therefore the findings of this study are not reliable. A real life example of where TV may have encouraged anti-social behaviour was during the London riots. Many young people may have seen the rioting on the news, and from this the anti-social behaviour spread from one area to many areas across the UK.

Huesmann and Moise suggest 5 ways that exposure to media violence could lead to aggression in children. Observational learning and imitation occurs from a child copying the behaviour of a media model, especially when the child admires and identifies with the model and perceive the violence as realistic.

TV can inform children of the consequences of violence, yet they are likely to imitate behaviour that is successful in gaining the TV model’s objectives. This is supported by Bandura’s study into social learning theory, where children imitated violent behaviour on a Bobo doll, which they had earlier seen an adult do.

However this was an unrealistic study carried out in an artificial environment, yet the children still learnt through observation. The findings may also have been affected by demand characteristics. Noble heard a child at the study say, “Look mummy! There’s the doll we have to hit!” This suggests that the children may have thought they were expected to hit the doll.

More recent, naturalistic studies rarely find the levels of imitation that Bandura found. Phillips analysed crime statistics 10 days after a televised boxing match and found that homicide rates increased largely. There was no such rise after a SuperBowl game was aired.

Cognitive priming is the activation of aggressive thoughts, triggered by watching TV. The person responds aggressively, because a network of memories involving aggression is primed. Frequent exposure may lead to children storing the scripts from a violent TV programme in their memory and recalling them in a later aggressive situation.

A supporting study was carried out by Josephson where hockey players were deliberately frustrated and half of them watched a violent film where an actor used a walkie talkie and the others were shown a non-violent film. In the next hockey game the referee had a walkie talkie, which presumably triggered the memory to be retrieved, as the players who saw the violent film were significantly more aggressive.

This study was a field experiment, which is good as it is in a real life situation, yet a weakness is that the experimenter is unable to control the variables. There is gender and culture bias as this was carried out on men from a western culture. It just assumes that men and women from all cultures will behave in the same way, and completely ignores individual differences and free will.

Cumberbatch argued that people may get used to screen violence but not necessarily violence in the real world. He claims that it is more likely to make children frightened rather than be frightening. Giles suggested that there are stronger desensitisation effects for males than females.

Huesmann and Moise report that boys who are heavy TV watchers have a lowered physiological arousal in response to new scenes of violence. Arousal from watching violent scenes are unpleasant, but children who constantly watch it become used to it and so their emotional/ physiological responses decline.

The excitation model suggests that arousal creates a readiness to aggress if there are appropriate circumstances. There are ethical issues with such research as aggression is being made more likely. This explanation also mainly focuses on boys, meaning there is a gender bias, as it ignores female behaviour.

Violent behaviour on the TV can provide justification for the child’s own violent behaviour, change their morals on what is acceptable and unacceptable behaviour and teach them that problems can be solve through violence. This explanation is deterministic as it assumes that all children who are violent will justify their behaviour with TV.

However clearly not every child will do this as some children will know the shows aren’t real and others may have had a strict upbringing and will avoid being violent altogether.

A natural experiment carried out by Charlton et al contradicts theses explanations. They found that after the introduction of TV in St Helena, there was no increase in anti-social behaviour in children, showing that media does not always affect anti-social behaviour.

Many studies tend to have a low population validity as the sample usually consists of students. These explanations are all on the nurture side as the influence of media is learnt rather than caused by genetic factors. This is a good thing as it means that any anti-social behaviour that has been learnt should be able to be unlearnt.


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