The influence of media violence on youth

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/83429/1/2003.Anderson_etal.InfluenceofMediaViolenceonYouth.PsychologicalScienceinthePublicInterest.pd

Twenty-five years of research on violence in digital games and aggression: Reply to Elson & Ferguson (2013)

In this commentary, we first analyze Elson and Ferguson's (2013) attempt to offer a theory that would explain why exposure to family, community, school, and media violence could be related to increased aggression, but not cause such aggression. We conclude that the "new" theory they offer is not very "new." It differs from dominant social learning theories only in its claim that the relation between exposure to violence and aggression is almost entirely due to people who are genetically or biologically predisposed to be aggressive also exposing themselves to more violence. We show this assertion is strongly contradicted by existing experimental and longitudinal data. We also show that Elson and Ferguson's so-called "exhaustive review" of empirical data on the topic is seriously flawed; that their claim that effect sizes are trivial is not supported by the math; and that their claim that scholars who believe that violent video games cause aggression are an "extreme" group in a divided field is contradicted by surveys that show the vast majority of researchers believe violent video games increase aggression. We point out that their claim that scholars who believe in media violence effects are having a "moral panic" has no theoretical or empirical support, whereas the contrasting argument that researchers who produce violent media themselves, or use it extensively, are biased by the force of cognitive consistency and experience a "reactance" of "regulatory panic" does have support from psychological theory. © 2013 Hogrefe Publishing

Cognition and Aggression: A Reply to Fowers and Richardson

Fowers and Richardson (1993) charge that our theory of aggression is `infused with unacknowledged liberal individualistic... assumptions which portray humans as... autonomous, strategic agents seeking to achieve pre-given ends' (Abstract), and that these `unacknowledged sociocultural and moral values... distinctly limit its [our theory's] potential for either fully understanding unwanted forms of human aggression or orienting a practical response to them' (p. 354). In this reply we assert that, when stripped of their jargon, none of these criticisms is valid. The theoretical basis for our model is not disguised but has been specified quite openly and precisely. The theory has not been built on an ideological base of how humans should behave but on an empirical foundation of how humans do behave. Fowers and Richardson have invented an ideology for which they have coined the term liberal individualism. We suggest that, if they see some of its characteristics in our theory, it is because humans behave that way, not because the theory was derived from the ideology.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68547/2/10.1177_0959354393033006.pd

Effects of avatar race in violent video games on racial attitudes and aggression

The media often link Black characters and violence. This is especially true in video games, in which Black male characters are virtually always violent. This research tested the effects of playing a violent game as a Black (vs. White) avatar on racial stereotypes and aggression. In Experiment 1, White participants (N = 126) who played a violent video game as a Black avatar displayed stronger implicit and explicit negative attitudes toward Blacks than did participants who played a violent video game as a White avatar or a nonviolent game as a Black or White avatar. In Experiment 2, White participants (N = 141) who played a violent video game as a Black (vs. White) avatar displayed stronger implicit attitudes linking Blacks to weapons. Implicit attitudes, in turn, related to subsequent aggression. Black violent video game avatars not only make players more aggressive than do White avatars, they also reinforce stereotypes that Blacks are violent. © The Author(s) 2014