media influences on aggression

• hours watching TV in childhood is associated with adult convictions for aggressive and violent crimes. Additionally the study found watching TV was also associated with reduced social interaction and poor educational achievement. Therefore, link to aggression may be indirect
• bandura et al replicated their earlier Bobo doll study but this time children watched a film of an adult model beating the doll. Children again imitated the models behaviour closely, demonstrating that social learning can operate through media as well as face to face
• a meta-analysis of 200 studies found a significant positive correlation between viewing TV/film violence and antisocial behaviour. However, TV/film violence accounted for only 1-10% of variance in children’s aggressive behaviour, suggesting a minor effect on aggression for TV and film compared with other sources
• there is evidence that computer games have a more powerful effect than traditional screen based media because the game player is active and game playing is directly rewarding
• for ethical reasons participants are not exposed to violence. Therefore studies use competitive reaction time task ,giving blasts of white noise at chosen volumes to opponents (which are non-existent). The researchers found that students playing violent games for 10 minutes gave higher volumes of white noise than students who played non-violent golfing games
• several measures of aggression are positively correlated with time spent playing violent games. The link is so well established that aggression should be considered a public health issue and computer game violence a risk factor
• One limitation is there are many unsupported conclusions. Many studies are methodologically weak as there are confounding variables and meta analyses sometimes include poor quality studies. Many studies are correlational and experimental studies lack external validity. Therefore some researchers may be guilty of drawing premature conclusions based on findings that lack validity
• One strength is that SLT is a convincing theoretical framework. Researchers note that we accept that exposure to aggression at home is harmful, so logically media are important sources of social learning. Children are more likely to imitate aggressive behaviours when they see them rewarded (vicarious reinforcement) especially when children identify with onscreen characters. This is a key feature of science as it has a unifying explanation to account for findings