What have researchers focused on in more recent years? How does exposure to media violence increase later aggressive behavior?
Early aggression researchers were interested in discovering how youth learn to be aggressive. Once they discovered observational learning takes place not only when youth see how people behave in the real world but also when they see characters in films and on television, many began to focus on exactly how watching such violent stories increases later aggression. In other words, more recent research really focused on the underlying psychological mechanisms. In the last 10 years there also has been a huge increase in research on violent video games. Based on five decades of research on television and film violence and one decade of research on video games, we now have a pretty clear picture of how exposure to media violence can increase aggression in both the immediate situation as well as in long term contexts. Immediately after consuming some media violence, there is an increase in aggressive behavior tendencies because of several factors.
Related Questions
- What have researchers focused on in more recent years? How does exposure to media violence increase later aggressive behavior?
- Does exposure to violence on television or in video games lead to aggressive behavior in the real world?
- How does the U.S. compare to other countries in monitoring exposure to media violence?
