Violent Media and Aggression: What is the Issue? (original) (raw)

Report of the Media Violence Commission

Aggressive Behavior, 2012

, the International Society for Research on Aggression appointed a special commission to prepare a report on media violence. Their charge was as follows: "The ISRA Violent Media Effects Commission is charged with the task of producing a public statement on the known effects of exposure to media violence, based on the current state of scientific knowledge. If the Commission finds sufficient evidence of harmful effects, then the Commission's public statement may include public policy recommendations, keeping in mind that effective policies may well differ across countries because of their different legal and cultural traditions and systems. The statement could be an original statement by the Commission, or could be an endorsement or modification of one or more similar statements offered in recent years by other major scientific bodies and/or groups of scientists who have appropriate expertise in the media violence domain. The statement (if sufficiently brief) or an Executive Summary statement (of a longer, more detailed statement) will be published in ISRA's journal Aggressive Behavior and will appear on the ISRA web site. It may also be published in the ISRA Bulletin." What follows is the final report of the Media Violence Commission, delivered in May, 2012. This statement was written by a group of internationally recognized active researchers in the field of media violence to summarize current knowledge about the strength of the link between violent media use and aggression, explain the psychological processes by which violent media may increase the risk of aggressive behavior, and offer practical advice on how parents and policy makers can deal with the issue.

Media Violence and the General Aggression Model

Journal of Social Issues

The General Aggression Model (GAM) is a meta-theory that considers the role of personal and situational variables on aggressive behavior, ranging from the biological to the cultural. Possible mediating variables include internal states (e.g., aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, increased physiological arousal) and the results of appraisal and decision processes (automatic and controlled). In this article, we focus on one situational variable-exposure to violent media-and how it can influence a wide array of cognitive, developmental, emotional, and social processes that can increase likelihood of aggression. Previous research has shown that exposure to violent media can increase aggression through all three internal state paths, and by increasing hostile appraisals. In this article, we use GAM as a theoretical framework to explain a wide variety of violent media effects. We also add some clarifications and extensions to GAM that research in the past 15 years has shown to be needed in the model. We also suggest new research directions in the media violence domain that we believe will be especially useful in the future. "There is nothing so useful as a good theory."-Kurt Lewin (1951) We believe that the General Aggression Model (GAM) is "useful" and is a "good theory" for explaining violent media effects. Our goal in this article is to use GAM to summarize what is currently known about how exposure to media violence influences those who consume it. More specifically, we focus on screen