Media influences on Antisocial behaviour

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Desensitisation
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Terms in this set (7)
Desensitisation
Under normal conditions, anxiety about violence inhibits its use, HOWEVER, media violence may stimulate aggressive behaviour by desensitising children to the effects of violence
The more violence watched = more acceptable aggressive behaviour is - frequent viewing may cause children to become less anxious about violence
Someone becomes desensitised and sees it as more normal and so is more likely to engage in violence themselves
Against desensitisation
Cumberbatch (2001) argues that people may get used to onscreen violence but it does not mean they will get used to real life violence - claims that screen violence is more likely to make children scared than scary
Cognitive priming
Refers to the activation of existing aggressive thoughts and feelings - explains why children observe one behaviour on TV and then commit another - immediately after the programme the viewer is primed to respond aggressively because a network of aggressive memories are retrieved
Frequent exposure to violence may lead children to store scripts of aggressive behaviour that can be recalled in a later situation where any of the previous aspects are present
Support for cognitive priming
Study deliberated frustrated hockey players, they were then shown violent or non-violent films, where an actor held a walkie-talkie, they found that those who had watched the violent film acted more aggressively, especially if the referee was holding a walkie-talkie - this was presumably a cue for aggression
Lowered physiological arousal
Consistently found that stronger desensitised effects in males than females
One study reported that boys who were heavy TV watchers showed a lower than average physiological arousal to new scenes of violence - arousal stimulated by viewing violence is unpleasant at 1st but those who constantly watch TV become used to and their emotional and physiological responses decline, as a result, they are less inhibited to using violence
Support for lowered arousal
It has also been claimed that watching violence leads to increases in arousal and therefore more aggression - the excitation transfer model suggests that arousal creates a readiness to aggression if there are more appropriate circumstances - some theorists believe that watching violence allows a release of pent up aggressive energy
IDA - gender bias
Boyle (1999) suggests that there is gender bias in this research, this includes:
Primarily focussing on male on male violence - frequently viewed in labs and there is no conception on how this may affect male and female responses to the characters and situations
Used all male students and then generalised to everyone else, may not be the case for everyone