4.3.8 - Media influences on aggression

What media influence means

After watching or playing violent content, a person might think differently, feel less shocked by harm, or act differently. These are distinct outcomes: an explanation of media influence must identify which changed and how that change could affect aggression. Computer games are especially useful for comparing passive observation with active participation.

Computer games matter because they are not just watched. The player acts inside the game world. In many violent games the player practises aggressive actions, receives immediate feedback, and may be rewarded for successful attacks. This makes game-playing different from passively watching a film.

The key exam move is balance. AQA does not require you to claim that violent media is the only, or even the strongest, cause of aggression. It requires you to explain how media exposure can be a risk factor that interacts with personality, family, culture, peer groups and biological influences.

Important distinction: aggression is not the same as violent crime. Many studies measure short-term aggressive responses, hostile thoughts or willingness to punish an opponent in a laboratory. These are relevant to AQA, but they are not the same as proving that games cause serious criminal violence.

Research evidence on effects

Research into media influences uses several methods. Each method answers a different part of the question.

Bartholow and Anderson (2002): controlled game comparison. Forty-three undergraduates were randomly assigned to play Mortal Kombat or PGA Tournament Golf for ten minutes. They then chose noise-punishment levels in a competitive reaction-time task. Violent-game participants selected higher punishment levels, with a larger effect among men. Random assignment strengthens the short-term causal inference about the game conditions, but the games differed in more than violent content and noise punishment is not serious criminal violence.

DeLisi et al. (2013): a high-risk sample. In a correlational study of 227 institutionalised juvenile offenders, violent-game exposure and attitudes were associated with self-reported delinquency and serious violence after several statistical controls. This shows an association within that sample. Controls cannot remove every unmeasured difference or establish whether game choice preceded the aggression.

Robertson, McAnally and Hancox (2013): following development. The Dunedin study followed 1,037 people. More television viewing between ages 5 and 15 was associated with later antisocial outcomes, including aggressive personality traits, after controls. Following people over time helps establish the order of recorded exposure and outcome, but television viewing generally was measured, rather than violent content specifically. The result therefore does not isolate violent media as the cause.

Anderson et al. (2010): combining studies. A meta-analysis reported associations between violent games and aggressive behaviour, thoughts and feelings, as well as lower empathy and prosocial behaviour, across Eastern and Western studies. Combining studies can show whether a pattern recurs, but cannot repair weak measures or uncontrolled differences within them. The size and interpretation of the effects remain contested.

The strongest conclusion is not "computer games make everyone violent". A better conclusion is:

Violent media, including computer games, may increase aggressive thoughts, feelings and some aggressive behaviours for some people in some contexts, but the size and real-world meaning of the effect depend on how aggression is measured and what other risk factors are present.

That wording is cautious but still useful. It lets you use research support while avoiding exaggerated claims.

AO3: defining aggression is a real problem. Studies use different dependent variables: noise-blast intensity, self-reported aggression, teacher ratings, criminal convictions, aggressive word reaction times and antisocial personality traits. These are not interchangeable. If studies define aggression differently, it becomes harder to compare findings directly.

AO3: laboratory control has a trade-off. Lab studies can randomly allocate participants and test short-term cause and effect. However, the Taylor Competitive Reaction Time Task and similar tasks have low mundane realism. Choosing a noise level for an opponent is not the same as aggression in a school, street, prison or home.

AO3: correlational and longitudinal designs also have a trade-off. They can study more realistic behaviour and longer-term patterns, but they cannot fully rule out self-selection. It may be that aggressive people choose violent media, that violent media increases aggression, or that both are partly caused by a third factor such as peer group, family environment or sensation-seeking.

Evaluating a method in context: Random allocation spreads participant characteristics across game conditions on average, reducing selection bias without guaranteeing identical groups. Keep duration and instructions consistent. If the games also differ in difficulty, frustration could explain higher noise settings, so matching game difficulty strengthens a claim about violent content. The noise-blast outcome remains a proxy: it does not establish effects on serious violence. These are design-specific reasons, not the generic claim that every laboratory result is valid.

Desensitisation

Repeated exposure to violence may reduce the emotional response that normally discourages harming others.

Seeing serious violence often produces discomfort, although responses vary with context and experience. A person may show physiological arousal through increased heart rate, sweating, raised blood pressure or skin conductance response. This unpleasant response can act as an internal brake on aggression: the person feels disturbed by harm and empathises with the victim.

Desensitisation suggests that repeated exposure to violent media weakens this response. If violence is seen again and again, especially when it is stylised, entertaining or consequence-free, the viewer may become less emotionally reactive. Over time this can lead to:

• reduced anxiety or disgust when seeing violence
• reduced sympathy for victims
• greater acceptance of aggression as normal
• weaker emotional barriers against behaving aggressively

Weisz and Earls (1995) investigated exposure to filmed sexual violence. In a laboratory study, 193 university students were randomly assigned to watch one of four feature-length films, including films depicting sexual aggression, physical aggression or neutral content. Afterward, participants viewed a rape-trial reenactment and completed questionnaires. Male participants exposed to sexual violence showed more acceptance of interpersonal violence and rape myths, less sympathy toward the victim, and were less likely to judge the defendant guilty; female participants were less affected by film type. This supports an effect of film condition on later attitudes and judgements in this setting. It does not directly demonstrate the repeated-exposure process of desensitisation, and its sexual-violence content and post-film judgement task limit generalisation.

Krahe et al. (2011) studied desensitisation more directly. Undergraduates first reported habitual media-violence exposure. Two weeks later they watched violent and comparison film clips while skin conductance was measured, then completed tasks measuring aggressive cognitions and behaviour. Habitual media-violence exposure was linked with lower skin conductance during violent clips and faster access to aggressive cognitions. Lower anxious arousal predicted unprovoked aggression in the reaction time task. This pattern is consistent with desensitisation, but habitual exposure was measured rather than randomly assigned. Less emotionally reactive people might also choose more violent media. Reduced skin conductance alone is not proof that empathy has disappeared or that a person will harm someone.

Desensitisation can also be a bridge to other mechanisms. If violence no longer feels upsetting, disinhibition becomes easier: the normal emotional brake has weakened.

AO2 example: Marcus watches graphic fight videos every day. At first he feels shocked, but after several months he laughs when someone is badly hurt in a clip. Later, when a classmate is pushed over, Marcus does not help and says "it is not a big deal". Desensitisation explains the reduced emotional response and reduced empathy.