Introduction

1. Media Violence and its Effects on Aggression and Empathy Chuck Breter, Natalie Avery, Ashton Barnes, Lindsey Gregg (Dr. Victoria Kazmerski) Penn State Erie, The Behrend College • Discussion • Gender Differences • Men rated higher for aggression than women. • Women rated higher for empathy than men. • These findings are consistent with past and current research. • Aggression • No significant differences were found for aggression across the variables. • This is consistent with past research about aggression and adolescence. • Empathy • Those who watched empathy videos had significantly higher ratings of empathy. • Watching violent videos may decrease one’s capacity for empathy in the short term. • This could be due to the priming of certain parts of the brain, resulting from affect and arousal (Greitemeyer, 2009). • Empathy/Non-Scripted Interaction • A significant interaction was found between empathy and non-scripted variables. • Those exposed to either non-scripted variable scored higher in empathy than those exposed to either scripted variable. It is theorized that this may be because participants may have been able to empathize with those in the non-scripted videos because they knew that the characters in the videos were not fictitious. • Implications • Social Skills • Consuming violent media often, may decrease your chance of developing healthy social skills, which have been linked to success (Montgomery, Seeherman, & Haxby, 2009). • Parenting • Parents who know the effects of violent media will be more capable of managing the media consumption of their children. • Future Research • Future research could be done to look further into the pro-social effects of watching empathy-eliciting videos. • These videos could be used to promote the development of empathy in educational settings. Abstract In this study we investigated how media violence influences aggressive behavior and empathetic responses. Past research suggests that various media outlets such as music, television, and video games elicit aggression and can decrease empathy. Other studies showed that people can have an innate ability to mimic what they see and that media violence elicits aggression in the short and long term. Little research has been done on media violence and empathy. Our results showed that those who watched the empathy videos rated higher on the basic empathy scale. There was also a significant interaction for empathy between scripted and non-scripted videos. Therefore, one is more likely to be empathetic while being exposed to a non-scripted emotional video. • Method • Participants: • 179 Behrend Students, 78 males and 101 females recruited by Penn State Behrend’s SONA system. • Procedure: • Participants were assigned to one of four 30 minute videos. • -Violent Scripted • -Violent Non-Scripted • -Empathy Scripted • -Empathy Non-Scripted • Participants were then asked to complete a number of surveys. • -Demographic questions were asked to determine; • -Age • -Sex • -Media Consumption • -Revised Buss and Perry Aggression Questionnaire (Buss & • Perry, 1992) • -Example: “Right now, I could not help getting into an • argument with someone who disagreed with me.” • -Revised Basic Empathy Scale (Jolliffe & Farrington, 2006) • -Example: “I would be sad right now, if I saw another person • crying.” • Survey Questions were answered using a 7 point Likert Scale where 1 means not at all true, 4 means somewhat true, and 7 means very true. Violent Scripted Violent Non-Scripted • Introduction • One major concern is whether the influence of mass media affects our society through aggression (Bushman & Anderson, 2001). • Violent media is known to have effects on behavior through desensitization (Funk, Baldacci, Basald, & Baumgardner, 2003). • Over 1, 000 studies point overwhelmingly to a causal connection between media violence and aggressive behavior in children (Bushman & Anderson, 2009). • Little research has been done on the effects of media on empathy. • It would benefit society to know the effects of media on empathy, because empathy is a key factor in the development of social skills, which have been linked to success in life (Montgomery, Seeherman, & Haxby, 2009). • Research Gap • The majority of research on media violence and aggression has been done concerning the effects of television and film violence (Hopf et al., 2008). • Most research conducted on empathy included asking participants to imagine things through thought rather than visually seeing something to induce empathy (Johnson, Olivio, Gibson, Reed, & Nardo, 2009). • YouTube has recently been a popular site for sharing and uploading videos (YouTube, 2009). • Predictions • Aggression / Empathy Effects • Watching violent videos will increase ratings of aggression and decrease ratings of empathy. • Watching the empathy-eliciting videos will decrease ratings of aggression and increase ratings of empathy. • Scripted / Non-Scripted Effects • Non-scripted videos, even violent ones, will elicit more empathy since they involve real people and situations. • Scripted videos will elicit less empathy, since participants know that what they are watching is meant for entertainment. • Gender Effects • Aggression: M>F • Empathy: F>M Empathy Non-Scripted Empathy Scripted Results References Bushman, B.J., & Anderson C.A. (2001). Media violence and the American public: scientific facts versus media misfortune. American Psychologist, 56, 477-489. Bushman B.J., & Anderson, C.A. (2009). Comfortably numb: Desensitizing effects of violent media on helping others. Psychological Science, 20(3), 273-277. Buss, A.H. & Perry, M. (1992). The aggression questionnaire. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63(3), 452-459. Greitemeyer, T. (2009). Effects of songs with prosocial lyrics on prosocial thoughts, affect, and behavior. Journal of Experimental SocialPsychology, 45, 186-190. Funk, J., Baldacci, H., Pasold, T., & Baumgardner, J. (2003). Violence exposure in life, video games, television, movies, and the internet: Is there desensitization? Journal Of Adolescents, 27(1),23-29. Jolliffe, D., & Farrington. D.P. (2006). Development and validation of the basic empathy scale. Journal of Adolescence, 29, 589-611. Montgomery, K.J., Seeherman, K.R., & Haxby, J. (in press). The well-tempered social brain. Psychological Science, 20, 1211-1213. • Table 1. Means of Aggression and Empathy by Sex Collapsed Across Scripted/Nonscripted. • A 2x2x2 between subjects design found a significant difference in participant sex for scripted/non scripted on the measure of empathy, F(1,193) = 7.32, p =.007. • A 2x2x2 between subjects design found a significant difference in participant sex for scripted/non scripted on the measure of aggression, F(1,193) = 4.24, p =041. • Figure 1. Those who watched violent videos rated lower on empathy, F(1,193) = 13.48, p =.00. • Those assigned to non-scripted videos rated higher in empathy, even for violent videos. This was seen in the significant interaction between violent/empathy and scripted/non scripted on the measure of empathy, F(1,193) = 5.25, p =.023. Figure 2. There was no main effect for aggression. There was not a significant interaction between violent/empathy and scripted/non scripted on the measure of aggression, F(1,193) = 2.74p =.601. Acknowledgements We would like to thank our faculty advisor, Dr. Victoria Kazmerski, for all of her guidance and support. We would also like to thank Dr. Robert Light, at the Office of Undergraduate Research at Penn State Behrend. This research was approved by the Office of Research Compliance.