Media influences on social behaviour

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

Next up

Media influences on social behaviour

Description

Resource summary

Similar

	Created by Florence Neyroud over 10 years ago