Social Group Stories in the Media and Child Development

How do children and youth come to understand what it means to be a member of a particular race, gender, and other social groups? How do they come to hold beliefs about the groups that they do and do not belong to? Both news stories and fictional narratives that we are tuned into as a culture tell stories about what it means to be a member of a particular social group. In this review article, we relate the latest scientific knowledge on news and entertainment media representations of race, gender and other social categories and what they tell us about how these messages are taken in and processed by developing minds. We include research on identity development, social learning about members of other groups, and both positive and negative behavioral outcomes to cultural messages about race, gender, and other social categories. We offer recommendations for stakeholders to understand the role of the media in educating youth about race, gender and other social categories

Consensus on media violence effects : comment on Bushman, Gollwitzer, and Cruz (2015)

We summarize the main findings of Bushman, Gollwitzer, and Cruz (2015), highlight its empirical contributions, and note interesting patterns and implications for future research. The results demonstrate that consensus exists among experts on the reality of harmful media violence effects on children and adolescents. We note likely differences in the makeup of the different samples and how these might have affected the results. This comment also presents a new breakdown of the Bushman et al. findings, highlighting the high consensus for causal screen media violence effects on aggression, which fairly closely mirrors findings from that voluminous research literature, and compares this to the lack of consensus on the harmful effects of print media violence, which corresponds to a quite small research literature. We conclude with a call for research on how to overcome resistance to unpopular scientific findings.7 page(s