Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Media influences on social behaviour
- Media influences on prosocial behaviours
- Explanations for media influences
- Equivalent number of prosocial and antisocial acts on children's TV.
- Prosocial TV reflects prosocial norms - prosocial behaviours are therefore reinforced
- Younger children are less able to understand prosocial messages
- Effective parental mediation - discussing programmes with child
- Research studies
- Mare (1996) meta-analysis - children exposed to prosocial content:
- - Behaved more altruistically
- - showed higher levels of social control
- - Prosocial effects from other forms of media e.g. children's stories
- - Acted more positively towards each other
- - Became less stereotyped in attitudes and beliefs
- Evaluation
- TV for pre-schoolers contained few prosocial lessons
- Post-viewing discussion may enhance prosocial norms, but does not always work
- Zimmerman et al. (2007) Baby einstein DVDs may lead to poorer outcomes
- Mixing prosocial and antisocial messages reduces the effectiveness of the prosocial message
- Strongest effects on pre-schoolers, weakest on adolescents
- Prosocial depictions more effective when concrete than abstract
- 'instructive mediation' is effective, 'social co-viewing' is not
- Real-world application - Sesame street is more effective for children of higher socioeconomic class
- Media influence on antisocial behaviour
- Observational learning
- children observe actions of models and may later imitate them
- More likely to be imitated if perceived as real
- Bandura (1963) - artificial situation, little evidence of real-world 'copycat' violence
- St Helena - no increases in aggression after introduction of TV
- Cognitive priming
- Activation of existing aggressive thoughts and feelings
- Frequent exposure leads to stored scripts for violent behaviour
- Josephson (1987) - walkie talkie acted as a cue for aggression
- Desensitisation
- Media violence desensitises children to its effect
- Media violence represents violent behaviour as 'normal'
- Cumberbatch (2001) - fact that chidden get used to screen violence doesn't mean they get used to real-life violence
- Lowered physiological arousal
- Catharsis - Watching violence causes a real ease of emotions
- Excitation-transfer - violence creates readiness to agress
- Don't react in normal way to violence and less inhibited about using it
- Heavy TV violence viewers - lower arousal levels to scenes of violence
- Justification
- Violent TV may justify what is acceptable behaviour
- Unpunished TV violence decreases concerns about own behaviour
- Negative effects of exposure to violent characters on TV supports justification model
- Belson (1978) - unpredictable link between violent TV and aggression
- Computers and video games
- Positive effects of game play
- Playing prosocial game can increase helping behaviour (Greitemeyer and osswald, 2010)
- Multiplayer games and social issues (Kahne) and social commitment (Lenhart)
- Greitemeyer and Osswald (2010) - video game industry less likely to produce altruistic games as less likely to sell
- Methodological limitations of surveys
- Therapeutic applications of video games for post traumatic stress
- Negative effects of computers
- Karpinski study doesn't indicate causal relationship
- Link between Facebook use and stress supported in real life study (D'Amanto et al., 2010)
- Greenfield (2009) - Facebook 'infantilises' the brain
- Charles (2001) - anxiety linked to their use of social networking site Facebook
- Karpinski (2009) - link between lower grades among students and Facebook use
- Positive effects of computers
- Gonzales and Hancock (2011) - Facebook walls can have a positive influence on self-esteem
- Hyperpersonal Model (Walther, 1996) explains relationship between Facebook use and positive self-esteem
- Negative effects of game play
- Increases in aggression and white noise blast
- Longitudinal studies - high exposure to violent video games, more aggression
- Consistent link between violent game play and aggression
- 'Bi-directional model' explains link between game play and aggression
- Longitudinal studies - participants exposed to other forms of media violence
- Researchers cannot measure 'real-life' aggression