Craig Anderson
Violent video game effects: An overview
A new meta-analysis on the effects of violent video games will be presented. This meta-analysis is based on studies that meet stricter methodological criteria than past analyses. Included are studies using cross-sectional, experimental, and longitudinal designs from the U.S., Japan, Australia, and Western Europe. Results reveal strong support for the hypothesis that playing violent video games is a causal risk factor for aggression and violence, as well as for aggressive cognition, in both short and long term contexts. There also is evidence that playing violent video games increases physiological arousal, aggressive affect, desensitization and lack of empathy, and decreases prosocial behavior. Finally, recent research suggests that habitual violent video game play is linked to attention problems, ranging from attention deficit disorder to poorer proactive executive control.
Ed Donnerstein
The Internet as "fast and furious" content
Unlike traditional media such as TV, radio, and recorded music, the Internet gives children and adolescents access to just about any form of content they can find. For the first time, these individuals will be able (with some work) to have the ability to view almost any form of sexual behavior, violent content, or advertisement. Unlike years past, this can be done in the privacy of their own room with little knowledge of their parents.
The Internet thus becomes the medium in which TV, film, and video games can be downloaded, viewed and processed. It is also a vehicle, however, for the creation of aggressive images and the acting out of aggressive behavior. It is both passive and active. It incorporates our conception of how children and adolescents process conventional media violence, but adds a new dimension - actually being aggressive.
The messages of concern on the Internet do not differ from those of traditional media: concerns of sex, violence, sexual violence, tobacco and alcohol advertisements, and more recently advertising of "unhealthy" food products to children. The effects from exposure we would expect to be at least the same, if not enhanced. The interactive nature of the Internet, which can lead to more arousal and more cognitive activity, would suggest that influences such as those found from traditional media, like media violence, would be facilitated.
Issues
1. Children and adolescents use of the Internet relative to traditional media
2. What are the types of content of most risk for children and adolescents?
3. Is the Internet a vehicle for aggressive behavior, such as cyberbullying?
Cordelia Fine
Minds, marketing and mental pollution: What does cognitive science tell us?
The starting point for my talk is the surprising finding that older, more ‘media savvy’ children are no less influenced by marketing than are younger, more naïve kids. This seems counterintuitive until we consider research showing that marketing can persuade automatically, that is, in the absence of awareness, intention or control. For example, psychologists can alter adults’ consumer behaviour by creating an environment that subtly pairs a particular brand with rewarding stimuli. Thus the task for the consumer who wishes to remain uninfluenced is not to cynically and critically evaluate the marketing, but to over-ride its automatic effects.
I’ll discuss the implications of this for the ethics of marketing to children, and then go on to explore the broader ramifications of the growing evidence of the influence of the social environment on attitudes, behaviours, and values. This research raises important questions about children’s media environments, and the role of media / marketing literacy in ameliorating its negative influence.
Elizabeth Handsley
'There oughta be a law': The (potential) role of Law and Regulation in slowing down and calming down.
When people identify a problem in society, it's never long until somebody asks what legal measures are being taken, or could be taken, to address the problem. In this presentation, Elizabeth Handsley will explore the existing legal mechanisms for addressing violent and sexualised media for children and discuss the limitations of those mechanisms, including the impact of debates about individual freedom and parental responsibility. She will also propose some alternative legal and regulatory models that could be more effective in enhancing the media environment for children.
L. Rowell Huesmann
Why those who observe violence behave more violently.
Severe violent behavior is almost always the product of predisposing characteristics of the person and precipitating factors of the moment. One important environmental experience that contributes both to predisposing a person to behave more violently in the long run and to precipitating violent behavior in the short run is exposure to violence – whether in the home, in the community, in the school, or during experiences with electronic media. Television, movies, and video games are windows on the world, and what children see through those windows affects them just as what they see though other windows. Psychological and neurological theories have emerged over the past few decades that now explain both the short term precipitating effects and the long term predisposing effects of media violence in terms of well understood neurological and psychological processes. In my lecture I review how these mechanisms work and display data from some multi-year longitudinal studies on the devastating consequences of long term exposure to violence in the electronic media and in real life. However, an understanding of the psychological processes involved also makes it clear that non-violent, electronic media with the right content can have very positive effects on child development. Thus, understanding why violent electronic media cause violent behavior in the observer or player is the first step toward developing effective policies for reducing the negative effects of the violent electronic media and enhancing the positive effects of non-violent media.
Louise Newman
Too hot to handle: The psychological impact of sexualisation in the media
The ‘hypersexualization’ of contemporary Western culture refers to a cultural process of proliferation of sexual images and themes under the name of ‘permissive’ sexual values and preoccupation with sexual expression. The impacts of this process on children is profound and has surrounded even pre-pubertal children with encouragement to adopt adult-type sexual images, behaviour and practices. Marketing to young children includes adult-type clothes and implicit values equating popularity and social acceptability with sexualised behaviour. For girls in particular, media representations reinforce a ‘raunch’ style and objectify girls and young women as sexual beings above self-worth is related to sexual attractiveness.
The psychological impacts of sexualisation in the media include those effects on self-esteem and self-worth and ongoing self-scrutiny. Depression, anxiety and disordered eating behaviours are associated with sexual objectification of girls and are seen in primary school children. For adolescents the pressure to be sexually attractive and sexually active may contribute to poorly judged sexual activity and exploitation.
Wayne Warburton
I know that what I eat matters, but how can listening to Eminem do me any harm?
Across three decades, research has converged to suggest that exposure to music with violent themes increases the likelihood of aggressive behaviour, along with aggressive and hostile thoughts and negative emotions such as anger, unfriendliness and fear. Similarly, exposure to violent visual media (including movies, video games and music videos) has been shown to increase aggressive thoughts, feelings and behaviours. These effects have been demonstrated over the short and long term, for males and females, for children and adults, and for people with different personality types and personal circumstances. This talk will focus on the effect of hearing music with violent themes, and in particular violent music video clips. Evidence from very recent studies will be presented to demonstrate that the lyrical content of music is crucial to its effect. Further research that compares the effects of heard violent media versus seen violent media will also be presented. Finally, the research findings will be discussed in terms of possible explanations for why these effects occur.
A key process that will be discussed is the wiring of a viewer/listener’s brain. The human brain is plastic across the lifespan, meaning that it changes day by day and minute to minute. The way it is wired together is the product of the experiences of the person, just as our arteries reflect what we eat and our muscles reflect what we do. Consistent exposure to violent media can be instrumental in the creation of a ‘neural network’ in which there are many aggression related concepts, along with aggressive scripts for solving interpersonal conflict, beliefs approving the use of aggression, fear about whether other people can be trusted, desensitisation to violence, and callousness toward the fate of others. The overall message from this talk is that the content of media is crucial. While anti-social media exposure is linked with a range of anti-social thoughts, feelings and behaviours, exposure to pro-social media can have the opposite effect. As people who care about the way our children’s brains are put together, understanding the impact of what our children experience in the media is vital.
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