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Psychological Effects of War and Violence on Children
.Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ, pp. 281–301Snyder H N, Sickmund M
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enile Offender and Victims: ANational Report
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(4): 271–91Richters J E, Martinez P 1993 The NIMH Community ViolenceProject: I. Children as victims of and witnesses to violence.
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J. Garbarino
Violence and Media
Public and academic concern about media’s con-tributionto real world violence are about as old as themass media and the social sciences themselves(Wartella and Reeves 1985). Despite frequent framingofthematteras‘controversial,’extensiveresearch—anestimated 3,000 (Donnerstein et al. 1994) to 3,500(Wartella et al. 1998) studies in the United Statesalone—have examined the impact of media violence,and a number of recent major reviews (Huston et al.1992, Murray 1994, see also Potter 1999, Paik andComstock 1994, Comstock and Paik 1991), haveconcludedthatmediaviolenceplaysameasurablerolein real-world violence. A variety of US agencies,including the Centers for Disease Control of the USPublic Health Service (1991), and medical and publicinterest organizations, including the American Medi-cal Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics,and the National Conference of Parent-Teacher As-sociations, have identified media violence as a publichealth problem. The review below focuses mostheavily on US research and US media, most notablyAmerican television, primarily because a large ma- jorityofthepublishedsocialscienceresearchonmediaand violence is US research on American audiovisualmedia.Potter(1999,pp.44–5),forexample,reports42publishedcontentanalysesofUStelevisionsince1954,and just 19 from the rest of the world. Moreover,American media are among the world’s mostviolent—and most exported—and real-world violenceisarecurringpublicpolicyissue.Further,muchofthisliterature concerns impacts of media violence onchildren and adolescents, for the inter-related reasonsthat young audiences are considered the most im-pressionableandmostvulnerable.Adultsaregenerallyviewed to be more resistant to the deleterious in-fluences of violence, and, as some would argue (cf.Huesmann 1997), violent behaviors in adulthood maybe traced to media use during childhood.
1. Theories of Effect
Three models have been proposed to describe theprocessbywhichsuchlearningandimitationofmediaviolenceoccurs: social learning theory, priming effectstheory, and a social developmental model of learning(Wartella et al. 1998).First proposed by Albert Bandura in the 1960s,social learning theory is the best known theoreticalaccount of violence effects. Bandura asserts thatthrough observing television models, viewers come tolearn behaviors which are appropriate, that is, whichbehaviors will be rewarded and which punished. Inthis way, viewers seek to attain rewards and thereforeimitate these media models. When both children andadults are shown an aggressive model who is eitherrewarded or punished for their aggressive behavior,models who are positively reinforced influence imi-tation among the viewers. Even research in the fieldhasdemonstratedthataggressionislearnedatayoungage and becomes more impervious to change as thechild grows older. In a longitudinal study to examinethe long-term effects of television violence on ag-gression and criminal behavior, Huesmann et al.(1984)studiedagroupofyouthacross22years,atages8, 18, and 30. For boys (and to a lesser, though stillsignificant extent for girls), early television violenceviewingcorrelatedwithself-reportedaggressionatage30 and added significantly to the prediction of seriouscriminal arrests accumulated by age 30. These re-searchers find a longitudinal relationship betweenhabitualchildhoodexposuretotelevisionviolenceandadultcrimeandsuggestthatapproximately10percentof the variability in later criminal behavior can beattributed to television violence.Priming effects theory serves to augment the moretraditionalsociallearningtheoryaccountoftelevisionviolence effects. In the work of Leonard Berkowitzandhiscolleagues,thistheoreticalaccountassertsthatmany media effects are immediate, transitory, andshort-term (Berkowitz 1984). Berkowitz suggests thatwhen people watch television violence, it activates or‘primes’ other semantically related thoughts whichmayinfluencehowthepersonrespondstotheviolenceon television. Viewers who identify with the actors ontelevision may imagine themselves like that charactercarrying out the aggressive actions of the character ontelevision, and research evidence suggests that ex-posure to media aggression does indeed ‘prime’ other16187
Violence and Media
 
aggressive thoughts, evaluations, and even behaviorssuch that violence viewers report a greater willingnessto use violence in interpersonal situations.OnlyRowellHuesmann’s(1986;seealsoHuesmann1997) theoretical formulation of the social develop-mentalmodelofviolenceeffectsoffersatruereciprocaltheoretical account of how viewers’ interest in mediaviolence, attention to such violence, and individualviewer characteristics may interact in a theory of media violence effects. Using ideas from social cog-nition theory he develops an elaborate cognitivemapping or script model. He argues that socialbehavior is controlled by ‘programs’ for behaviorwhich are established during childhood. These ‘pro-grams’ or ‘scripts’ are stored in memory and are usedas guides to social behavior and problem solving.Huesmann and Miller (1994, p. 161) submit that ‘ascript suggests what events are to happen in theenvironment, how the person should behave in re-sponseto these events, and what thelikely outcome tothose behaviors would be.’ Violence from television is‘encoded’ in the cognitive map of viewers, and sub-sequent viewing of television violence helps to main-tain these aggressive thoughts, ideas, and behaviors.Over time such continuing attention to televisionviolence can thus influence people’s attitudes towardviolence and their maintenance and elaboration of aggressive scripts.This theory suggests that while viewing violencemay not cause aggressive behavior, it certainly has animpact on the formation of cognitive scripts formapping how to behave in response to a violent eventand what the outcome is most likely to be. Televisionportrayals, then, are among the media and personalsources that provide the text for the script which ismaintained and expanded upon by continued ex-posure to scripts of violence.Huesmann has demonstrated that there are keyfactors which are particularly important in main-taining the television viewing–aggression relationshipfor children: the child’s intellectual achievement level,socialpopularity,identificationwithtelevisioncharac-ters, belief in the realism of the TV violence, and theamountoffantasizing about aggression.According toHuesmann,aheavydietoftelevisionviolencesetsintomotion a sequence of processes, based on thesepersonal and interpersonal factors, that results inmany viewers becoming not only more aggressive butalso developing increased interest in seeing moretelevision violence.It must be emphasized that all serious scholars of the impacts of media on violence are careful to notethat media are not the only, nor perhaps among themost important, contributors to real-world violence.Violent behavior is a complex, multivariable problem,formed of many influences. Racism, poverty, drugabuse, child abuse, alcoholism, illiteracy, gangs, guns,mental illness, a decline in family cohesion, a lack of deterrents, the failure of positive role models, amongothers, all interact to affect antisocial behavior. AsHuesmann has argued, aggression is a syndrome, anenduring pattern of behavior that can persist throughchildhood into adulthood. The impact of mediaviolenceappearsstrongest asa predictorofreal-worldantisocial behavior as one facet of a ‘culture of violence.’
2. Types of Effects
AsPotter(1999,Chap.9)notes,media-violenceeffectsfall into five categories—physiological, emotional,cognitive, attitudinal, and behavioral—and both im-mediate or short- and long-term effects have beenstudied. While some attention has focused on direct,short-term imitative or modeling effects (cf. Phillips1980, 1982, but see Hessler and Stipp 1985), moreattentionandpublicpolicyconcernhasfocusedonthelong-term impact of repeated exposure to violence.More generally, three overarching categories of effectreceivemostattention:learningofaggression,desensi-tization to real-world violence, and the cultivation of fear inrepeated exposuretomedia violence(Wilson etal. 1997).Clearly, not all violent depictions should be treatedequally, nor all viewers. The (US) National TelevisionViolence Study (Wilson et al. 1997) identified severalcontextual factors within a representation that mayinfluence audience reactions to media violence whichinclude the following.
2.1 The Nature of the Perpetrator
Where individuals perceiveperpetratorsofviolence asattractive, as heroes, and
\
or as similar to themselves,thelikelihoodofstimulatingattention(Bandura1986)and aggression (Paik and Comstock 1994) increases.
2.2 The Nature of the Victim
While the commission of violence on an attractivecharacter with which an audience member identifiesmightservetoinhibitaggressivebehavior,itsprincipalimpact would seem to be in arousing fear among theaudience members.
2.3 The Reason for the Violence
Wilson et al. (1997, p. 24) note that violence viewed as justified likely heightens aggression, while violenceviewed as unjustified arouses fear. The impact of  justification has been documented with fictional aswell as realistic programming (Meyer 1972), and withadult as well as child viewers (Liss et al. 1983). In fact,arecentmeta-analysisof217mediastudiesdocuments16188
Violence and Media
 
that a justified portrayal of violence can enhanceaggressive behavior among viewers (Paik andComstock 1994).
2.4 The Presence of Weapons
A number of studies, including a meta-analysis of 56published experiments (Carlson et al. 1990) havedemonstrated that the presence of weapons, eitherpictorally or in the natural environment, can enhanceaggression among subjects. While, for ethical reasons,the large majority of such research involves adultsubjects,inatleastonestudy(Frodi1975)thepresenceof weapons enhanced aggression among adolescents.‘Conventional’ weapons such as guns and knives aremore likely than unconventional means for primingthe effect, social learning theory would suggest, be-cause their use as a means of aggression are stored inmemory (Berkowitz 1990, Leyens and Parke 1975).
2.5 The Extent and Graphicness of the Violence
A review (Wilson et al. 1997) for the NationalTelevision Violence Study suggested that more re-search is needed, but several tentative conclusionsabout extent and graphicness could be reached: (a)extensiveness of violence
within
media presentationsshould be associated with increased desensitization toviolence, at least in the short- to medium-term; (b)graphicness of violence should be associated withincreased cultivation of fear; (c) longitudinal studiesclearly suggest that extensiveness of 
iewing
violentmedia presentations heightens the likelihood of en-gaging in aggressive behavior.
2.6 The Degree of Realism of the Violence
In brief, realistic violence has been found to induceaggressive behavior, and to induce fear, more thanviolence believed to be less realistic or more fantastic.An extremely important qualification deals withyounger children, who may be unable to distinguishrealistic from fantastic characters, behaviors, andsituations. In one study, however, where
percei 
ed realism
was manipulated for older children (9 to 11 inFeshbach1972;10 to13 inAtkin 1983), thosesubjectswhowereled tobelieve thatfootage wasrealisticnewswere more likely subsequently to behave aggressivelythan those led to believe it was taken from anentertainment program.
2.7 Whether Violence is Rewarded or Punished 
Rewarded violence is more likely to be imitated thanviolence which is punished. Significantly, and par-ticularly for children (since, as we will show below,television programming most frequently presents vi-olent actions that are neither rewarded nor punished),the absence of punishment may enhance imitation,even in the absence of explicit reward (Bandura 1965,Walters and Parke 1964). Paik and Comstock’s meta-analysis (1994) suggests that rewarded violence stimu-latesaggressionamongbothchildandadultaudiences.One study suggests that punishment of criminalviolence decreases fear (Bryant et al. 1981).
2.8 Consequences of Violence
In general (and exceptions are noted in Wilson et al.1997, p. 30), mediated depictions of violence whichshow either pain cues or other short- or longer-termnegative effects or consequences of violence are likelyto depress the learning of aggression. There is littleresearch on the effects of pain cues or violenceconsequencesondesensitizationandthecultivationof fear.
2.9 Presence of Humor
AstheNationalTVViolenceStudy reviewalso noted,further research is needed here as well, but the presentstate of knowledge suggests, other things being equal,that violence coupled with humor is more likely toheighten aggression, and to increase desensitization,than violence without the presence of humor:
Several mechanisms can be used to explain such a facilitativeeffectofhumoronaggression.Humormightelevateaviewer’sarousal level over that attained by violence alone, andincreased arousal has been shown to facilitate aggression.… Humor could serve as a reinforcement or reward forviolence, especially if the perpetrator is funny or admired orhisorherwit.Andhumormaydiminishtheseriousnessoftheviolence and therefore undermine the inhibiting effects of harm and pain cues in a scene. … However, we shouldunderscore that our conclusion about the facilitative effect of humor on aggression is tentative until more systematicresearch … is undertaken (Wilson et al. 1997, p. 32).
3. Young Viewers
As noted, research indicates that certain factors maybe processed differently by young viewers. First,children below about age 8 have more difficultydistinguishing reality from fantasy and often imitatesuperheros with magical powers such as the
PowerRangers
(Boyatzisetal.1995).Second,youngchildrenmay have difficulty connecting scenes and drawinginferences from the plot. Timing of punishments andrewards becomes important in this instance. In manyprograms, the crime or violent behavior may gounpunished until the end of the program. Youngchildren may have difficulty connecting the endingpunishment with the initial violent act and may,therefore, believe that the violence went unpunished(Wilson et al. 1997). Thus, learning of aggressiveattitudes and behaviors from television varies by boththe nature of the portrayals and the nature of the16189
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of 00

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