Violence in Media **FOR SOLUTIONS PRO*** DUE SATURDAY DEC 3RD

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American Behavioral Scientist Volume 51 Number 8

April 2008 1212-1230 © 2008 Sage Publications

10.1177/0002764207312018 http://abs.sagepub.com

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Media Violence The Effects Are Both Real and Strong John P. Murray Kansas State University

Fifty years of research on the effect of TV violence on children leads to the inescapable conclusion that viewing media violence is related to increases in aggressive attitudes, values, and behaviors. The changes in aggression are both short term and long term, and these changes may be mediated by neurological changes in the young viewer. The effects of media violence are both real and strong and are confirmed by the careful reviews of research evidence by various scientific and professional organizations that are concerned with children’s mental health and development.

Keywords: children; neurological effects; television; violence

It is not unusual to describe media violence as a drug. Parents who have watchedtheir young child sit mesmerized in front of the television screen, watching fast action and fast-paced programming, often comment on the zombie-like or drugged expression on the child’s face. And yet, we know that the drug reference is merely a metaphor, or do we? Our recent research involving mapping children’s brain activa- tion patterns while they watch violent video clips suggests that there may be a basis for thinking about the addictive quality of media violence.

Of course, concern about media violence is not a new issue. Early in the 20th cen- tury, parents, teachers, and legislators raised concerns about violence in comics, the Penny Dreadful illustrated material, as well as radio and movies. In the middle of the 20th century, television arrived on the scene and quickly became a focus of concern. And, of course, the increasingly graphic video game violence adds to the list of growing concerns in the 21st century.

All of these concerns are real and important. The culture of childhood, in particu- lar in the United States, is rife with violence in entertainment—portrayed as socially acceptable and even “fun” in the latest breed of video games. The largest body of research on media violence is research on televised violence. More recent research efforts have addressed video game violence, but this is merely an extension of the extensive research on TV violence. We can benefit from the 50 years of research on television (Pecora, Murray, & Wartella, 2007) to begin to understand the “drugging” effects of all media violence. In our review of research over the past 50 years, we cat- alogued almost 2,000 studies (1,945, to be precise) conducted on various aspects of television’s effect, with about 600 studies related directly to the violence issue.

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The violent face of television has been presented to audiences from the first broadcasts of this medium. Television broadcasting in the United States began in the early 1940s, with full development following the Second World War. Although extensive broadcast schedules did not begin until the late 1940s, and violence was not as graphic as it would become in later years, the first public concerns about vio- lence were evident in the 1950s. The early Congressional hearings (U.S. Congress, 1952, 1955) set the stage for similar expressions of public concern that have contin- ued through the 20th century and into the 21st century (U.S. Congress, 1990, 2001). What have we learned from all of this research and discussion on the “violent face of television” and what can be done to mitigate the harmful influences?

Early Research and Social Concerns

The early studies of television’s influence began almost simultaneously in England, the United States, and Canada in the mid-1950s. In England, a group of researchers at the London School of Economics and Political Science, under the direction of Hilde Himmelweit, a reader in social psychology, began the first study of children’s television viewing patterns while TV was still relatively new (only three million TV sets were installed in the 15 million households in England). This study was proposed by the Audience Research Department of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) but was conducted by independent researchers. The research, begun in 1955, was published in a 1958 report, Television and the Child: An Empirical Study of the Effect of Television on the Young (Himmelweit, Oppenheim, & Vince, 1958). The American and Canadian study was conducted by Wilbur Schramm and his colleagues in communications at Stanford University. This project began in 1957 and was published in a 1961 report, Television in the Lives of Our Children (Schramm, Lyle, & Parker, 1961).

The British and American/Canadian surveys provided a very important bench- mark for understanding the broad and general effects of television on children. For example, Himmelweit et al. (1958) noted,

We have found a number of instances where viewers and controls differed in their out- look; differences which did not exist before television came on the scene. There was a small but consistent influence of television on the way children thought generally about jobs, job values, success, and social surroundings. (pp. 17-18)

With regard to aggression, these correlational studies were less specific, as Himmelweit and her colleagues (1958) noted,

We did not find that the viewers were any more aggressive or maladjusted than the con- trols; television is unlikely to cause aggressive behaviour, although it could precipitate it in those few children who are emotionally disturbed. On the other hand, there was

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little support for the view that programmes of violence are beneficial; we found that they aroused aggression as often as they discharged it. (p. 20)

In the case of the Schramm et al. (1961) study, their conclusions about television vio- lence included the observation that those Canadian and American children who had high exposure to television and low exposure to print were more aggressive than those with the reverse pattern. Thus, the early correlational studies or surveys iden- tified some areas of concern about television violence and set the stage for more focused investigations. Finally, it should be noted that these 1950s studies of view- ers and nonviewers took place when television was new in the United States, Canada, and England. Later studies—in the 1970s—would revisit these issues and this research strategy when television was being introduced into isolated communi- ties in Australia (Murray & Kippax, 1977, 1978, 1979) and Canada (MacBeth, 1996; Williams, 1986).

Moving beyond these 1950s surveys, there was another set of studies that emerged in the early 1960s—not surveys or correlational studies but experimental studies that were addressed to cause-and-effect relationships in the TV-violence/ aggressive-behavior equation. These initial experiments were conducted by Albert Bandura, at Stanford University, who studied preschool-age children, and Leonard Berkowitz, at the University of Wisconsin, who worked with college-age youth. In both instances, the studies were experimental in design, which meant that partici- pants were randomly assigned to various viewing experiences and, therefore, the results of this manipulated viewing could be used to address the issue of causal rela- tionships between viewing and behavior. The early Bandura studies, such as “Transmission of Aggression Through Imitation of Aggressive Models” (Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1961) or “Imitation of Film-Mediated Aggressive Models” (Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1963), were set within a social learning paradigm and were designed to identify the processes governing the ways that children learn by observing and imitating the behavior of others. In this context, therefore, the studies used stimulus films (videotape was not generally available) back-projected on a simulated televi- sion screen, and the behavior of the children was observed and recorded in a play- room setting, immediately following the viewing period. Despite the structured nature of these studies, Bandura’s research was central to the debate about the influ- ence of media violence. Moreover, the work of Berkowitz and his colleagues, such as “Effects of Film Violence on Inhibitions Against Subsequent Aggression” (Berkowitz & Rawlings, 1963) or “Film Violence and the Cue Properties of Available Targets” (Berkowitz & Geen, 1966), studied the simulated aggressive behavior of youth and young adults following the viewing of segments of violent films, such as a Kirk Douglas boxing film, The Champion. The demonstration of increased willingness to use aggression against others following viewing further fueled the debate about the influence of media violence.

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Concern about the influence of TV violence began as early as the start of this new medium. The first Congressional hearings were held in the early 1950s (U.S. Congress, 1952, 1955). At these early hearings, developmental psychologist Eleanor Maccoby (1954) and sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld (1955) presented testimony that relied on some early studies of violence in films, such as the 1930s report, Boys, Movies and City Streets (Cressey & Thrasher, 1933), to outline a necessary program of research on the issue of TV violence and its effects on children.

As the 1960s progressed, concern in the United States about violence in the streets and the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy stimulated continuing interest in media violence. In response, several major government commissions and scientific and professional review com- mittees were established, from the late 1960s through the 1990s, to summarize the research evidence and public policy issues concerning the role of television violence in salving or savaging young viewers.

The five principal commissions and review panels—National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence (Baker & Ball, 1969); Surgeon General’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior (1972; Murray, 1973); National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH, 1982) Television and Behavior Project; Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (1982) Child and Television Drama Review; and the American Psychological Association (APA) Task Force on Television and Society (Huston et al., 1992)—have been central to setting the agenda for research and public discussion.

In 1982, NIMH published a 10-year follow-up of the 1972 Surgeon General’s study. The two-volume report (NIMH, 1982; Pearl, Bouthilet, & Lazar, 1982), col- lectively titled Television and Behavior: Ten Years of Scientific Progress and Implications for the Eighties, provided a reminder of the breadth and depth of knowledge that has accumulated on the issue of TV violence. In this regard, the NIMH staff and consultants concluded,

After 10 more years of research, the consensus among most of the research community is that violence on television does lead to aggressive behavior by children and teenagers who watch the programs. This conclusion is based on laboratory experiments and on field studies. Not all children become aggressive, of course, but the correlations between violence and aggression are positive. In magnitude, television violence is as strongly correlated with aggressive behavior as any other behavioral variable that has been measured. (p. 10)

In 1986, the APA empanelled a Task Force on Television and Society to review the research and professional concerns about the effect of television on children and adults. The nine psychologists assigned to this committee undertook reviews of rel- evant research, conducted interviews with television industry and public policy pro- fessionals, and discussed concerns with representatives of government regulatory agencies and public interest organizations. The final report, entitled Big World, Small

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Screen: The Role of Television in American Society (Huston et al., 1992), included the following observation about television violence:

American television has been violent for many years. Over the past 20 years, the rate of violence on prime time evening television has remained at about 5 to 6 incidents per hour, whereas the rate on children’s Saturday morning programs is typically 20 to 25 acts per hour. There is clear evidence that television violence can cause aggressive behavior and can cultivate values favoring the use of aggression to resolve conflicts. (p. 136)

The extent of concern—both social and scientific—is demonstrated by the fact that over the past half century, about 1,000 reports have been published on the issue of TV violence (Murray, 1980; Pecora et al., 2006). Of course, only a small per- centage of these thousands of pages represents original studies or research reports, but there is an extensive body of research on the effect of TV violence. Nevertheless, the research history is best described in terms of the nature of the research approaches: Correlational and experimental studies, and their variants cross-lagged panel studies and field studies, are the main ways in which the effect of media vio- lence has been investigated.

Correlational Research

The demonstration of a relationship between viewing and aggressive behavior is a logical precursor to studies of the causal role that TV violence may play in pro- moting aggressive behavior. In this regard, the early surveys of the effect of televi- sion on children, conducted by Himmelweit et al. (1958) and Schramm et al. (1961)—discussed in an earlier section—addressed some of these concerns about violence. However, later research was more focused on studying the correlations between TV violence viewing and aggression.

In typical correlational studies, such as those conducted for the Surgeon General’s research program (Dominick & Greenberg, 1972; McLeod, Atkin, & Chaffee, 1972a, 1972b; Robinson & Bachman, 1972), the researchers found consistent pat- terns of significant correlations between the number of hours of television viewed or the frequency of viewing violent programs and various measures of aggressive atti- tudes or behavior. Also, a study by Atkin, Greenberg, Korzenny, and McDermott (1979) found that heavy TV-violence viewers were more likely to choose physical and verbal aggressive responses to solve hypothetical interpersonal conflict situa- tions (i.e., 45% of the heavy violence viewers chose physical/verbal aggressive responses vs. 21% of the low violence viewers). Similarly, a further study in this genre (Walker & Morley, 1991) found that adolescents who reported enjoying TV violence were more likely to hold attitudes and values favorable to behaving aggres- sively in conflict situations.

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In another approach, a large database, the Cultural Indicators Project, has been used to explore the relationship between television portrayals and the viewer’s fear- ful conception of the world. In a series of studies begun in the 1960s, George Gerbner and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania (Gerbner, 1970; Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, & Signorielli, 1994) have tracked public perceptions of society in relation to the respondent’s extent of television viewing. Of relevance to the violence issue, these researchers have identified differences in the risk-of- victimization perceptions, described as the “mean world syndrome” effect, of light versus heavy viewers. The heavy viewers (usually 5 or more hours per day) are much more fearful of the world around them than are light viewers (about 2 or fewer hours per day). When questioned about their perceptions of risk, heavy viewers are much more likely to overestimate (i.e., greater than the FBI crime reports for their locale would suggest) the chance that they will be the victim of crime in the ensuing 6 months, have taken greater precautions by changing the security of their homes or restricting their travels at night, and are generally more fearful of the world. As Gerbner et al. (1994) note,

We have found that long-term exposure to television, in which frequent violence is vir- tually inescapable, tends to cultivate the image of a relatively mean and dangerous world . . . in which greater protection is needed, most people cannot be trusted, and most people are just looking out for themselves. (p. 30)

Special-Case Correlational Research

Studies such as the early surveys clearly demonstrate that violence viewing and aggressive behavior are related, but they do not address the issue of cause and effect. And yet, there are some special-case correlational studies in which “intimations of causation” can be derived from the fact that these studies were conducted over sev- eral time periods. There have been three major panel studies: a study funded by CBS (Belson, 1978), one funded by NBC (Milavsky, Kessler, Stipp, & Rubens, 1982), and the third funded by the Surgeon General’s Committee and NIMH (Huesmann & Eron, 1986; Huesmann, Eron, Lefkowitz, & Walder, 1984; Lefkowitz, Eron, Walder, & Huesmann, 1972).

The CBS study (Belson, 1978) was conducted in England with 1,565 youths who were a representative sample of 13- to 17-year-old boys living in London. The boys were interviewed on several occasions concerning the extent of their exposure to a selection of violent television programs broadcast during the period of 1959 through 1971. The level and type of violence in these programs were rated by members of the BBC viewing panel. Thus, it was possible to obtain, for each boy, a measure of both the magnitude and type of exposure to televised violence (e.g., realistic, fic- tional, etc.). Furthermore, each boy’s level of violent behavior was determined by his

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report of how often he had been involved in any of 53 categories of violence over the previous 6 months. The degree of seriousness of the acts reported by the boys ranged from only slightly violent aggravation, such as taunting, to more serious and very violent behavior such as, “I tried to force a girl to have sexual intercourse with me”; “I bashed a boy’s head against a wall”; “I burned a boy on the chest with a cigarette while my mates held him down”; and “I threatened to kill my father.” Approximately 50% of the 1,565 boys were not involved in any violent acts during the 6-month period. However, of those who were involved in violence, 188 (12%) were involved in 10 or more acts during the 6-month period. When Belson compared the behavior of boys who had higher exposure to televised violence with those who had lower exposure (and had been matched on a wide variety of possible contributing factors), he found that the high-violence viewers were more involved in serious interpersonal violence.

The NBC study (Milavsky et al., 1982) was conducted over a 3-year period from May 1970 to December 1973 in two cities, Fort Worth and Minneapolis. Interviews were conducted with samples of second- to sixth-grade boys and girls and a special sample of teenage boys. In the elementary school sample, the information on televi- sion viewing and measures of aggression were collected in six time periods over the 3 years. The aggression measure was made up of peer ratings of aggressive behav- ior based on the work of Eron and his colleagues (Eron, Walder, & Lefkowitz, 1971). In the teenage sample, there were only five waves of interviews over the 3 years and the aggression measures were self-report rather than peer-reported aggression. In summarizing the results of this study, Milavsky et al. (1982) concluded, “On the basis of the analyses we carried out to test for such a causal connection there is no evidence that television exposure has a consistently significant effect on subsequent aggressive behavior in the [elementary school] sample of boys” (p. 482). Similar null findings were reported for the elementary school girls and the teenage boys. However, reanalyses of these data by Kenny (1984) and Cook, Kendzierski, and Thomas (1983) have concluded that there are small but clear causal effects in the NBC data and that these effects become stronger when analyzed over longer time periods through successive waves of interviews.

Finally, one of the longest panel studies, 22 years, is the work of Leonard Eron and his colleagues (Eron, 1963, 1982; Huesmann & Eron, 1986; Huesmann, Eron, Lefkowitz, & Walder, 1984; Lefkowitz et al., 1972). In the initial studies, conducted for the Surgeon General’s investigation of TV violence (Lefkowitz et al., 1972), the researchers were able to document the long-term effects of violence viewing by studying children over a 10-year period from age 8 to age 18. At these two time peri- ods, the youngsters were interviewed about their program preferences and informa- tion was collected from peer ratings of aggressive behavior. The violence levels of their preferred TV programs and other media and measures of aggression across these two time periods suggested the possibility that early television violence view- ing was one factor in producing later aggressive behavior. In particular, the findings

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for 211 boys followed in this longitudinal study demonstrated that TV violence at age 8 was significantly related to aggression at age 8 (r = .21) and the 8-year-old vio- lent TV preferences were significantly related to aggression at age 18 (r = .31), but TV violence preferences at age 18 were not related to aggressive behavior at the ear- lier time period, age 8 (r = .01). When other possible variables, such as parenting practices and discipline style, were controlled, it was still clear that early media violence could be part of the cause of later aggressive behavior. Furthermore, in a follow-up study, when these young men were now age 30 (Huesmann et al., 1984), the authors found a significant correlation (r = .41) between TV violence levels at age 8 and serious interpersonal criminal behavior (e.g., assault, murder, child abuse, spouse abuse, rape) at age 30.

Thus, it seems clear that a correlation between television violence and aggression can be established from diverse studies. And, some special cases of longitudinal cor- relational studies (described as cross-lagged/panel studies) can lead to intimations of causation. However, the issue of causation is best assessed in experimental designs that allow for random assignment of participants to various treatment conditions or, in the case of field studies, take advantage of naturally occurring variations in tele- vision viewing experiences.

Experimental Studies

The potential role of television violence in the causation of aggressive behavior was, as noted earlier, among the first topics investigated by social scientists. The stud- ies by Bandura (e.g., Bandura et al., 1961, 1963) and Berkowitz (e.g., Berkowitz & Rawlings, 1963) set the stage for later experimental studies in which causal influences of TV violence could be assessed by randomly assigning participants to various view- ing conditions. These later studies employed both the structured, laboratory-based settings as well as more naturalistic settings in schools and communities.

One of the earlier studies in this genre (Liebert & Baron, 1972) assessed the effects of viewing segments of a violent television program, The Untouchables, on the aggressive behavior of 5- to 9-year-old boys and girls. In this study, the children viewed either The Untouchables or a neutral, but active, track race. Following view- ing, the child was placed in a playroom setting in which he or she could help or hurt another child who was ostensibly playing a game in another room. The participant could help the other child by pressing a button that would make the game easier to play and allow the other child to win more points. Similarly, the child could hurt the other child by pressing a button that would make the game very difficult to play and hence lose points. The results indicated that youngsters who had viewed the violent program manifested a greater willingness to hurt the other child than youngsters who had watched the neutral program. Moreover, an elaboration of this study by Paul Ekman and colleagues (Ekman et al., 1972) included the recording of the facial

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expressions of these children while they were watching the television violence. In this instance, the children whose facial expressions indicated interest or pleasure while watching TV violence were more willing to hurt the other child than the youngsters whose facial expressions indicated disinterest or displeasure while watching TV violence. Thus, this set of studies identified some potential moderating variables in the violence-viewing/aggressive-behavior equation.

Other early experiments by researchers using physiological measures of arousal (e.g., galvanic skin response [GSR], heart rate, respiration changes) while watching violent cartoons (Cline, Croft, & Courrier, 1973; Osborn & Endsley, 1971) found that children are emotionally responsive even to cartoon violence. Also, other stud- ies (Ellis & Sekyra, 1972; Hapkiewitz & Roden, 1971; Lovaas, 1961; Mussen & Rutherford, 1961; Ross, 1972) found that exposure to even one violent cartoon leads to increased aggression in the structured playroom settings. Furthermore, studies by Drabman and his colleagues (Drabman & Thomas, 1974; Thomas, Horton, Lippincott, & Drabman, 1977) have shown that children who view violent television programs become desensitized to violence and are more willing to tolerate aggres- sive behavior in others. Moreover, later studies with emotionally disturbed children (Gadow & Sprafkin, 1993; Grimes, Vernberg, & Cathers, 1997) have found that these youngsters may be more vulnerable to the influence of TV violence. For example, Grimes et al. (1997) found that 8- to 12-year-olds who were diagnosed as having either attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, or conduct disorder manifested less emotional concern for victims and were more willing to accept violence as justified than a matched group of children who did not have these disorders.

All of the studies described above were conducted in fairly structured laboratory or playroom settings where the display of aggression or emotional arousal or desen- sitization were relatively contiguous to the viewing of TV violence. Questions remain about what might happen in more naturalistic settings or field studies of vio- lence viewing and aggressive behavior. One early study that assessed these issues was the work of Aletha (Stein) Huston and Lynette (Friedrich) Cofer (Friedrich & Stein, 1973; Stein & Friedrich, 1972) in which they assessed the effect of viewing aggressive versus prosocial television programs on the behavior of preschoolers in their normal child-care settings.

In this study, the preschoolers were assigned to view a “diet” of either Batman and Superman cartoons, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, or neutral programming that contained neither aggressive nor prosocial material (i.e., special travel stories for preschoolers). The diet included 12 half-hour episodes that were viewed 1 half hour per day, 3 days per week, for 4 weeks. The researchers observed the children in the classroom and on the playground for 3 weeks prior to the start of the view- ing period, to establish a baseline for the amount of aggression or prosocial behav- ior, and continued to observe the children during the 4 weeks of viewing and for an additional 2 weeks.

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The results were that children who were initially more aggressive and had viewed the Batman and Superman cartoons were more active in the classroom and on the playground, played more roughly with toys, and got into more aggressive encoun- ters. Conversely, youngsters from lower income families who had viewed Mister Rogers increased their prosocial helping behavior. One suggestion from this early field study is that viewing aggressive program content can lead to changes in aggres- sive behavior, whereas the opposite is also true for prosocial programming. Moreover, these changes were demonstrated in a relatively short viewing period (12 half hours) and in the context of other viewing that took place outside of the class- room setting.

Other field studies have used restricted populations such as boys in detention cen- ters or secure residential settings. In one such study, conducted for NBC, Feshbach and Singer (1971) presented preadolescent and adolescent males in a security facil- ity with a diet of aggressive or nonaggressive television programs over a 6-week period and measured their daily aggressive behavior. They found that the youngsters who watched the nonaggressive programs were more aggressive than the other group. However, this study was criticized on methodological grounds relating to the selection of participants and the assignment of viewing conditions (Liebert, Sobel, & Davidson, 1972), and a subsequent replication (Wells, 1973) failed to duplicate the findings. Moreover, a later study conducted by Berkowitz and his colleagues (Parke, Berkowitz, Leyens, West, & Sebastian, 1977), using aggressive or nonag- gressive films presented to adolescent males living in minimum security institutions, did demonstrate increases in both verbal and physical interpersonal aggression among the teens viewing the aggressive diet.

Another approach to field studies involved the assessment of the effects of natu- rally occurring differences in the television exposure available to children in com- munities with or without television or communities with differing television content. In one set of studies (Murray & Kippax, 1977, 1978), the researchers were able to study the introduction of television in a rural community in Australia, in contrast to two similar communities that had differing experiences with television. In a second set of studies (MacBeth, 1996; Williams, 1986), the research team studied the intro- duction of television in a rural Canadian community, in contrast to two similar com- munities with differing television experiences. In general, the results of both the Australian and Canadian studies converge in showing that the introduction of televi- sion had a major influence on restructuring the social lives of children in these rural communities. In this regard, both studies found that television displaced other media use and involvement in various social activities, a finding not dissimilar to the ear- lier studies of children in England (Himmelweit et al., 1958) or the United States and Canada (Schramm et al., 1961). However, with regard to the effects of TV violence, these newer field studies provide stronger evidence of negative influence, in differ- ing but complementary ways. Murray and Kippax (Murray, 1980) found changes in perceptions of the seriousness and prevalence of crime among children in the town

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exposed to higher levels of television violence, whereas Williams and MacBeth (Joy, Kimball, & Zabrack, 1986) found increases in aggression among children following the introduction of television in the town.

What Have We Learned?

Research conducted over the past 50 years leads to the conclusion that televised violence does affect viewers’ attitudes, values, and behavior (Hearold, 1986; Murray, 1994; Paik & Comstock, 1994). In general, there seem to be three main classes of effects: aggression, desensitization, and fear.

• Aggression: Viewing televised violence can lead to increases in aggressive behavior and/or changes in attitudes and values favoring the use of aggression to solve conflicts.

• Desensitization: Extensive violence viewing may lead to decreased sensitivity to violence and a greater willingness to tolerate increasing levels of violence in society.

• Fear: Extensive exposure to television violence may produce the mean world syn- drome effect, in which viewers overestimate their risk of victimization.

Although the body of research on the effects of viewing television violence is extensive and fairly coherent in demonstrating systematic patterns of influence, we know surprisingly little about the processes involved in the production of these effects. Although we know that viewing televised violence can lead to increases in aggressive behavior or fearfulness and changed attitudes and values about the role of violence in society, it would be helpful to know more about how these changes occur in viewers.

To set the context for the continuing research—within the broad framework of a social learning paradigm—we know that changes in behavior and thoughts can result from observing models in the world around us, be they parents, peers, or other role models, such as those provided by mass media. The processes involved in modeling or imitation and vicarious learning of overt behavior were addressed in social learn- ing theories in the 1960s (Bandura, 1962, 1965, 1969; Berkowitz, 1962, 1965), but we need to expand our understanding of the neurological processes that might gov- ern the translation of the observed models into thoughts and actions.

As a start in this new direction, both Bandura (1994) and Berkowitz (1984) have provided some theoretical foundations for the translation of communication “events” into thoughts and actions. Bandura’s “social-cognitive” approach and Berkowitz’s outline of a “cognitive-neoassociation” analysis posit a role for emotional arousal as an affective tag that may facilitate lasting influences. As Bandura (1994) notes, “People are easily aroused by the emotional expressions of others. Vicarious arousal operates mainly through an intervening self-arousal process. . . . That is, seeing others react emotionally to instigating conditions activates emotion-arousing thoughts

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and imagery in observers” (p. 75). With regard to aggression, we know that viewing television violence can be emotionally arousing (e.g., Cline et al., 1973; Osborn & Endsley, 1971; Zillmann, 1971, 1982), but we lack direct measures of cortical arousal or activation patterns in relation to violence viewing.

The pursuit of neurological patterns of cortical arousal in violence viewing would likely start with the amygdala because it has a well-established role in the control of physiological responses to emotionally arousing or threatening stimuli (Damasio, 1994, 1999; Kosslyn & Koenig, 1995; LeDoux, 1996; LeDoux & Hirst, 1986; Ornstein, 1997; Panksepp, 1998; Steward, 2000). Indeed, a recent National Research Council (1993) report from the Panel on the Understanding and Control of Violent Behavior concludes,

All human behavior, including aggression and violence, is the outcome of complex processes in the brain. Violent behaviors may result from relatively permanent condi- tions or from temporary states. . . . Biological research on aggressive and violent behav- ior has given particular attention to the following in recent years: . . . (2) functioning of steroid hormones such as testosterone and glucocorticoids, especially their action on steroid receptors in the brain; . . . (6) neurophysiological (i.e., brain wave) abnormali- ties, particularly in the temporal lobe of the brain; (7) brain dysfunctions that interfere with language processing or cognition. (pp. 115-116)

Thus, one suggestion for further research on the effect of media violence is to assess some of the neurological correlates of viewing televised violence. In particu- lar, the use of videotaped violent scenes can serve as the ideal stimulus for assessing activation patterns in response to violence. These neurobiological studies hold the key to understanding the ways in which children might respond to seeing violence in entertainment, and this might also be the key to thinking about the desensitization to violence, or what some might describe as a drugging effect on the developing child. To assess this possibility, we embarked on an initial study of children’s brain activations while the youngsters viewed violent and nonviolent video program mate- rial. We reasoned that there may be similarities between the ways humans respond to the threats of physical violence in the real world and the neurobiological response to so-called “entertainment” violence.

We began our study with some notions and expectations drawn from previous research suggesting that we might find the “threat recognition” system—involving the limbic system and right hemisphere of the brain—as an area that will be activated while viewing video violence. The development of hypotheses about violence view- ing and brain activation, however, needs to start with research on physiological arousal (e.g., Osborn & Endsley, 1971; Zillmann, 1982; Zillmann & Bryant, 1994) and link this to cortical arousal (Davidson, Ekman, Saron, Senulis, & Friesen, 1990; Davidson & Tomarken, 1989; Ekman & Davidson, 1993, 1994; Ekman, Davidson, & Friesen, 1990).

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In our pilot study (Murray, 2001; Murray et al., 2006), we found that both violent and nonviolent viewing activated regions implicated in aspects of visual and audi- tory processing. In contrast, however, viewing TV violence selectively recruited the right precuneus, right posterior cingulate, right amygdala, bilateral hippocampus and parahippocampus, bilateral pulvinar, right inferior parietal and prefrontal, and right premotor cortex. Thus, TV violence viewing appears to activate brain areas involved in arousal and attention, detection of threat, episodic memory encoding and retrieval, and motor programming. These findings are displayed in Figure 1, showing the sig- nificant contrasts between violence viewing and nonviolence viewing by brain lobe/region in the xyz stereotaxic atlas coordinates (Talairach & Tournoux, 1988).

It can be seen that the regions of interest (ROI) of the composite activations of eight children, combined in adjusted Talairach space, include the amygdala, hip- pocampus, and posterior cingulate. These areas are important because they are likely

Figure 1 Violence Minus Nonviolence: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)

Activation Patterns for Eight Children (combined) While Viewing Video Violence

Note: See Murray et al. (2006) for further details on the study.

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indicators of the perception of threat and possible long-term memory storage of the threat event (in particular, these patterns are similar to the memory storage of trau- matic events by posttraumatic stress disorder patients). These activation patterns demonstrate that video violence viewing selectively activates the right hemisphere, and some bilateral areas, that collectively suggest significant emotional processing of video violence.

Our continuing research at Harvard Medical School, Children’s Hospital Boston is designed to address these questions about violence viewing in a more robust study that employs a larger and more differentiated sample of children who have had dif- fering experiences with violence (e.g., children who are identified as high or low in aggressive tendencies and children who have been victims of abuse). We will con- tinue to use the methods and procedures that were demonstrated to be effective in the pilot study; we will conjoin measures of physiological arousal (e.g., GSR, heart rate) with neuroimaging techniques (e.g., functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging [fMRI]) to track the emotional and neurological processes involved in viewing tele- vised violence. We anticipate finding clear differences in the three groups of children, with the victims of violence—the abused youngsters—being most respon- sive to viewing media violence and the aggressive youngsters being the least respon- sive to the entertainment violence; this is the desensitization effect that results from extensive violence viewing and acting out the violence witnessed in the entertain- ment world of film, television, and video game violence.

So, what is a reasonable set of conclusions that can be drawn from these data found in these and the hundreds of studies of media violence and children that have been conducted over the past half century? First, as the APA has noted in a recent public policy resolution (APA, 2005), there is ample evidence that violence in media does lead to increases in aggressive behavior. This new resolution follows a 1984 resolution condemning TV violence (APA, 2007). As a result, the new APA resolu- tion targets video games and other interactive media, drawing on the research on TV violence and other media, and calls for a reduction of violence in interactive media used by children and adolescents. In particular, the APA (2005), which speaks on behalf of more than 300,000 psychologists in North America, recommends that American society should

teach media literacy to children so they will have the ability to critically evaluate inter- active media;

encourage the entertainment industry to link violent behaviors with negative social conse- quences;

develop and disseminate a content-based rating system that accurately reflects the content of video games and interactive media; and

encourage developers of violent video games and interactive media to address the issues that playing these games may increase aggressive thoughts and behaviors in children and adolescents and that these effects may potentially be greater than the effects of exposure to violent television and movies.

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It is this ever-rising level of concern about violent media and the harmful effects on youth that fuels the demands for action from the media industries, government, professional and public policy observers, and educators and parents. The suggestions outlined by the APA, noted above, are a good starting point for action. The success of such action depends on the involvement of parents as a driving force for change in the home environment by focusing attention on the need to limit children’s access to violent media (television, films, and video games, in particular) and to take posi- tive steps to intervene in children’s engagement in and response to violent entertain- ment. As the esteemed philosopher Plato observed in 434 BCE, a society should be very concerned about the ways in which its citizens choose to amuse themselves. We run the risk of amusing ourselves to death.

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John P. Murray, PhD, is a professor of developmental psychology in the School of Family Studies and Human Services at Kansas State University and a visiting scholar in the Center on Media and Child Health, Children’s Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School. His current research is focused on mapping children’s brain activations, using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, in response to viewing video violence.

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