The Effects of Violence in the Media

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Recommended: Media violence and behavior

The effects of violence in the media that we see on a day-to-day basis affect us all. For most adults, we choose whether to act upon these effects or not. However, what about those who are exposed to this violence and who are not adults? What about our nation’s adolescents and youth? They do not have the mental capabilities of adults, what happens to them when they are exposed to such violence and they choose to act on their thoughts after exposure? These are just a few of the slew of questions that have been asked by psychologists over the years about media violence.
The first article that I found that deals with violence in the media may not pertain to the adolescents and youth of this nation, but it does pertain to the younger adult crowd and how they view a situation in news articles. The article is called “Race, media, and violence: Differential racial effects of exposure to violent news stories” by James D. Johnson, Mike S. Adams, William Hall, and Leslie Ashburn (1997). The basis for this study was to gain further insight into how people would see things when they were given a non-violent or violent news article and then had a race (Black, White, Non-specified race) added to the situation in the news article. This study conducted is aligned with the course’s curriculum as it correlates with the chapter on aggression and the media influences that it has on people’s aggression. Johnson et al. (1997) were hoping to find out if people had a learned predisposition to attribute the violent crimes with those of a certain race (in this case it was Black, White, or Non-specified) when people read a news article that was violent or non-violent because violence is stereotypically associated with Blacks. Johnson et al. (19...

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...n to do women. We are exposed to violence in media on a daily basis and with the studies in this paper it shows that it can have a huge impact on us.

References
Coyne, S. M., Linder, J. R., Nelson, D. A., & Gentile, D. A. (2012). ‘Frenemies, fraitors, and mean-em-aitors’: Priming effects of viewing physical and relational aggression in media on women. Aggressive Behavior, 38, 141-149.
Johnson, J. D., Adams, M. S., Hall, W., & Ashburn, L. (1997). Race, media, and violence: Differential racial effects of exposure to violent news stories. Basic & Applied Social Psychology, 19, 81-90.
Kronenberger, W. G., Matthews, V. P., Dunn, D. W., Wang, Y., Wood, E. A., Giauque, A. L., Larsen, J. J., Rembusch, M. E., Lowe, M. J., & Li, T. Q. (2005). Media violence exposure executive functioning in aggressive and control adolescents. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 61, 725-737.

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