Page 299 - The Social Animal

Human Aggression 281

and yelled aggressively at their opponents to a much greater extent
than either the kids rated as nonaggressive who had also watched the
violent film or those rated as aggressive who had watched the non-
violent film. Thus, it may be that watching media violence gives ag-
gressive kids permission to express their aggression. Josephson’s
experiment suggests that youngsters who do not have aggressive ten-
dencies to begin with do not necessarily act aggressively—at least,
not on the basis of seeing only one violent film.
That last phrase is an important one because it may be that even
youngsters who are not prone toward aggression will become more
aggressive if exposed to a steady diet of violent films over a long pe-
riod.That is exactly what was found in a set of field experiments per-
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formed by Ross Parke and his colleagues. In these experiments,
different groups of children were exposed to differing amounts of
media violence over an extended period. In these experiments, the
great majority of the kids (even those without strong aggressive ten-
dencies) who were exposed to a high degree of media violence over
a long period were more aggressive than those who watched more
benign shows.
We might mention, in passing, that at a congressional hearing on
TV violence in the 1990s, it was estimated that the average 12-year-
old has witnessed more than 100,000 acts of violence on television. 80
We mention this because we believe that one of the crucial factors
involved in the above findings (in addition to social learning and im-
itation) is the simple phenomenon of priming. That is, just as expos-
ing children to rifles and other weapons left lying around the house
or the laboratory tends to increase the probability of an aggressive re-
sponse when children subsequently experience pain or frustration, so
too might exposing them to an endless supply of violence in films
and on TV.
Thus far, in discussing the effects of media violence, we have fo-
cused much of our attention on children—and for good reason.
Youngsters are, by definition, much more malleable than adults; that
is, it is generally assumed that their attitudes and behaviors can be
more deeply influenced by the things they view. But the effect of
media violence on violent behavior is not limited to children; media
violence has a major impact on the aggressive behavior of adolescents
and young adults, as well. Recently, Jeffrey Johnson and his col-
leagues published a study in which he monitored the behavior of
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