Desensitisation

• Repeated exposure to extreme violence in the media such as films and computer games results in lower emotional reactions to violence.
• Psychologists propose that desensitisation as a response to violence viewed in computer games can have a negative effect. Individuals may not respond to real aggression with any physiological arousal, such as that associated with fear.
• This causes individuals to be less empathic towards victims and increasingly accept aggression as the ‘social norm’, with reduced physiological responses from the sympathetic nervous system.