Paul John Griffiths
Discuss the influence of screen violence on young people from a Cognitive Behavioral perspective.
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From the era of ‘Battleship Potemkin’ (Eisenstein 1924), with its deliberate use of violence as propaganda, the moving image has been recognized as a shaper of behavior and purveyor of natural values. The advent of television reinforced the concerns about violence coming readily into the home and it became a common belief that screen violence (Straw Dogs {Peckinpah 1971}, Clockwork Orange {Kubrick 1971}), could in fact transfer into off screen behavior. Even ‘Tom & Jerry’ have been held up to suspicion.
So its obvious that the belief that violence engenders violence as suggested by Tarantino’s ‘Reservoir Dogs’ (1991), needs a more systematic investigation. Schneider (1996) suggests that "Media violence is partly responsible for the growing ‘brutalization’ of western societies". However, he does admit "Media violence causes only a few acts of actual intimidation, but (that) it has a considerable share in the development of aggressive attitudes and behavior patterns". This essay will specifically explore the relationship between screen violence and the subsequent behavior of young people (juveniles), from a criminological perspective. It was not the intention to concentrate on male juveniles alone. However, as research is quite sparse with reference to female juveniles, this essay does have a male central theme.
We need to discover what effects and what changes occur, with reference to modification and relearning procedures of juveniles. Therefore, a Cognitive Behavioral perspective will be used which includes imagery, fantasy, thought, self-image etc. and will follow the route of ‘Feelings, Beliefs, Attitudes and Behavior’.
The first section, ‘Background’, will provide a historical overview of recent research and outline some of the difficulties found investigating this area. In the second section ‘Developmental Influences’, are discussed, because there is a need to understand what learning processes occur during childhood. ‘Cognitive Effects’ is the title of the next section and deals with various internal processing, because what the juvenile believes about the subject matter and the reasons for them, can be just as important as the actual behavior itself. If you have ever looked underneath a bonnet of a high performance car, you will have noted a compact array of pipes, wires and engine components. Therefore, in the fourth section called ‘Physiological Implications’, we will take a neural and hormonal look at the body’s central processing unit, the ‘Brain’. In the next section entitled, ‘Social Effects’, we consider both criminogenic and social factors to media stimulation. ‘Individual Differences’, is the final section that explores what individual characteristics if any play a part in the effects of media violence on juvenile behavior. The essay is summarized by way of a conclusion.
BACKGROUND Back to top
During the 1960’s a number of articles on the effects of mass media violence on juveniles concluded that there were no harmful consequences (Wertham 1963). Early research into media effects included joint contributions from psychologists, sociologists and criminologists (Howitt 1998). Siegal’s (1959), investigation into the influence of violence in the mass media upon children’s role expectations, suggested that aggression and violence which children include in their role expectations of persons of various statuses are influenced by the aggression and violence attributed to these persons in the mass media. However, Wertham’s (1963), ‘Scientific study of mass media effects’, of over 200 cases suggested that the younger generation was becoming significantly more "teledirected". The early ‘use and gratification model’ (Klapper 1960) put forward two major functions: firstly, ‘Emotional Release’, for example, feeling better when one’s troubles are shared by characters in a television series; secondly, ‘School for Life’, such as when people claim that they learn how to deal with their own lives from television programs. However, Howitt (1998) states that the early multidisciplinary approach, was a "highly political and uncomfortable initiative"; and so the disciplines eventually drifted apart in order to concentrate on their own specialist interests.
Following the United States Surgeon General’s study of television and social behavior during the late 1960’s, and the subsequent warning that TV violence was moderately dangerous to children’s mental health, Bogart (1973) suggested that the reason for violence occurring on American television at a higher rate than elsewhere was due to the reliance by commercial television on ratings. He suggested then that "immediate remedial action should be taken in regard to televised violence". However, Howitt (1974), suggested that there were several methodological problems with the media-causes-violence idea of the Surgeon General; these included poor empirical definition of aggression, conflicting results in studies comparing age and sex differences and negative correlation between aggression and the amount of television viewed. Grixti (1985) rejected the pure behaviorist models of learned aggressiveness, although, he argued that the suggestion of innate aggressiveness has not been disproved. We will discuss and explore innate anger with reference to hormonal and neurological inferences, in the section on ‘Physiological Implications’.
DEVELOPMENTAL INFLUENCES Back to top
A juvenile’s age is a major determinant of the things that will be frightening and the techniques that will be most effective in counteracting emotional disturbances (Cantor 1994). Erikson (1989) puts forward various stages of what he calls "Psychosocial Development". At the ‘Toddler Stage’, around the second and third years of life, young people have a growing awareness of autonomy, this occurs alongside the development of shame and doubt. It is at this age that the individual strives to learn independence and self-confidence. Between the ages of three and five, the stage Erikson calls ‘Pre-Schooler’, the individual is drawn between initiative and guilt. This is where the young person learns to initiate tasks but also grapples with the nature of self-control. The stage called ‘Elementary School’, lasts from the age of six through to puberty and deals with the continuum of competence versus inferiority. It is here that the young person learns either to feel effective or inadequate. During ‘Adolescence’, that occupies the teenage years, there is confusion about role and identity. The juvenile works at developing a sense of self by testing roles and then integrates those roles to form a single identity. These distinct stages should be born in mind throughout this essay, especially during the next section on ‘Cognitive Effects’.
Huesmann (1986) presented a developmental theory to account for the relationship between increased exposure to media violence and increased aggressive behavior. He argued that the effects of media violence on individual differences in aggression were primarily the result of a cumulative learning process during childhood. He suggested that if undampened, these processes could build enduring schemas for aggressive behavior that persisted into adulthood. The area of ‘Schema’ is discussed later in the essay. The view from Groth and Hobson (1983) in their research with sex offenders, considered that rape was the result of developmental difficulties; most offenders they studied began their sexual offending history by age 16 and the majority of offenders reported no significant exposure to or preoccupation with pornography or erotica, which was predominately sexually orientated.
Juveniles with abstract reasoning deficiencies when viewing media sequences may come away with the wrong message; therefore suggesting that when the media becomes the message, movies may in fact play an important role in shaping the future of impressionable young people (Snyder 1995). One way that violence in the media can influence aggression is by teaching aggressive responses through a process of observational learning (Green 1990). Juvenile offenders were found by Browne and Pennell (1998) to have lower level of moral development than non-offenders and they were less able to appreciate the viewpoints of, or able to emphasize with, others. Belson (1978) investigated over 1500 London boys aged between 13 and 16. He suggests that boys who watched medium amounts of television violence were the most aggressive, low and high viewers showing the least aggression. Very high viewers of television violence were 50% less aggressive than those watching medium amounts of violence. Fried (1997), in her work on ‘Children abusing Children’, suggested that prevention strategies are needed. She included support for new parents and ongoing parenting skill training, ensuring that handguns and other weapons are kept out of the hands of children, and the curtailment of media violence. She extended her concerns to include racism and sexism, and also, emphasized the value of conflict resolution skills. These are not only practical skills but also ones that could encompass cognitive behavioral techniques.
Potter (1986) suggests that those people who doubt the reality of television and its portrayals of the world may not be so impressionable to the cultivation effects of the medium studied: individuals differ in their cognitive interpretation of television. He measured individual's perception of reality of television viewing by using three distinct scales: Magic window: when the individual believes what is seen as being a true representation of the real world; Instruction: the individual believes television to be a good instructional device rather than a useless distortion of reality; Identity: the perception and identification of events or characters on television as real. However, his studies suggested that television exposure showed only a weak cultivation effect and virtually zero effect when demographic factors were taken into consideration, although the overall predictor was their cognition; the individuals perceived reality of television (Howitt 1998). Bandura’s work on modeling (1994) may suggest television influences can serve diverse functions: tutors, inhibitors, disinhibitors, social prompters, emotion arouser and shapers of values and conceptions of reality.
In a study conducted by Bates (1996), into male convicted sex offenders, deviant sexual fantasy had emerged long before first offending but only 25% had offended within a year of first having had the deviant fantasy. Harris (1994), however, argued that the major concern is not with sex or violence as separate issues but in the way the two appear together. Sexual violence and unpleasant themes typically facilitate aggression, whereas, non-violent, ‘soft-core’ explicit material may actually inhibit it (Zillmann, Bryant, Comisky and Medoff 1981). With respect to video violence, Browne and Pennell (1998) suggest that young offenders were more likely to have aggressive temperaments and distorted perceptions about violence than non-offenders. It was suggested by Huesman and Eron (1984), that juveniles who fantasized a great deal about violence were more aggressive than those who do not; a reason for this may have been that fantasizing causes rehearsal of existing schemata for behavior; juveniles who fantasize about violence could actually increase the retrieval of an aggressive schema, especially on occasions of interpersonal conflict. They also noted that aggressive fantasizing was positively correlated with both television viewing and the extent to which children identified with television characters.
Morgan and Shanahan’s study (1991), into cultivation processes, highlighted the fact that high consumers of television tended to have beliefs which reflected media "enculturation" if they used video a lot. However, in contrast they suggested, those who watched little television but used video quite substantially tended to have fewer media-enculturated beliefs. Abelson (1976) first postulated the theory of scripts the basis being a ‘vignette’ defined as an ‘encoding of an event of short duration’, thus consisting of both a perceptual image and a conceptual representation of the event. A script consists of a sequence of vignettes. ‘Cognitive Script Theory’ (Huesmann 1986), proclaims that aggression is not merely a set of random responses to events but something much more organized and sequenced, thus suggesting the existence for a repertoire of ways to deal with situations that may or not involve violence. Abelson (1976) states that ‘cognitively medicated’ social behavior depends on the occurrence of two processes. Firstly, the selection of a particular script to represent the given situation and secondly, the taking of a participant role within that script. Green (1994) suggests the retrieval of any script depends on the amount of similarity between the situation at the time of retrieval and the situation at the time the script was encoded into memory. Therefore he suggests that the observation of media violence can engender complex associations, consisting of aggressive ideas, emotions related to violence and the impetus for aggressive acts. This is central to the underpinning methodology of Cognitive Behaviorism i.e. "The continuum of Feelings, Beliefs, Attitudes and Behavior".
Bandura (1994) suggests that ‘Cognitive Restructuring’ of behavior through moral justifications and palliative characterizations is perhaps the most effective psychological mechanism for promoting transgressive conduct. He states that because moral restructuring not only eliminates self-deterrents but also engages self-approval in the service of transgressive exploits. In other words what was once morally condemnable is now a source for self-esteem.
PHYSIOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS Back to top
Oliver Stone (1998) in a ‘Panorama’ television documentary, describes film media as a "powerful stimulant, a hallucinogenic". In basic terms he informs us that the stimulus "goes into your eye and into your brain; direct input!" He links the potential dangerous effects to those of alcohol and tobacco. This notion of "direct input" needs further investigation with reference to visual, auditory and general physiological functions. Our understanding in this area has come out of animal experimentation or work with humans who have suffered head injuries. However, due to ethical constraints on human experimentation, the scientific world has had to make do with cross species studies.
Physiologically there are several areas within the brain that are considered to be neurally responsible for visual and auditory systems. Some are interconnected and have multifunctional purposes and are also, in part, associated with aggressive behavior. From Carlson’s (1991) standard textbook on ‘Physiological Psychology’ we are informed that the Midbrain, controls defensive, predation and offensive behaviors; it also receives information via the auditory system. The Hypothalamus controls the autonomic nervous system and the endocrine system and organizes behaviors related to survival of the species, that Carlson (1991) calls the four F’s: fighting, feeding, fleeing and mating; it also receives visual information. The Hypothalamus produces defensive behavior, offensive behavior and predation. The Amygdala, part of the Limbic System has a role in modulating hypothalamic-midbrain mechanisms in aggressive and defensive behavior (Carlson 1991).
Emery and Emery (1976) suggest that television blunts cognitive functions. Working through a process of habitualization, television they suggest is a simple, constant, repetitive, and ambiguous visual stimulus, which gradually closes down the nervous system. Some developmental dyslexia appears to involve parts of the brain that play a role in language and due to the fact that it tends to occur in families, suggest the possibility of a genetic component. However, further research is needed in this area to identify the place that this plays in juvenile offending behavior. Developmental dyslexia refers to the language difficulties, in particular reading processes, which are most common in males (Carlson 1991). Krugman (1970), in his study using electroencephalographic material, found that the brain’s alpha rhythms were present when television is watched (Alpha rhythms usually occur when eyes are shut and visual imagery is absent). The Excitation-transfer theory put forward by Zillmann (1978), suggests that physiological arousal, no matter how it is caused, leads to an increase in any activity, implying that it is arousing television and not violent television that is the problem. This would also have implications for computer games and possibly even music.
Hormonally, androgens namely testosterone, primarily promote offensive attack. Long-term adult exposure to androgens will eventually produce offensive aggression (Carlson 1991). In a study conducted by Mazur (1983) into hormone and aggression, it was found that male testosterone levels begin to increase during early teens, at the same time that intermale fighting and aggressive behavior increase. However, juvenile’s individual status changes at this time and testosterone affects muscle as well as brains. Therefore it is not possible to deduce whether the effect is neurally or hormonally produced. A later study by Dabbs, Frady, Carr and Besch (1987) into juvenile violent offenders found that testosterone appears to be related to some indicators of aggression. They suggest that although the levels of testosterone did not show a significant relationship with rated violence, a relationship was found between the violence of the crime for which the offender had been sentenced. In an earlier Swedish study of juvenile boys, Olweus, Mattesson, Schalling and Low (1980), found that testosterone levels were positively related to measures of both physical and verbal aggression. They suggested that testosterone levels may be related primarily to a disposition to become angry and that other stimuli must be present before the disposition is manifested into aggressive behavior. The significance of neurotransmitters and the relationship to human aggression continue to be explored by Berman, Kavoussi and Coccaro (1997) and the hormonal aspects of aggression and violence by Brain and Susman (1997): their respective chapters in the ‘Handbook of Antisocial Behavior’ are worthy of reading to further extend knowledge in this area.
The research of Blumler, Brown and McQuail, (1970) into British "Soaps", developed typologies of the needs satisfied by different sorts of programs and designed a fourfold classification of function namely: Diversion, Personal Relationships, Personal Identity and Surveillance of what is happening in the world. The power of visual media on a normal sample was researched by Quinsey, Steinman, Bergersen and Holmes (1975), who found that, on average, a sample of normal males had substantial erections in response to pictures of pubescent and younger girls which were on average more than 50% of the size of their erections to pictures of adult women. The misclassification of different offender types on the basis of their response to various sorts of visual sexual imagery was noted by Wormith (1986); he found that approximately 33% of non-sexual offenders were wrongly classified as rapists and over 40% of pedophiles were categorized as normal men. This illustrates the need for a thorough understanding of contributory variables in any research, especially media violence studies, in order for a correct interpretation of data to take place.
Criminogenic effects may involve either direct or indirect cognitive processes. Direct processes, reflect an effect in the media on the viewer and indirect processes refer to effects in individuals from media coverage of issues other than crime e.g. divorce, lone parent families, wealth etc. (Howitt 1998). The danger in media violence does not lie in its fictional portrayal, where motives are examined and end results are shown, but in the presentation of real people engaged in antisocial activity (Schlickel 1969). In their review of literature on the behavioral and attitudinal effects of media violence on children Heath, Bresolin and Rinaldi (1989) suggest some underlying variables, namely, predisposition toward aggression, a violent family environment, identification with aggressive media characters, belief in the reality of the media and the depicted consequences of media violence. They raise the issue that media violence may distort a juvenile’s perceptions of the world and highlight the complex nature of the association, which makes intervention difficult.
Hearold (1986) suggested that ‘prosocial media effects’ can be achieved and that they could even be stronger, than antisocial ones. This theme was continued by Derdeyn and Turley (1994), in their work on ‘Horror Movies’. They suggest that although there may be a population of children at risk of becoming violent in response to such films, they might just play the same function as bedtime fairytales. They put forward that this "particular art form can be understood rather than feared". Jo and Berkowitz (1994), go as far as to suggest that depictions of prosocial actions in media can activate thoughts and memories that foster such things as helpfulness, kindness and other socially constructed behaviors. Paik and Comstock (1994) found little to suggest that criminal violence against a person, as opposed to property crime, be related to television media violence exposure. The effects of TV action and violence on children’s behavior, was the basis for research conducted by Houston-Stein, Fox, Green, Watkins and Whitaker (1981). They found that children’s attention to high action cartoons was as great as it was to heighten aggression in a free-play situation. Therefore, suggesting that the thematic content of the cartoons was immaterial to determining its effects.
The ‘Message System Analysis’, coined by Gerbner (1972), suggested that television’s messages can be identified by counting the characteristics of crime and violence presented. Therefore, people who watch the most television are the most likely to absorb television’s symbolic messages; those who watch the least television will be the least influenced. The longitudinal study conducted by Wiegman, Kuttschreuter and Barda (1992) covered five countries. In the Dutch study, it was found that juvenile’s aggression levels were better predictors of their violence viewing than viewing was a predictor of aggression; i.e. aggressive youngsters tend to like violent programs. In Australia, they found no significant relationship for either sex between viewing and aggression. In Finland a correlation was found in boys only, between violence viewing and aggression. The Polish data also suggested no significant relationship but found a possible influence of viewing television violence on the aggression of boys. Finally in the Israeli research, a significant relationship emerged between aggression and violence viewing for both male and female.
Howitt (1998), suggests that if media does influence the viewer to be criminal, but not directly, then it is perfectly feasible that media use by individuals fails to predict their criminality, whereas criminal statistics responds to the introduction of the media or periods of media strikes. He considers that the pattern of evidence supported the ‘indirect processes theory’ better than it did the ‘direct processes model’. In a review of literature and field studies conducted by Howitt and Denbo (1974), it is suggested that the most promising way of synthesizing results and expanding the limited insights into media influence provided by the paradigm of effects was by way of a subculture explanation. They argued that the impact of mass media could be interpreted only by understanding the social and cultural contexts in which the media-audience relationship developed. They conclude that media violence is a poor substitute for the real life aggression that is a central element of the street subculture and that there is no reason to assume that preferences for violent material in the media cause aggressive or delinquent behavior.
INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES Back to top
Leyens and Camino (1974), suggested some mediating factors that influence the content of violent mass media on viewers at the individual level: identification with the hero, emotional activation and confusion between reality and fiction increase the impact of violent content. They suggested that these influences might also be used to aid self-control. It has been noted that television produces a longer-term increase in aggressive behavior of boys but not of girls (Turner, Hesse and Peterson-Lewis 1986). The research of Lynn, Hampson and Agahi (1989), puts forward a ‘genotype-environment relationship and interaction theory’, whereby it was suggested that differences in psychoticism could be posited to generate differences in aggression and the enjoyment of television violence, which could in fact increase aggression.
Research conducted by Fenigstein (1979), into whether aggression caused a preference for viewing media violence, found that those films chosen by males contained more violence than those chosen by females. Browne and Pennell (1998) in their research on the effects of video violence on young offenders found that offenders spent a greater amount of time viewing video films than non-offenders and that violent offenders were more likely than non-violent offenders to prefer violent films. This is consistent with the earlier view of Gunter (1994) namely that viewers with particular beliefs about the world selectively choose to watch certain types of programs that provide reinforcement for their beliefs. This links into even earlier work of Fenigstein (1979) who compared aggressive fantasies in males to non-aggressive fantasies, he too found that this increased the preference for viewing violence and that men who were allowed to aggress physically (compared to those who had no such opportunity), were more likely to choose to view films containing violent content. He concluded, that the viewing of violence may increase aggression, so too aggressive behavior may increase the preference for viewing violence.
In a study by Holborn, Brown and Chaney (1970), into the use of television by youngsters on probation, compared with a control group of middle-class and working class juveniles, found significant differences between delinquents and middle class controls but little difference between delinquents and working-class controls. This suggested that social class appeared to explain more variation in television use than delinquency did alone. This area was extended in a recent paper by Browne and Pennell (1998), who found a greater difference between offenders and non-offenders than between violent offenders and non-violent offenders in terms of viewing preferences and reactions to violent films. Eron (1986) considered that interventions, which combined both cognitive and behavioral approaches, appeared to have had the most promise when it came to alleviating the psychological effects of media violence on aggressive behavior.
The fact that violent criminals commit non-violent crimes is inconsistent with explanations that supports ‘proviolence socialization’ (Felson 1996). Therefore, it is possible to suggest that exposure to media violence has a small but significant effect on violent behavior for some juveniles. This may be because the media directs attention to novel forms of violent behavior. Some of the underlying variables highlighted in this essay are claimed by their respective authors to discriminate between offenders and non-offenders. They include the following: Physical confrontational thoughts (Browne & Pennell 1998, Leyenes & Camino 1974), Family breakdown (Browne & Pennell 1998), Aggressive temperament (Browne & Pennell 1998, Heath, Bresolin & Rinaldi 1989, Fenigstein 1979), Identification with a screen hero (Browne & Pennell 1998, Heath et. Al. 1989, Potter 1986, Huesmann & Eron 1984, Leyenes and Camino 1974), Low moral development (Browne & Pennell 1989), Low empathy (Browne & Pennell 1998), High level of fantasy (Huesmann & Eron 1984, Fenigstein 1979, Leyenes & Camino 1974), Parental violence to young person, Low I.Q. (Browne & Pennell 1998), Preference for violent films (Browne & Pennell 1998, Wiegman, Kuttschreuter and Besden 1992, Fenigstein 1979), etc. Although their research does not prove whether screen violence causes or influences crime, it does however, suggest links from having a violent home background to being an offender, to being more likely to prefer violent films and violent actors (Browne & Pennell 1998).
Schneider (1996) is of the impression that the amount of violence shown in the media should be reduced and its mode of depiction changed. Cantor (1994), concludes her chapter on ‘Confronting children’s fright responses to mass media’, by reminding us that because television is one of young peoples major sources of information about the world, we need to be able to make reasoned decisions about what to expose them to and when. She reiterates the need to be able to explain crucial aspects of life, in an age-appropriate way that preserves their optimism while promoting necessary and appropriate precautions. Developmental factors in reaction of media violence over the age span from childhood to adulthood is considered by Green (1994) to remain an important problem for future research.
Cognitive behavioral strategies with juveniles, involving the provision of information about a violent media stimulus, is required in order to evoke a change in the interpretation or mental conception. For example, one technique is to explain that the fictional character or event is ‘not real’ (Gunter 1994). Any Cognitive Behavioral interventions relies on juveniles being able to encode and comprehend information presented; this is in order that it can be retrieved during subsequent encounters. The area of physiological psychology appears to be lacking in a large number of media violence studies. Yet, it is a vital subject to explore in order to gain some insight into any individual’s behavior. The effect of screen violence on juveniles is a fascinating subject area and one that will evoke greater attention in the future. There is a need for more empirical studies to be conducted; especially ones that employ scientific methodology and include multidisciplinary input, rather than some of the tendentious spurious social surveys that have so often been commissioned in the past.
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