Effects of media violence ignored by media?
I’ve been reading a paper by Susan Hurley (@Wikipedia), a philosopher who sadly died a couple of years ago aged only 53, for a university course. The title is “By-passing conscious control: imitation, media violence and freedom of speech.” (In S Pockett et al, Does Consciousness Cause Behaviour, MIT Press. I might be doing an essay on whether conscious control is really required for “free will.”) It really surprised me to learn that there seems to be widespread agreement among researchers in the relevant disciplines that there’s a link between the viewing of media violence and subsequent aggressive behaviour: “The consensus among researchers is that there is indeed a robust causal influence here.” (p301)
The last I heard about this, admittedly several years ago, was from a media studies academic, who insisted that no such link had ever been shown. However, Hurley cites many studies, including meta-studies (reviews of multiple studies), and the overall effect is very convincing. This bit particularly impressed me:
What is the magnitude of the effects of media violence? The effect sizes shown in the 1994 meta-analysis are larger than the effects of calcium intake on bone mass, lead exposure on IQ in children, or asbestos exposure to cancer… (p303)
So why isn’t this widely known? IMHO, the main reason is that there are connections between news and entertainment media businesses, and it’s not in their interests to publicise it. After all, what’s more important, to reduce the level of violence in society, or to maintain the profitability of big business? What do you think they think?
February 16, 2010
Posted in: philosophy, politics, psychology
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