Media Desensitization In Media

How Violence in Media Stimulates Desensitization Harsh methods used in law enforcement, rapid increase in gun violence, and even the tendency to pull out a smartphone and hit the record button in extreme situations all make it easy to infer that modern society has grown to a point in which empathy has become a thing of the past. Thanks to such great technological advancements over the years, the fact of the matter is that violence can be accessed much more easily by just about anyone now. This ease in accessibility to graphic content has raised many to believe the current media is the cause of a phenomenon referred to as desensitization. The idea behind desensitization is that exposure to violence in multiple forms can cause a person

Desensitization can be defined as a decrease or lack of an emotional response over time after repeated exposure to negative stimuli. What this means is that prolonged exposure to scenes of brutality lowers our inhibitions to violence, thus we become “comfortably numb” to what is violent (Fanti et al, 179). Desensitization can be split into two different categories. These two domains can be categorized by emotion and cognition. According to Dr. Kostas Fanti, a psychologist and professor at the University of Cyprus, emotional desensitization is identified when a person reports a lower perception of the physical or emotional status of another. To best exemplify the emotional side of desensitization, one could look towards spectators of a public fight. These people can be considered desensitized because rather than showing empathy and stepping in to stop the fight, onlookers either apathetically cheer the fighters on, or simply watch without doing anything to prevent further injury. When a person

Kostas Fanti found that subjection to media violence over a short period of time can still cause desensitization. His experiment consisted of an ethnically diverse sample of 96 college students that had a varying range of hours spent watching tv over an average week. In this experiment, the students were asked to view segments of nine 2 minute violent or comedic scenes in random order with three minute breaks in between each scene. They were also asked to fill out a questionnaire before and after viewing each video clip. Each comedy clip was taken from different episodes of the series” Friends” and the violent scenes were taken from various movies. Movies used include: Elephant, Clockwork Orange, Fight Club, 48 Hours, and Soylent Green; each violent scene depicted either realism, emotional suffering, or physical trauma of victims (Fanti et al, 181). In the first few moments of the experiments, subjects reported that they did not enjoy the violent scenes much and expressed sympathy for the victims in the clips. After a prolonged subjection to these clips however, the participants’ reports were quite the contrary as participants began enjoying the violence portrayed and expressed less sympathy towards the victims in the clips. Fanti noted that there was a correlation between aggression and the level of enjoyment to scenes of violence. What this means is that the aggressive individuals in the sample seemed to enjoy the violent clips more than the less