MEDIA INFLUENCES

• What is desensitisation?

  A reduced physiological response. Normally experience arousal of sympathetic nervous system when witnessing aggression but those who repeatedly view aggression on TV or play violent games they become habituated and the physiological effects are reduced
• What is desensitisation in the psychological sense?

  A reduced psychological response. repeated exposure to violent media promotes belief that using aggression to resolve conflict is socially acceptable, so less empathy is felt towards victims and negative attitudes towards violence weakens
• how did Weisz and Earl support desensitisation?

  showed participants a graphic rape scene in the film Straw Dogs, male viewers showed greater acceptance of rape myths after watching a mock rape trial compared with males viewers of a non violent film, showed less empathy for victim and less likely to find defendant guilty (no similar effect for females)
• what is disinhibition?

  exposure to violent media changes usual restraints, gives aggressive behaviour approval especially where effects on victims are minimised and appear justified, restraints are disinhibited
• how is disinhibition enhanced?

  if aggression is rewarded, video games show violence being rewarded and consequences minimised or ignored, creates new social norms and strengthens them in the viewer
• what is cognitive priming?

  repeated exposure to aggressive media provides a script about how to behave to aggressive cues and how violent situations might play out. Huesmann says the script is stored in memory so we become primed to be aggressive, this is automatic and the script is triggered when we encounter cues
• how do songs with aggressive lyrics influence behaviour?

  may trigger violent behaviour, research investigated song lyrics as a form of media violence, male participants listened to sons with aggressive derogatory lyrics about women, compared to neutral lyrics they recalled more negative qualities about women and behaved more aggressively towards a female confederate, similar results were found with switched genders
• strength of desensitisation

  research support - Krahe et al showed violent and non violent film clips while measuring physiological arousal using skin conductance. Habitual viewers of violent media showed lower arousal when watching violent clips, reported higher pleasant arousal and lower anxious. Correlated with an unproved proactive aggression noise blast task
• limitation of desensitisation

  alternative explanation - Kramer failed to find link between media viewing, lower arousal and provoked reactive aggression. May be because catharsis occurred as the viewing of violent clips was a safety valve, cannot be explained by desensitisation
• Strength of disinhibition

  Research support - showed film depicting aggression as vengeance, participants gave more fake electric shocks of longer duration to confederate, suggests justification disinhibits violence, increases validity
• Strength of Disinhibition

  real life application - can explain cartoon violence, children do not learn specific behaviours from cartoons (head spins 360 after punch) instead they learn the social norms, aggression carried out in cartoons is socially normative, supports disinhibition as children learn aggression in an acceptable way
• Strength of cognitive priming

  Practical application - understanding cognitive priming influence can save lives, effective interventions can be put in place to reduce aggressive behaviour by challenging hostile cognitive scripts and encouraging violent media viewers to consider alternatives