media influences on aggression

• The interactive nature of violent video games mean they have the potential to have a greater impact than television violence. This is because the viewer is no longer a passive observer but rather interacting and engaging in violent behaviour which is often rewarded in video games.
• Laboratory studies conducted by Stone et al (2005) have found video games increase physiological arousal, aggressive feelings and behavior in people straight after playing violent video games compared to non-violent video game play. Aggressive behavior itself cannot be encouraged or studied so alternative behaviour is measured instead
• stone - after playing violent video games participants are able to blast opponents with white noise to measure their level of aggression instead. Participants who played a violent videogame (Wolfenstein 3D) were found to blast their opponents for longer and rated themselves as feeling a greater sense of hostility compared to players of a calmer puzzle based game (Anderson and Dill 2000). This would suggest violent videogames could increase aggression towards others too.
• Meta-Analyses aggregate the findings of numerous individual studies to measure how media influences on aggression. - bushman
• Bushman et al (2006) carried out a meta-analysis of 431 studies which involved over 68k participants, the majority of which were children (264). The studies examined the impact of TV violence as well as video games, music and comic books. The analysis found a significant effect due to media exposure with higher levels of aggressive behaviours, thoughts, feelings and heightened arousal. The study also found the long-term effects were greater on children while the short-term effects were greater for adults suggesting media can influence aggressive behavior in both age groups differently.
•  desensitisation assume that under normal situations, anxiety about the use of aggression and violence inhibits their use. Those who are not used to media violence would presumably be shocked at witnessing an act of violence in the real world yet frequent viewing of such events in media may cause the person to become “desensitised” to such behaviour. This means anxiety is lowered in the use of aggression and it becomes a normalised approach due to repeated media exposure. Aggression then becomes generalised to real world settings too causing less anxiety and making violence easier to commit
• One way researcher’s measure whether desensitization has occurred is through reduced physiological arousal. This is done measuring heart rate and skin conductance response when exposed to real violence after repeated media violence exposure previously (Linz et al 1989). As people habituate to violence and aggression from the media, their level of emotional, cognitive and behavioural response is reduced.
• Disinhibition means uncharacteristic behavior is demonstrated by an individual because they feel caught up or within the media and therefore act in a similar way as they are observing. The way media is explained to cause aggression through disinhibition is that children and people can infer standards of acceptable behavior through the observation of violent media.
• According to the disinhibition explanation of media aggression, watching or playing violent media can alter moral standards of acceptable behavior and legitimise the use of violence within people’s own lives by undermining the social sanctions that normally inhibit aggression.
• Aggression caused by disinhibition can have an immediate influence or long-term effect. Media violence triggers physiological arousal which increases the chances of behaving aggressively. Within this aroused state, inhibitions are suppressed by the urge to act and prolonged exposure to media violence normalizes everyday violence making it seem a part of everyday life. Observing aggressive actions which are unpunished or justified on television reduces the viewer’s guilt on using violence themselves. This then causes individuals to feel less inhibited about being aggressive themselves. 
• The disinhibition effect when on a computer can be explained due to anonymity, solipsistic introjection and minimization of authority (Suler 2004). Similar to deindividuation, if a person is anonymous and invisible behind an alias on a computer, they then view themselves as less culpable for their behavior as the fear of identification and consequences is no longer a deterrent. Solipsistic introjection is the feeling of becoming cognitively merged with the character in the videogame. This occurs when the player selects a character to represent them in the virtual world 
• Cognitive priming was proposed by Berkowitz (1984) in an attempt to explain the short-term effects of media violence. Cognitive priming is the idea that we are exposed to cues via the media and these cues can trigger behaviour in us as they temporarily increase accessibility of thoughts and ideas related to what we observe. Cues can be anti-social in nature such as aggression or violence or pro-social such as altruistic behaviour.
• According to cognitive priming, the more accessible a thought or idea is, the more chances it may be used to interpret social information. Prolonged exposure to violent media according to cognitive priming, results in a lowered activation threshold for aggressive thoughts allowing them to be accessed more readily. Zelli et al (1995) found that priming participants with aggressive stimuli influenced them to make hostile attributions about the behaviour of other people which increased the likelihood of aggressive behaviour by them.
• cognitive priming

  • we have schemas for how to respond in certain situations
  • we can learn schemas from tv and computer games
  • we often see hero acting aggressively when threatened with a knife - these become cues
  • we are then cognitively primed, when exposed to these cues in the real world in a simlar context
  • we then act aggressively