Does violence on televison lead to violence in real life? Essay

The debate on tv even off system craze has been on going for many geezerhood now and has professionalduced a wide and alter set of views and research results.Many rise up established psychologists turn in attempted, with various types of experiments and observations, to either support or contradict a go-to doe with in the midst of force-out on television receiver and the blood-red episodes in truly aliveness.These sets of data work thrown up around interesting views and face-to-face consequences regarding the subject of television violence, and we will show the varying views and conclusions that some of these psychologists have reached and by using a respected and well known formation we will supply to show the views of a small section of our community. introductory research into the draw between violence and televisionOver the years numerous psychologists have produced thousands of experiments andor research to support or negate the link between violence an d television.In 1987 a psychologist named Cumberbatch produced data on the effective amounts of violence represent to be in British television programmes. He concluded that 30% of the programmes contained some form of violence, with an overall relative frequency of 1.14 violent causes per programme and 1.68 violent acts per hour. Each act of violence lasted an reasonable 25 seconds persisting to violence occupying just over 1% of make verboten television airtime.His research showed that in 26% of violent acts death occurred, unless in 61% no injuries were shown and the victim was portrayed as world in pain or stunned. In 83% of cases, no credit line was shown as a result of a violent act, and con spotrable line of work and gore occurred in however 0.2% of cases.Cumberbatch also revealed that most perpetrators of violent acts were more likely to be portrayed as b totalies rather than goodies, and violence occurred doubly as frequently in law breaking than in law-uphol ding contexts.His research, although incomplete for or against violence on television, gives us an idea of the amount of violence on television we are exposed to.Howitt and Cumberbatch in 1974 analysed 300 studies of television violence and its direct effect on childrens doings, they vie down the link between television violence and the childrens behaviour.A further study into the relationships between the media and violence carried out by Eron 1987and Phillips 1986 set up a opposite conclusion. They concluded that a positive correlation between the amount of attack viewed at 8 and later aggression at 30 could be seen.George Gerbner (1989) researched television and its functions on human behaviour and give tongue to Television influences human behaviour because there are routes or mechanisms whereby the suffice of television net have an effect on what we do, and how we act. Thus, offset of televisions influence perplexs about because of how we learn (by observation and i mitation), because of how we respond to certain kinds of story framework (arousal/desensitisation), and because of the structure of our inhibitions and the way television provides the kind of stimulation necessary to disclose them (disinhibition). I called these behavioural mechanisms, because for the most part the influence was shown on some activity (p128 The Psychology of Television)Aletha Huston (university of Kansas 1989) studied the effects of television violence on childrens behaviour and stated Children who watch violent television programmes, all the same just funny cartoons, were more likely to hit out at their playmates, argue, disobey frame rules, leave tasks unfinished, and were less willing to wait for things than those who watched the non violent programmes.(p 142 The Psychology of Television)We can see from the varying studies, different results and opinions of these psychologists just how toilsome it can be to support or negate a link between violence on televi sion and in actual life.How the interrogationnaires were on the watch in classIn a classroom environment we produced a questionnaire on concourses opinions relating to the link between television violence and real life.The class split into small groups of three or four and discussed possible questions to add to the questionnaire, trying to have a balance of pro television and anti television questions. The individual group questions were discussed and eight questions picked to make up the actual questionnaire, these questions consisted of four pro television and four anti television, the questions were set out so an anti television was followed by a pro television question.The obvious reason for the split into pro and anti television is to try and produce a questionnaire that will give the people taking part a non-biased set of alternate dissolves.The questions we decided on where as follows1. frenzy on TV causes certain people to copy those actions in real life2. People under stand TV is non real life and have no wish to copy what they see3. Children often act out violence from TV especially cartoons4. vehemence in playgrounds is not influenced by TV5. Violence is sensationalised in TV soaps to boost ratings6. Violence in soap story lines is vital to keep viewers interested7. News programmes use to much graphic violence8. Graphic violence is call for in the media to show reality in news storiesTo poster these results we required a descale, this scale is known as the Likert questionnaire scale and was devised in the 1930s, and it works on the principle of asking the question and then grown the subject five possible solutions, strongly agree, jolly agree, unsure, sensibly dissent and strongly disaccord (the first two and last two can be reversed)Questions one, two, five and six were prepared using the act scale, 1 strongly agree, 2 moderately agree, 3 unsure, 4 moderately disagree and 5 strongly disagree.Questions three, four, seven and eight w ere prepared using the answer scale, 1 strongly disagree, 2 moderately disagree, 3 unsure, 4 moderately agree and 5 strongly agree. The reason for this is to prevent untrue answers and is explained in the next section.Why are there anomalies in preparation and analytic thinkingWhen preparing the questionnaire we realised that we could possibly detect problems in the way people would answer the stated questions, the Likert scale is specifically designed to prevent this.For example we could encounter people who would pick only if their favourite number and pay no attention to the questions being asked, or people would stick to the left side or right side of each column.The way the scale is set out at the moment both mortal who is anti and someone who is pro television would both score the same, 24, and somebody who is unsure of either question asked would score 24 as well. Also a mortal who sticks to only one side of the scale, say the right side, would score a maximum of 40. Th is would not form a very interesting conclusion and peoples true views would be unknown so we have to alter the scale to produce interesting results, we alter only the scale and not the actual answers.To alleviate these problems the scale has to go through dainty changes when we have all the necessary data, but we must emphasise that only the scores are changed and not any of the actual answers given by the participantsAfter we have made these changes it can be seen that we now have a set of interesting results with definite pro and anti opinions and the people who have not completed the questionnaire correctly have no position on the result.How the data was analysedTo analyse all the data collected from the questionnaires we needed to produce a graph of all the answers.This table would show in detail how the subjects of the questionnaire answered our eight questions and, when we alter the scale, would provide us with evidence of the pro and anti television feeling.The graph shows all the answers to the questionnaire and also shows the changes made, the numbers in red show how we have altered the evaluate for the actual answer e.g. question 1 answer 1 has now become question 1 answer 5 etcSummary results of questionnaireTo find the pro and anti television views of our subjects we needed to work out the over all percentages, these were found by the mathematical processes below1. Strongly pro television value 1 (79) divided by the number of participants (520) multiplied by snow to give us 15.19%2. middling pro television value 2, 113/520 x 100 = 21.73%3. Unsure value 3, 45/520 x 100 = 8.65%4. Moderately anti television value 4, 181/520 x 100 = 34.81%5. Strongly anti television value 5, 102/520 x 100 = 19.62%These results show that 54.43% of the people who participated in our questionnaire are moderately or strongly anti television, compared to 36.92% who are moderately or strongly pro television.Other theories for the cause of war-ridden behaviourAlthough the debates still continue on the links between television and aggressive behaviour, other links have been researched and their findings well documented.Probably the most well known person to document his findings on aggressive behaviour was Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) he had a psychoanalytical memory access and stated that we all have unlearned intellects in the form of something called Eros (the seeking of pleasure and self-preservation) and Thanatos (a course to self destruct)He tells us that this tension can often lead to the Thanatos being projected outwardly and onto others.Freud stated that the need for displaying aggression comes as naturally as the need for food, drink and sex. The aggressive instinct can be dis settled through cathartic activities such as sport.Megargee (1966) support Freud in his findings and found that crimes are often committed by over controlled individuals who, over a period of time, have repressed their anger.Another approach to this topic was Lore nzs ethological approach, his hydraulic model claimed that aggressive energy builds up gradually over a period of time and needs to be released periodically. Lorenz (1966) stated that aggression is connected with our need to be adaptive, to fit in and survive within our environment.Dollard et al (1939) adopted a very different approach, the frustration-aggression hypothesis.This hypothesis claimed that aggression is always a consequence of frustration and the instauration of frustration always leads to aggression.Dollard et al view aggression as connatural and in doing so agree with the findings of Freud and Lorenz, but, say it would only take place in particular opportune circumstances. Aggression could possibly be decelerate or it could be aimed at a third party, a scapegoat. It is as if the mind thinks things through and only acts when the time is perceived to be right, or is advantageous.Another view is that of Berkowitz (1966) who says we rely on certain cues to trigger our responses. licking leads to anger, which is different from actual aggression, the frustration cues a readiness to act. Then only an environmental cue will actually trigger aggression.This theory is fair similar to the frustration-aggression hypothesis but it has the intermediary response that takes the form of anger, something has to come along that tips us over the edge.Bandura (1961, 1963, 1965, 1973, 1994) produced a theory on favorable learning. He claimed that aggressive behaviour was learned through observation, imitation and support of aggressive models. Even non-tangible reinforcements such as the words be ruffian can have the same effect.BibliographyCourse notesR Walters & P J Daly2003The psychology of TelevisionJohn Condry