Media

Media

1. Pro-social Behaviour

   • Any action that intended to help others
   • Caring, helping, sharing and volunteering are all encompassed under the category of pro-social behaviour
   • Social Learning Theory: Imitating role models (such as parents or celebrities) through observing their behaviour, usually the imitator is a child
     • Attention - attention is paid to attractive, high-status and perceived similar models
     • Retention - observed behaviours are memorised
     • Reproduction - imitation occurs if a person has the skills to reproduce observed behaviour
     • Motivation - direct and indirect reinforcements (both negative an positive) as well as punishments; influence the motivation to imitate
     • Link with pro-social behaviour and the media
       • SLT argues that the media portrayals of pro-social acts have an equal impact to anti-social ones. For instance watching people help others, like on TV charity events, arouses others to do the same. TV charity ads, celebs giving money, articles in magazines and movies highlighting big issues or morals are some examples.
     • Rushton - found that children developed more positive attitudes to pro-social behaviour after watching pro-social TV. However, although pro-social acts were seen in behaviour, the effect only lasted about 2 weeks. This therefore suggests that the effects of the media are only short term.
     • Sparfkin et al. - found that children who had previously watched Lassie where puppies were rescued spent more time trying to help some distressed puppies than other children, even though doing so decreased their chances of winning a competition. This therefore suggests the children imitated the behaviour in line with SLT.
     • Hearold - performed a meta-analysis of more than 1000 studies of the effects of TV on social behaviour and found that pro-social behaviour had a bigger effect than anti-social behaviour. This therefore suggests the power of TV to influence pro-social behaviour through social learning is strong (generalisable).
   • Cognitive Priming
     • Media cues affecting pro-social and anti-social behaviour
     • Being in comparable scenarios 'triggers' these scripts into action, activating similar thoughts sharing memory pathways
     • Therefore viewing pro-social behaviour increases the chances of individuals acting prosocially when they find themselves in similar contexts
     • However the behaviour is not an exact imitation of what is observed as with SLT, but just general pro-social behaviour
     • Holloway (1977) - found that participants who 'overheard' a pro-social radio message in a waiting room before a study involving bargaining were more cooperative that those who did not hear the bulletin, This suggests a pro-social effect of the cognitive priming of good news. Not a lot controlled - personalities, what happened that day
     • Blackman and Hornstein (1977) - found that participants hearing a 'good news' bulletin rated human nature in terms of cooperativeness, honesty and decency much higher than those who didn't hear the bulletin. This suggests that related pro-social concepts in memory were primed by the original bulletin.
     • Moriaty and McCabe (1977) - found that children exposed to media models of sports people behaving prosocially performed more pro-social acts than those who were not. The acts they performed were different from those models performed. This suggests that the media models acted as cognitive primers for the children's pro-social behaviour.
     • Causality cannot be demonstrated in many of the 'research support' studies only correlational.
     • Cognitive priming may depend upon personality factors
     • Much research support has used media made explicitly for 'pro-social' purposes, not entertainment TV which is what most people watch regularly
     • Content analysis methodology is flawed as it does not recognise the intention behind the acts

2. Anti-social Behaviour

   • SLT
     • Imitating acts of role models. Attention is paid to the anti-social behaviour of the high-status, attractive model and these behaviours are memorised. The behaviour is imitated if the person has the skills to reproduce it and reinforcements motivate the person to carry it out again or not.
     • Leyens et al. - divided juvenile delinquents into 2 groups of aggressive and non-aggressive boys. 1/2 of each group watched violent and 1/2 watched non-violent films. There was an increase in aggression among those watching violent films. This supports SLT because it shows that behaviour was observed and imitated and it wasn't due to personality, however there was gender bias as no girls were in the experiment.
     • Huesmann et al. - carried out a longitudinal study of 758 US and 220 Finnish children aged between 6-10 years old. Self-ratings and ratings of others were used to establish aggression levels. TV viewing habits were recorded by parents. Concluded that amount and degree of TV violence viewed correlated positively with their behaviour. This supports SLT because the more violent films they saw the more aggressive their behaviour became so this would indicate observation and imitation.
     • Paik and Comstock - conducted a meta-analysis which examined 217 studies of the relationship between media violence and aggressive behaviour. The studies were carried out between 1957-1990, with age range from 3-70 years. They found that there was a highly significant relationship between TV violence and aggressive behaviour. The greatest effect was evident in pre-school children. The effect for males was slightly higher than for females.
   • Negative effect on society
   • Depends on context (age, place, situation, etc)
   • Insults, physical violence, swearing, drugs, graffiti, criminal damage, theft, burglary, smoking, lying
   • Desensitisation
     • Desensitisation is when anxiety is reduced by gradually getting used to the object or situation which causes fear. You're exposed to things or situations so you then get used to seeing them and are no longer shocked/scared by them. The media can have a negative impact on behaviour.
     • SUPPORT Drabman and Thomas - found that children viewing violent films showed less emotional response and more tolerance of subsequent violence. This suggests a desensitisation effect.
     • SUPPORT Bushman - found that participants playing violent video games for 20 minutes took longer to respond to someone injured in a staged fight than those viewing non-violent games. This shows that the participants could have become desensitised to violence after playing the violent games therefore supporting the theory.
     • CRITIQUE Belson - conducted a study of 1500 teenage boys, finding no evidence that high exposure to TV violence desensitised them into being more violent, and no evidence that watching violent TV reduced consideration for others or respect for authority. Therefore contradictory findings from research about violence on TV leading to anti-social behaviour.