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Violence, media effects, and criminology.

Nickie D. Phillips Nickie D. Phillips Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, St. Francis College
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.013.189
Published online: 27 July 2017

Debate surrounding the impact of media representations on violence and crime has raged for decades and shows no sign of abating. Over the years, the targets of concern have shifted from film to comic books to television to video games, but the central questions remain the same. What is the relationship between popular media and audience emotions, attitudes, and behaviors? While media effects research covers a vast range of topics—from the study of its persuasive effects in advertising to its positive impact on emotions and behaviors—of particular interest to criminologists is the relationship between violence in popular media and real-life aggression and violence. Does media violence cause aggression and/or violence?

The study of media effects is informed by a variety of theoretical perspectives and spans many disciplines including communications and media studies, psychology, medicine, sociology, and criminology. Decades of research have amassed on the topic, yet there is no clear agreement about the impact of media or about which methodologies are most appropriate. Instead, there continues to be disagreement about whether media portrayals of violence are a serious problem and, if so, how society should respond.

Conflicting interpretations of research findings inform and shape public debate around media effects. Although there seems to be a consensus among scholars that exposure to media violence impacts aggression, there is less agreement around its potential impact on violence and criminal behavior. While a few criminologists focus on the phenomenon of copycat crimes, most rarely engage with whether media directly causes violence. Instead, they explore broader considerations of the relationship between media, popular culture, and society.

media exposure
criminal behavior
popular culture
media violence
media and crime
copycat crimes

Media Exposure, Violence, and Aggression

On Friday July 22, 2016 , a gunman killed nine people at a mall in Munich, Germany. The 18-year-old shooter was subsequently characterized by the media as being under psychiatric care and harboring at least two obsessions. One, an obsession with mass shootings, including that of Anders Breivik who ultimately killed 77 people in Norway in 2011 , and the other an obsession with video games. A Los Angeles, California, news report stated that the gunman was “an avid player of first-person shooter video games, including ‘Counter-Strike,’” while another headline similarly declared, “Munich gunman, a fan of violent video games, rampage killers, had planned attack for a year”(CNN Wire, 2016 ; Reuters, 2016 ). This high-profile incident was hardly the first to link popular culture to violent crime. Notably, in the aftermath of the 1999 Columbine shooting massacre, for example, media sources implicated and later discredited music, video games, and a gothic aesthetic as causal factors of the crime (Cullen, 2009 ; Yamato, 2016 ). Other, more recent, incidents have echoed similar claims suggesting that popular culture has a nefarious influence on consumers.

Media violence and its impact on audiences are among the most researched and examined topics in communications studies (Hetsroni, 2007 ). Yet, debate over whether media violence causes aggression and violence persists, particularly in response to high-profile criminal incidents. Blaming video games, and other forms of media and popular culture, as contributing to violence is not a new phenomenon. However, interpreting media effects can be difficult because commenters often seem to indicate a grand consensus that understates more contradictory and nuanced interpretations of the data.

In fact, there is a consensus among many media researchers that media violence has an impact on aggression although its impact on violence is less clear. For example, in response to the shooting in Munich, Brad Bushman, professor of communication and psychology, avoided pinning the incident solely on video games, but in the process supported the assertion that video gameplay is linked to aggression. He stated,

While there isn’t complete consensus in any scientific field, a study we conducted showed more than 90% of pediatricians and about two-thirds of media researchers surveyed agreed that violent video games increase aggression in children. (Bushman, 2016 )

Others, too, have reached similar conclusions with regard to other media. In 2008 , psychologist John Murray summarized decades of research stating, “Fifty years of research on the effect of TV violence on children leads to the inescapable conclusion that viewing media violence is related to increases in aggressive attitudes, values, and behaviors” (Murray, 2008 , p. 1212). Scholars Glenn Sparks and Cheri Sparks similarly declared that,

Despite the fact that controversy still exists about the impact of media violence, the research results reveal a dominant and consistent pattern in favor of the notion that exposure to violent media images does increase the risk of aggressive behavior. (Sparks & Sparks, 2002 , p. 273)

In 2014 , psychologist Wayne Warburton more broadly concluded that the vast majority of studies have found “that exposure to violent media increases the likelihood of aggressive behavior in the short and longterm, increases hostile perceptions and attitudes, and desensitizes individuals to violent content” (Warburton, 2014 , p. 64).

Criminologists, too, are sensitive to the impact of media exposure. For example, Jacqueline Helfgott summarized the research:

There have been over 1000 studies on the effects of TV and film violence over the past 40 years. Research on the influence of TV violence on aggression has consistently shown that TV violence increases aggression and social anxiety, cultivates a “mean view” of the world, and negatively impacts real-world behavior. (Helfgott, 2015 , p. 50)

In his book, Media Coverage of Crime and Criminal Justice , criminologist Matthew Robinson stated, “Studies of the impact of media on violence are crystal clear in their findings and implications for society” (Robinson, 2011 , p. 135). He cited studies on childhood exposure to violent media leading to aggressive behavior as evidence. In his pioneering book Media, Crime, and Criminal Justice , criminologist Ray Surette concurred that media violence is linked to aggression, but offered a nuanced interpretation. He stated,

a small to modest but genuine causal role for media violence regarding viewer aggression has been established for most beyond a reasonable doubt . . . There is certainly a connection between violent media and social aggression, but its strength and configuration is simply not known at this time. (Surette, 2011 , p. 68)

The uncertainties about the strength of the relationship and the lack of evidence linking media violence to real-world violence is often lost in the news media accounts of high-profile violent crimes.

Media Exposure and Copycat Crimes

While many scholars do seem to agree that there is evidence that media violence—whether that of film, TV, or video games—increases aggression, they disagree about its impact on violent or criminal behavior (Ferguson, 2014 ; Gunter, 2008 ; Helfgott, 2015 ; Reiner, 2002 ; Savage, 2008 ). Nonetheless, it is violent incidents that most often prompt speculation that media causes violence. More specifically, violence that appears to mimic portrayals of violent media tends to ignite controversy. For example, the idea that films contribute to violent crime is not a new assertion. Films such as A Clockwork Orange , Menace II Society , Set it Off , and Child’s Play 3 , have been linked to crimes and at least eight murders have been linked to Oliver Stone’s 1994 film Natural Born Killers (Bracci, 2010 ; Brooks, 2002 ; PBS, n.d. ). Nonetheless, pinpointing a direct, causal relationship between media and violent crime remains elusive.

Criminologist Jacqueline Helfgott defined copycat crime as a “crime that is inspired by another crime” (Helfgott, 2015 , p. 51). The idea is that offenders model their behavior on media representations of violence whether real or fictional. One case, in particular, illustrated how popular culture, media, and criminal violence converge. On July 20, 2012 , James Holmes entered the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises , the third film in the massively successful Batman trilogy, in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. He shot and killed 12 people and wounded 70 others. At the time, the New York Times described the incident,

Witnesses told the police that Mr. Holmes said something to the effect of “I am the Joker,” according to a federal law enforcement official, and that his hair had been dyed or he was wearing a wig. Then, as people began to rise from their seats in confusion or anxiety, he began to shoot. The gunman paused at least once, several witnesses said, perhaps to reload, and continued firing. (Frosch & Johnson, 2012 ).

The dyed hair, Holme’s alleged comment, and that the incident occurred at a popular screening led many to speculate that the shooter was influenced by the earlier film in the trilogy and reignited debate around the impact about media violence. The Daily Mail pointed out that Holmes may have been motivated by a 25-year-old Batman comic in which a gunman opens fire in a movie theater—thus further suggesting the iconic villain served as motivation for the attack (Graham & Gallagher, 2012 ). Perceptions of the “Joker connection” fed into the notion that popular media has a direct causal influence on violent behavior even as press reports later indicated that Holmes had not, in fact, made reference to the Joker (Meyer, 2015 ).

A week after the Aurora shooting, the New York Daily News published an article detailing a “possible copycat” crime. A suspect was arrested in his Maryland home after making threatening phone calls to his workplace. The article reported that the suspect stated, “I am a [sic] joker” and “I’m going to load my guns and blow everybody up.” In their search, police found “a lethal arsenal of 25 guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition” in the suspect’s home (McShane, 2012 ).

Though criminologists are generally skeptical that those who commit violent crimes are motivated solely by media violence, there does seem to be some evidence that media may be influential in shaping how some offenders commit crime. In his study of serious and violent juvenile offenders, criminologist Ray Surette found “about one out of three juveniles reports having considered a copycat crime and about one out of four reports actually having attempted one.” He concluded that “those juveniles who are self-reported copycats are significantly more likely to credit the media as both a general and personal influence.” Surette contended that though violent offenses garner the most media attention, copycat criminals are more likely to be career criminals and to commit property crimes rather than violent crimes (Surette, 2002 , pp. 56, 63; Surette 2011 ).

Discerning what crimes may be classified as copycat crimes is a challenge. Jacqueline Helfgott suggested they occur on a “continuum of influence.” On one end, she said, media plays a relatively minor role in being a “component of the modus operandi” of the offender, while on the other end, she said, “personality disordered media junkies” have difficulty distinguishing reality from violent fantasy. According to Helfgott, various factors such as individual characteristics, characteristics of media sources, relationship to media, demographic factors, and cultural factors are influential. Overall, scholars suggest that rather than pushing unsuspecting viewers to commit crimes, media more often influences how , rather than why, someone commits a crime (Helfgott, 2015 ; Marsh & Melville, 2014 ).

Given the public interest, there is relatively little research devoted to exactly what copycat crimes are and how they occur. Part of the problem of studying these types of crimes is the difficulty defining and measuring the concept. In an effort to clarify and empirically measure the phenomenon, Surette offered a scale that included seven indicators of copycat crimes. He used the following factors to identify copycat crimes: time order (media exposure must occur before the crime); time proximity (a five-year cut-off point of exposure); theme consistency (“a pattern of thought, feeling or behavior in the offender which closely parallels the media model”); scene specificity (mimicking a specific scene); repetitive viewing; self-editing (repeated viewing of single scene while “the balance of the film is ignored”); and offender statements and second-party statements indicating the influence of media. Findings demonstrated that cases are often prematurely, if not erroneously, labeled as “copycat.” Surette suggested that use of the scale offers a more precise way for researchers to objectively measure trends and frequency of copycat crimes (Surette, 2016 , p. 8).

Media Exposure and Violent Crimes

Overall, a causal link between media exposure and violent criminal behavior has yet to be validated, and most researchers steer clear of making such causal assumptions. Instead, many emphasize that media does not directly cause aggression and violence so much as operate as a risk factor among other variables (Bushman & Anderson, 2015 ; Warburton, 2014 ). In their review of media effects, Brad Bushman and psychologist Craig Anderson concluded,

In sum, extant research shows that media violence is a causal risk factor not only for mild forms of aggression but also for more serious forms of aggression, including violent criminal behavior. That does not mean that violent media exposure by itself will turn a normal child or adolescent who has few or no other risk factors into a violent criminal or a school shooter. Such extreme violence is rare, and tends to occur only when multiple risk factors converge in time, space, and within an individual. (Bushman & Anderson, 2015 , p. 1817)

Surette, however, argued that there is no clear linkage between media exposure and criminal behavior—violent or otherwise. In other words, a link between media violence and aggression does not necessarily mean that exposure to violent media causes violent (or nonviolent) criminal behavior. Though there are thousands of articles addressing media effects, many of these consist of reviews or commentary about prior research findings rather than original studies (Brown, 2007 ; Murray, 2008 ; Savage, 2008 ; Surette, 2011 ). Fewer, still, are studies that specifically measure media violence and criminal behavior (Gunter, 2008 ; Strasburger & Donnerstein, 2014 ). In their meta-analysis investigating the link between media violence and criminal aggression, scholars Joanne Savage and Christina Yancey did not find support for the assertion. Instead, they concluded,

The study of most consequence for violent crime policy actually found that exposure to media violence was significantly negatively related to violent crime rates at the aggregate level . . . It is plain to us that the relationship between exposure to violent media and serious violence has yet to be established. (Savage & Yancey, 2008 , p. 786)

Researchers continue to measure the impact of media violence among various forms of media and generally stop short of drawing a direct causal link in favor of more indirect effects. For example, one study examined the increase of gun violence in films over the years and concluded that violent scenes provide scripts for youth that justify gun violence that, in turn, may amplify aggression (Bushman, Jamieson, Weitz, & Romer, 2013 ). But others report contradictory findings. Patrick Markey and colleagues studied the relationship between rates of homicide and aggravated assault and gun violence in films from 1960–2012 and found that over the years, violent content in films increased while crime rates declined . After controlling for age shifts, poverty, education, incarceration rates, and economic inequality, the relationships remained statistically non-significant (Markey, French, & Markey, 2015 , p. 165). Psychologist Christopher Ferguson also failed to find a relationship between media violence in films and video games and violence (Ferguson, 2014 ).

Another study, by Gordon Dahl and Stefano DellaVigna, examined violent films from 1995–2004 and found decreases in violent crimes coincided with violent blockbuster movie attendance. Here, it was not the content that was alleged to impact crime rates, but instead what the authors called “voluntary incapacitation,” or the shifting of daily activities from that of potential criminal behavior to movie attendance. The authors concluded, “For each million people watching a strongly or mildly violent movie, respectively, violent crime decreases by 1.9% and 2.1%. Nonviolent movies have no statistically significant impact” (Dahl & DellaVigna, p. 39).

High-profile cases over the last several years have shifted public concern toward the perceived danger of video games, but research demonstrating a link between video games and criminal violence remains scant. The American Psychiatric Association declared that “research demonstrates a consistent relation between violent video game use and increases in aggressive behavior, aggressive cognitions and aggressive affect, and decreases in prosocial behavior, empathy and sensitivity to aggression . . .” but stopped short of claiming that video games impact criminal violence. According to Breuer and colleagues, “While all of the available meta-analyses . . . found a relationship between aggression and the use of (violent) video games, the size and interpretation of this connection differ largely between these studies . . .” (APA, 2015 ; Breuer et al., 2015 ; DeCamp, 2015 ). Further, psychologists Patrick Markey, Charlotte Markey, and Juliana French conducted four time-series analyses investigating the relationship between video game habits and assault and homicide rates. The studies measured rates of violent crime, the annual and monthly video game sales, Internet searches for video game walkthroughs, and rates of violent crime occurring after the release dates of popular games. The results showed that there was no relationship between video game habits and rates of aggravated assault and homicide. Instead, there was some indication of decreases in crime (Markey, Markey, & French, 2015 ).

Another longitudinal study failed to find video games as a predictor of aggression, instead finding support for the “selection hypothesis”—that physically aggressive individuals (aged 14–17) were more likely to choose media content that contained violence than those slightly older, aged 18–21. Additionally, the researchers concluded,

that violent media do not have a substantial impact on aggressive personality or behavior, at least in the phases of late adolescence and early adulthood that we focused on. (Breuer, Vogelgesang, Quandt, & Festl, 2015 , p. 324)

Overall, the lack of a consistent finding demonstrating that media exposure causes violent crime may not be particularly surprising given that studies linking media exposure, aggression, and violence suffer from a host of general criticisms. By way of explanation, social theorist David Gauntlett maintained that researchers frequently employ problematic definitions of aggression and violence, questionable methodologies, rely too much on fictional violence, neglect the social meaning of violence, and assume the third-person effect—that is, assume that other, vulnerable people are impacted by media, but “we” are not (Ferguson & Dyck, 2012 ; Gauntlett, 2001 ).

Others, such as scholars Martin Barker and Julian Petley, flatly reject the notion that violent media exposure is a causal factor for aggression and/or violence. In their book Ill Effects , the authors stated instead that it is simply “stupid” to query about “what are the effects of [media] violence” without taking context into account (p. 2). They counter what they describe as moral campaigners who advance the idea that media violence causes violence. Instead, Barker and Petley argue that audiences interpret media violence in a variety of ways based on their histories, experiences, and knowledge, and as such, it makes little sense to claim media “cause” violence (Barker & Petley, 2001 ).

Given the seemingly inconclusive and contradictory findings regarding media effects research, to say that the debate can, at times, be contentious is an understatement. One article published in European Psychologist queried “Does Doing Media Violence Research Make One Aggressive?” and lamented that the debate had devolved into an ideological one (Elson & Ferguson, 2013 ). Another academic journal published a special issue devoted to video games and youth and included a transcript of exchanges between two scholars to demonstrate that a “peaceful debate” was, in fact, possible (Ferguson & Konijn, 2015 ).

Nonetheless, in this debate, the stakes are high and the policy consequences profound. After examining over 900 published articles, publication patterns, prominent authors and coauthors, and disciplinary interest in the topic, scholar James Anderson argued that prominent media effects scholars, whom he deems the “causationists,” had developed a cottage industry dependent on funding by agencies focused primarily on the negative effects of media on children. Anderson argued that such a focus presents media as a threat to family values and ultimately operates as a zero-sum game. As a result, attention and resources are diverted toward media and away from other priorities that are essential to understanding aggression such as social disadvantage, substance abuse, and parental conflict (Anderson, 2008 , p. 1276).

Theoretical Perspectives on Media Effects

Understanding how media may impact attitudes and behavior has been the focus of media and communications studies for decades. Numerous theoretical perspectives offer insight into how and to what extent the media impacts the audience. As scholar Jenny Kitzinger documented in 2004 , there are generally two ways to approach the study of media effects. One is to foreground the power of media. That is, to suggest that the media holds powerful sway over viewers. Another perspective is to foreground the power and heterogeneity of the audience and to recognize that it is comprised of active agents (Kitzinger, 2004 ).

The notion of an all-powerful media can be traced to the influence of scholars affiliated with the Institute for Social Research, or Frankfurt School, in the 1930–1940s and proponents of the mass society theory. The institute was originally founded in Germany but later moved to the United States. Criminologist Yvonne Jewkes outlined how mass society theory assumed that members of the public were susceptible to media messages. This, theorists argued, was a result of rapidly changing social conditions and industrialization that produced isolated, impressionable individuals “cut adrift from kinship and organic ties and lacking moral cohesion” (Jewkes, 2015 , p. 13). In this historical context, in the era of World War II, the impact of Nazi propaganda was particularly resonant. Here, the media was believed to exhibit a unidirectional flow, operating as a powerful force influencing the masses. The most useful metaphor for this perspective described the media as a “hypodermic syringe” that could “‘inject’ values, ideas and information directly into the passive receiver producing direct and unmediated ‘effects’” (Jewkes, 2015 , pp. 16, 34). Though the hypodermic syringe model seems simplistic today, the idea that the media is all-powerful continues to inform contemporary public discourse around media and violence.

Concern of the power of media captured the attention of researchers interested in its purported negative impact on children. In one of the earliest series of studies in the United States during the late 1920s–1930s, researchers attempted to quantitatively measure media effects with the Payne Fund Studies. For example, they investigated how film, a relatively new medium, impacted children’s attitudes and behaviors, including antisocial and violent behavior. At the time, the Payne Fund Studies’ findings fueled the notion that children were indeed negatively influenced by films. This prompted the film industry to adopt a self-imposed code regulating content (Sparks & Sparks, 2002 ; Surette, 2011 ). Not everyone agreed with the approach. In fact, the methodologies employed in the studies received much criticism, and ultimately, the movement was branded as a moral crusade to regulate film content. Scholars Garth Jowett, Ian Jarvie, and Kathryn Fuller wrote about the significance of the studies,

We have seen this same policy battle fought and refought over radio, television, rock and roll, music videos and video games. Their researchers looked to see if intuitive concerns could be given concrete, measurable expression in research. While they had partial success, as have all subsequent efforts, they also ran into intractable problems . . . Since that day, no way has yet been found to resolve the dilemma of cause and effect: do crime movies create more crime, or do the criminally inclined enjoy and perhaps imitate crime movies? (Jowett, Jarvie, & Fuller, 1996 , p. 12)

As the debate continued, more sophisticated theoretical perspectives emerged. Efforts to empirically measure the impact of media on aggression and violence continued, albeit with equivocal results. In the 1950s and 1960s, psychological behaviorism, or understanding psychological motivations through observable behavior, became a prominent lens through which to view the causal impact of media violence. This type of research was exemplified by Albert Bandura’s Bobo Doll studies demonstrating that children exposed to aggressive behavior, either observed in real life or on film, behaved more aggressively than those in control groups who were not exposed to the behavior. The assumption derived was that children learn through exposure and imitate behavior (Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1963 ). Though influential, the Bandura experiments were nevertheless heavily criticized. Some argued the laboratory conditions under which children were exposed to media were not generalizable to real-life conditions. Others challenged the assumption that children absorb media content in an unsophisticated manner without being able to distinguish between fantasy and reality. In fact, later studies did find children to be more discerning consumers of media than popularly believed (Gauntlett, 2001 ).

Hugely influential in our understandings of human behavior, the concept of social learning has been at the core of more contemporary understandings of media effects. For example, scholar Christopher Ferguson noted that the General Aggression Model (GAM), rooted in social learning and cognitive theory, has for decades been a dominant model for understanding how media impacts aggression and violence. GAM is described as the idea that “aggression is learned by the activation and repetition of cognitive scripts coupled with the desensitization of emotional responses due to repeated exposure.” However, Ferguson noted that its usefulness has been debated and advocated for a paradigm shift (Ferguson, 2013 , pp. 65, 27; Krahé, 2014 ).

Though the methodologies of the Payne Fund Studies and Bandura studies were heavily criticized, concern over media effects continued to be tied to larger moral debates including the fear of moral decline and concern over the welfare of children. Most notably, in the 1950s, psychiatrist Frederic Wertham warned of the dangers of comic books, a hugely popular medium at the time, and their impact on juveniles. Based on anecdotes and his clinical experience with children, Wertham argued that images of graphic violence and sexual debauchery in comic books were linked to juvenile delinquency. Though he was far from the only critic of comic book content, his criticisms reached the masses and gained further notoriety with the publication of his 1954 book, Seduction of the Innocent . Wertham described the comic book content thusly,

The stories have a lot of crime and gunplay and, in addition, alluring advertisements of guns, some of them full-page and in bright colors, with four guns of various sizes and descriptions on a page . . . Here is the repetition of violence and sexiness which no Freud, Krafft-Ebing or Havelock Ellis ever dreamed could be offered to children, and in such profusion . . . I have come to the conclusion that this chronic stimulation, temptation and seduction by comic books, both their content and their alluring advertisements of knives and guns, are contributing factors to many children’s maladjustment. (Wertham, 1954 , p. 39)

Wertham’s work was instrumental in shaping public opinion and policies about the dangers of comic books. Concern about the impact of comics reached its apex in 1954 with the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. Wertham testified before the committee, arguing that comics were a leading cause of juvenile delinquency. Ultimately, the protest of graphic content in comic books by various interest groups contributed to implementation of the publishers’ self-censorship code, the Comics Code Authority, which essentially designated select books that were deemed “safe” for children (Nyberg, 1998 ). The code remained in place for decades, though it was eventually relaxed and decades later phased out by the two most dominant publishers, DC and Marvel.

Wertham’s work, however influential in impacting the comic industry, was ultimately panned by academics. Although scholar Bart Beaty characterized Wertham’s position as more nuanced, if not progressive, than the mythology that followed him, Wertham was broadly dismissed as a moral reactionary (Beaty, 2005 ; Phillips & Strobl, 2013 ). The most damning criticism of Wertham’s work came decades later, from Carol Tilley’s examination of Wertham’s files. She concluded that in Seduction of the Innocent ,

Wertham manipulated, overstated, compromised, and fabricated evidence—especially that evidence he attributed to personal clinical research with young people—for rhetorical gain. (Tilley, 2012 , p. 386)

Tilley linked Wertham’s approach to that of the Frankfurt theorists who deemed popular culture a social threat and contended that Wertham was most interested in “cultural correction” rather than scientific inquiry (Tilley, 2012 , p. 404).

Over the decades, concern about the moral impact of media remained while theoretical and methodological approaches to media effects studies continued to evolve (Rich, Bickham, & Wartella, 2015 ). In what many consider a sophisticated development, theorists began to view the audience as more active and multifaceted than the mass society perspective allowed (Kitzinger, 2004 ). One perspective, based on a “uses and gratifications” model, assumes that rather than a passive audience being injected with values and information, a more active audience selects and “uses” media as a response to their needs and desires. Studies of uses and gratifications take into account how choice of media is influenced by one’s psychological and social circumstances. In this context, media provides a variety of functions for consumers who may engage with it for the purposes of gathering information, reducing boredom, seeking enjoyment, or facilitating communication (Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, 1973 ; Rubin, 2002 ). This approach differs from earlier views in that it privileges the perspective and agency of the audience.

Another approach, the cultivation theory, gained momentum among researchers in the 1970s and has been of particular interest to criminologists. It focuses on how television television viewing impacts viewers’ attitudes toward social reality. The theory was first introduced by communications scholar George Gerbner, who argued the importance of understanding messages that long-term viewers absorb. Rather than examine the effect of specific content within any given programming, cultivation theory,

looks at exposure to massive flows of messages over long periods of time. The cultivation process takes place in the interaction of the viewer with the message; neither the message nor the viewer are all-powerful. (Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, Singnorielli, & Shanahan, 2002 , p. 48)

In other words, he argued, television viewers are, over time, exposed to messages about the way the world works. As Gerbner and colleagues stated, “continued exposure to its messages is likely to reiterate, confirm, and nourish—that is, cultivate—its own values and perspectives” (p. 49).

One of the most well-known consequences of heavy media exposure is what Gerbner termed the “mean world” syndrome. He coined it based on studies that found that long-term exposure to media violence among heavy television viewers, “tends to cultivate the image of a relatively mean and dangerous world” (p. 52). Inherent in Gerbner’s view was that media representations are separate and distinct entities from “real life.” That is, it is the distorted representations of crime and violence that cultivate the notion that the world is a dangerous place. In this context, Gerbner found that heavy television viewers are more likely to be fearful of crime and to overestimate their chances of being a victim of violence (Gerbner, 1994 ).

Though there is evidence in support of cultivation theory, the strength of the relationship between media exposure and fear of crime is inconclusive. This is in part due to the recognition that audience members are not homogenous. Instead, researchers have found that there are many factors that impact the cultivating process. This includes, but is not limited to, “class, race, gender, place of residence, and actual experience of crime” (Reiner, 2002 ; Sparks, 1992 ). Or, as Ted Chiricos and colleagues remarked in their study of crime news and fear of crime, “The issue is not whether media accounts of crime increase fear, but which audiences, with which experiences and interests, construct which meanings from the messages received” (Chiricos, Eschholz, & Gertz, p. 354).

Other researchers found that exposure to media violence creates a desensitizing effect, that is, that as viewers consume more violent media, they become less empathetic as well as psychologically and emotionally numb when confronted with actual violence (Bartholow, Bushman, & Sestir, 2006 ; Carnagey, Anderson, & Bushman, 2007 ; Cline, Croft, & Courrier, 1973 ; Fanti, Vanman, Henrich, & Avraamides, 2009 ; Krahé et al., 2011 ). Other scholars such as Henry Giroux, however, point out that our contemporary culture is awash in violence and “everyone is infected.” From this perspective, the focus is not on certain individuals whose exposure to violent media leads to a desensitization of real-life violence, but rather on the notion that violence so permeates society that it has become normalized in ways that are divorced from ethical and moral implications. Giroux wrote,

While it would be wrong to suggest that the violence that saturates popular culture directly causes violence in the larger society, it is arguable that such violence serves not only to produce an insensitivity to real life violence but also functions to normalize violence as both a source of pleasure and as a practice for addressing social issues. When young people and others begin to believe that a world of extreme violence, vengeance, lawlessness, and revenge is the only world they inhabit, the culture and practice of real-life violence is more difficult to scrutinize, resist, and transform . . . (Giroux, 2015 )

For Giroux, the danger is that the normalization of violence has become a threat to democracy itself. In our culture of mass consumption shaped by neoliberal logics, depoliticized narratives of violence have become desired forms of entertainment and are presented in ways that express tolerance for some forms of violence while delegitimizing other forms of violence. In their book, Disposable Futures , Brad Evans and Henry Giroux argued that as the spectacle of violence perpetuates fear of inevitable catastrophe, it reinforces expansion of police powers, increased militarization and other forms of social control, and ultimately renders marginalized members of the populace disposable (Evans & Giroux, 2015 , p. 81).

Criminology and the “Media/Crime Nexus”

Most criminologists and sociologists who focus on media and crime are generally either dismissive of the notion that media violence directly causes violence or conclude that findings are more complex than traditional media effects models allow, preferring to focus attention on the impact of media violence on society rather than individual behavior (Carrabine, 2008 ; Ferrell, Hayward, & Young, 2015 ; Jewkes, 2015 ; Kitzinger, 2004 ; Marsh & Melville, 2014 ; Rafter, 2006 ; Sternheimer, 2003 ; Sternheimer 2013 ; Surette, 2011 ). Sociologist Karen Sternheimer forcefully declared “media culture is not the root cause of American social problems, not the Big Bad Wolf, as our ongoing public discussion would suggest” (Sternheimer, 2003 , p. 3). Sternheimer rejected the idea that media causes violence and argued that a false connection has been forged between media, popular culture, and violence. Like others critical of a singular focus on media, Sternheimer posited that overemphasis on the perceived dangers of media violence serves as a red herring that directs attention away from the actual causes of violence rooted in factors such as poverty, family violence, abuse, and economic inequalities (Sternheimer, 2003 , 2013 ). Similarly, in her Media and Crime text, Yvonne Jewkes stated that U.K. scholars tend to reject findings of a causal link because the studies are too reductionist; criminal behavior cannot be reduced to a single causal factor such as media consumption. Echoing Gauntlett’s critiques of media effects research, Jewkes stated that simplistic causal assumptions ignore “the wider context of a lifetime of meaning-making” (Jewkes, 2015 , p. 17).

Although they most often reject a “violent media cause violence” relationship, criminologists do not dismiss the notion of media as influential. To the contrary, over the decades much criminological interest has focused on the construction of social problems, the ideological implications of media, and media’s potential impact on crime policies and social control. Eamonn Carrabine noted that the focus of concern is not whether media directly causes violence but on “how the media promote damaging stereotypes of social groups, especially the young, to uphold the status quo” (Carrabine, 2008 , p. 34). Theoretically, these foci have been traced to the influence of cultural and Marxist studies. For example, criminologists frequently focus on how social anxieties and class inequalities impact our understandings of the relationship between media violence and attitudes, values, and behaviors. Influential works in the 1970s, such as Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order by Stuart Hall et al. and Stanley Cohen’s Folk Devils and Moral Panics , shifted criminological critique toward understanding media as a hegemonic force that reinforces state power and social control (Brown, 2011 ; Carrabine, 2008 ; Cohen, 2005 ; Garland, 2008 ; Hall et al., 2013 /1973, 2013/1973 ). Since that time, moral panic has become a common framework applied to public discourse around a variety of social issues including road rage, child abuse, popular music, sex panics, and drug abuse among others.

Into the 21st century , advances in technology, including increased use of social media, shifted the ways that criminologists approach the study of media effects. Scholar Sheila Brown traced how research in criminology evolved from a focus on “media and crime” to what she calls the “media/crime nexus” that recognizes that “media experience is real experience” (Brown, 2011 , p. 413). In other words, many criminologists began to reject as fallacy what social media theorist Nathan Jurgenson deemed “digital dualism,” or the notion that we have an “online” existence that is separate and distinct from our “off-line” existence. Instead, we exist simultaneously both online and offline, an

augmented reality that exists at the intersection of materiality and information, physicality and digitality, bodies and technology, atoms and bits, the off and the online. It is wrong to say “IRL” [in real life] to mean offline: Facebook is real life. (Jurgenson, 2012 )

The changing media landscape has been of particular interest to cultural criminologists. Michelle Brown recognized the omnipresence of media as significant in terms of methodological preferences and urged a move away from a focus on causality and predictability toward a more fluid approach that embraces the complex, contemporary media-saturated social reality characterized by uncertainty and instability (Brown, 2007 ).

Cultural criminologists have indeed rejected direct, causal relationships in favor of the recognition that social meanings of aggression and violence are constantly in transition, flowing through the media landscape, where “bits of information reverberate and bend back on themselves, creating a fluid porosity of meaning that defines late-modern life, and the nature of crime and media within it.” In other words, there is no linear relationship between crime and its representation. Instead, crime is viewed as inseparable from the culture in which our everyday lives are constantly re-created in loops and spirals that “amplify, distort, and define the experience of crime and criminality itself” (Ferrell, Hayward, & Young, 2015 , pp. 154–155). As an example of this shift in understanding media effects, criminologist Majid Yar proposed that we consider how the transition from being primarily consumers to primarily producers of content may serve as a motivating mechanism for criminal behavior. Here, Yar is suggesting that the proliferation of user-generated content via media technologies such as social media (i.e., the desire “to be seen” and to manage self-presentation) has a criminogenic component worthy of criminological inquiry (Yar, 2012 ). Shifting attention toward the media/crime nexus and away from traditional media effects analyses opens possibilities for a deeper understanding of the ways that media remains an integral part of our everyday lives and inseparable from our understandings of and engagement with crime and violence.

Over the years, from films to comic books to television to video games to social media, concerns over media effects have shifted along with changing technologies. While there seems to be some consensus that exposure to violent media impacts aggression, there is little evidence showing its impact on violent or criminal behavior. Nonetheless, high-profile violent crimes continue to reignite public interest in media effects, particularly with regard to copycat crimes.

At times, academic debate around media effects remains contentious and one’s academic discipline informs the study and interpretation of media effects. Criminologists and sociologists are generally reluctant to attribute violence and criminal behavior directly to exposure to violence media. They are, however, not dismissive of the impact of media on attitudes, social policies, and social control as evidenced by the myriad of studies on moral panics and other research that addresses the relationship between media, social anxieties, gender, race, and class inequalities. Scholars who study media effects are also sensitive to the historical context of the debates and ways that moral concerns shape public policies. The self-regulating codes of the film industry and the comic book industry have led scholars to be wary of hyperbole and policy overreach in response to claims of media effects. Future research will continue to explore ways that changing technologies, including increasing use of social media, will impact our understandings and perceptions of crime as well as criminal behavior.

Annual Review of Public Health

Volume 27, 2006, review article, the role of media violence in violent behavior.

L. Rowell Huesmann 1 , and Laramie D. Taylor 1
View Affiliations Hide Affiliations Affiliations: 1 Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106-1248; email: [email protected] 2 Communication Department, University of California, Davis, California 95616; email: [email protected]
Vol. 27:393-415 (Volume publication date April 2006) https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.publhealth.26.021304.144640
© Annual Reviews

Media violence poses a threat to public health inasmuch as it leads to an increase in real-world violence and aggression. Research shows that fictional television and film violence contribute to both a short-term and a long-term increase in aggression and violence in young viewers. Television news violence also contributes to increased violence, principally in the form of imitative suicides and acts of aggression. Video games are clearly capable of producing an increase in aggression and violence in the short term, although no long-term longitudinal studies capable of demonstrating long-term effects have been conducted. The relationship between media violence and real-world violence and aggression is moderated by the nature of the media content and characteristics of and social influences on the individual exposed to that content. Still, the average overall size of the effect is large enough to place it in the category of known threats to public health.

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Reactions to Media Violence: It’s in the Brain of the Beholder

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliations Department of Psychiatry, Friedman Brain Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, United States of America, Department of Neuroscience, Friedman Brain Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, United States of America

Affiliations Department of Psychiatry, Friedman Brain Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, United States of America, Laboratory of Neuroimaging, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America

Affiliation Department of Psychiatry, Friedman Brain Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, United States of America

Affiliation Applied Mathematics and Statistics, SUNY, Stony Brook, New York, United States of America

Affiliation Laboratory of Neuroimaging, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America

Affiliation Medical Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York, United States of America

Nelly Alia-Klein,
Gene-Jack Wang,
Rebecca N. Preston-Campbell,
Scott J. Moeller,
Muhammad A. Parvaz,
Wei Zhu,
Millard C. Jayne,
Chris Wong,
Dardo Tomasi,

Published: September 10, 2014
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0107260
Reader Comments

Media portraying violence is part of daily exposures. The extent to which violent media exposure impacts brain and behavior has been debated. Yet there is not enough experimental data to inform this debate. We hypothesize that reaction to violent media is critically dependent on personality/trait differences between viewers, where those with the propensity for physical assault will respond to the media differently than controls. The source of the variability, we further hypothesize, is reflected in autonomic response and brain functioning that differentiate those with aggression tendencies from others. To test this hypothesis we pre-selected a group of aggressive individuals and non-aggressive controls from the normal healthy population; we documented brain, blood-pressure, and behavioral responses during resting baseline and while the groups were watching media violence and emotional media that did not portray violence. Positron Emission Tomography was used with [ 18 F]fluoro-deoxyglucose (FDG) to image brain metabolic activity, a marker of brain function, during rest and during film viewing while blood-pressure and mood ratings were intermittently collected. Results pointed to robust resting baseline differences between groups. Aggressive individuals had lower relative glucose metabolism in the medial orbitofrontal cortex correlating with poor self-control and greater glucose metabolism in other regions of the default-mode network (DMN) where precuneus correlated with negative emotionality. These brain results were similar while watching the violent media, during which aggressive viewers reported being more Inspired and Determined and less Upset and Nervous , and also showed a progressive decline in systolic blood-pressure compared to controls. Furthermore, the blood-pressure and brain activation in orbitofrontal cortex and precuneus were differentially coupled between the groups. These results demonstrate that individual differences in trait aggression strongly couple with brain, behavioral, and autonomic reactivity to media violence which should factor into debates about the impact of media violence on the public.

Citation: Alia-Klein N, Wang G-J, Preston-Campbell RN, Moeller SJ, Parvaz MA, Zhu W, et al. (2014) Reactions to Media Violence: It’s in the Brain of the Beholder. PLoS ONE 9(9): e107260. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0107260

Editor: Jonathan A. Coles, Glasgow University, United Kingdom

Received: May 5, 2014; Accepted: August 7, 2014; Published: September 10, 2014

This is an open-access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.

Data Availability: The authors confirm that, for approved reasons, some access restrictions apply to the data underlying the findings. All relevant brain and behavior data are provided in the supporting information files in excel format.

Funding: Funding was provided by (1) Brookhaven National Laboratory under contract DE-AC02-98CH10886, http://www.bnl.gov/world/ ; (2) National Institute of Mental Health: R01MH090134 (NAK), http://www.nimh.nih.gov/index.shtml ; and (3) National Institute of Mental Health NIDA and NIH K05DA020001 (JSF) and the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Intramural Program, http://www.drugabuse.gov/ and http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/ . The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exists.

Introduction

While visual media is replete with images of violence, only a small minority in the population engages in real-life violent behavior. Critically, whether a person will act violently depends on individual trait variations which play a prominent role in how visual media is experienced and processed [1] . Therefore, understanding the neurobiological underpinnings of those with aggressive personality traits above the documented norms, is an important prerequisite to the ongoing debate about media impact on behavior [2] . Enduring trait aggression reflects self-report of retaliatory motivation, with high face validity, where individuals endorse questions regarding the degree of their readiness to hurt others. It is emerging in the literature that aggressive individuals differ from non-aggressive individuals in their baseline, trait-like, neurobiological architecture [3] , suggesting involvement of the brain’s default mode network (DMN) [4] , [5] . The DMN forms a distributed circuit of connected brain systems that shows high and coherent metabolic activity or blood flow during awake yet passive resting states which may represent internal and self-referential processing [4] – [7] . The DMN includes regions typically spanning the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and precuneus, lateral inferior parietal gyrus (IPG), medial temporal gyrus (MTG), and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, including the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) [8] . We hypothesize that at resting baseline, individuals with high trait aggression will exhibit different brain metabolism patterns in the DMN including its ventromedial prefrontal regions, revealing fundamentally different internal preoccupations than those with normative trait aggression.

Stimuli with violent themes can prime, or perhaps facilitate existing trait tendencies [1] , [9] . The General Aggression Model (GAM) [10] outlines the processes by which exposure to violence can cause aggressive behavior through the interplay of enduring traits that drive internal states, coupled with congruent visual stimuli from the environment (e.g., violent media). Therefore, according to GAM, chronic exposure to violent images in the media reinforces existing aggressive traits, thereby preparing the individual towards future violence [11] , [12] . The OFC is specifically involved in elements of aggressive behaviors [13] – [15] through its role in prioritizing emotional cues according to intrinsic salience [16] . Likewise, gray matter deficits in the OFC have been observed in individuals with aggressive and violent behavior [17] . As such, we predict involvement of the OFC since it appears to be specifically involved in response to repeated media violence [18] , [19] . Individual differences in brain and behavior during visual media viewing can be further understood in the context of self-reported affective states and autonomic responses (or lack thereof) [20] , [21] . For example, self-reported distress and systolic blood pressure changes were observed in response to viewing violent media [1] , [21] . Cortical representations of emotion-dependent autonomic response (e.g., blood pressure) have been shown in the OFC, anterior cingulate, and insula in response to viewing violent media in healthy controls [22] .

To test our hypotheses regarding baseline and media viewing differences as a function of trait aggression, we recruited a group of healthy aggressive individuals with a history of assault behavior and a group of non-aggressive healthy controls. Measurements of glucose metabolism with [ 18 F]fluoro-deoxyglucose using positron emission tomography (PET) were obtained at three conditions: at resting baseline, during exposure to violent media, and during exposure to emotional, non-violent media. Blood pressure (BP) and behavioral ratings of state affect were collected intermittently during the movie presentations. We expected that aggressive individuals would have a distinct intrinsic brain activity pattern at resting baseline and during passive viewing of the violent media compared to emotional media.

Ethics Statement

This research protocol was approved by the ethical review board of Stony Brook University and conducted accordingly. All participants provided written informed consent prior to participation. Approval number BNL-381.

Participants

A total of 54 males who responded to advertisement for healthy controls and healthy individuals with history of physical fights, were evaluated for their physical assault tendencies and other inclusion/exclusion criteria. Individuals were initially screened by phone and then seen at Brookhaven National Laboratory by a physician for general exclusion criteria which included current or past psychiatric disorders (e.g., drug abuse or dependence), neurological disease, significant medical illness, current treatment with medication (including over the counter drugs) and head trauma with loss of consciousness >30 minutes. Normal physical examination and laboratory tests were required for entry and pre-scan urine tests ensured the absence of any psychoactive drugs. Individuals were classified as aggressive (Ag) or non-aggressive (Na) depending on their responses on the Physical Aggression subscale of the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire (the physical aggression subscale correlates strongly with peer ratings of aggression demonstrating its concurrent validity) [23] . Of these 54 participants, only individuals who reported physical fights in the last year and scored at or higher than 75 th percentile on the Physical Aggression scale (Ag, n = 12) or those who reported they did not engage in physical fights and scored at 50 th percentile or below on the Physical Aggression scale (Na, n = 13) were chosen for the study (mean age 25.15) [23] . As planned, the participants differed on Physical Aggression (Ag, mean ± standard error 33.5±1.2; Na, 14.5±1.0, p<.0001). They also differed significantly on the other subscales of the Buss-Perry: Verbal Aggression (Ag, 18.8±1.0; Na, 11.6±1.2, p<.0001), Anger (Ag, 23.7±1.5; Na, 9.6±0.6, p<.0001), Hostility (Ag, 23.1±2.0; Na, 11.8±0.9, p<.0001) and the total score (Ag, 99.5±3.8; Na, 47.5±2.7, p<.0001). The two groups did not differ on age, handedness [24] , socio-economic status [25] , estimates of verbal and non-verbal intelligence [26] , [27] , and depression symptoms [28] . Participants were asked about their media habits including the number of hours they watched TV per day on weekdays and on weekends ( Table 1 ). The participants were monetarily compensated for their participation. It is important to note that the staff performing the media exposure, imaging, nursing, and questionnaire completion, were blind to the subject’s assignment as aggressive or non-aggressive.

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0107260.t001

Personality and Behavioral Measures

In addition to the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire, the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ) [29] , a three-factor structural model of personality was used. As listed in Table 1 , the MPQ models three higher order dimensions of personality: Negative Emotionality (NEM, or Neuroticism ) reflecting tendency toward emotional distress, alienation from others and aggressive behavior; Positive Emotionality (PEM, or extraversion) reflecting enduring positive affect through interpersonal engagement, and Constraint measuring tendencies toward self-control. Several lines of evidence have shown that high levels of NEM as Neuroticism are robustly associated with violence and aggression [30] . Similarly, individuals with elevated scores of NEM tend to experience/report more frequent negative emotions such as anger and anxiety, perceive their environment as hostile/unfair, and often exhibit poor coping mechanisms in a stressful situation [31] . The three NEM sub-scales include Stress Reaction which is linked to low frustration tolerance; Aggression which reflects the tendency to respond with retaliatory response style; and Alienation which is the most predictive primary scale of aggressive behavior. We also assessed attention and inhibitory control using a performance based measure, the Attention Network Task (ANT), that captures reaction-time performance on Alerting (response readiness), Orienting (scanning and selection), and Conflict (inhibitory control) in attention [32] .

Imaging Conditions and State Reactivity

There were three 40-minute imaging conditions: resting baseline, where participants were instructed to rest with eyes open, a video presentation of violent scenes, and a video presentation of emotional scenes not portraying violence. The two videos (violent and emotional) were edited from R-rated movies and documentary films. The violent media presentation contained 20 scenes of violent acts encompassing the depiction of intentional acts of violence from one individual to another (e.g. interpersonal, shootings, street fights). The emotional media presentation contained 19 emotionally intense and action filled but non-violent scenes (e.g. people interacting during a natural disaster, sudden failures during competitive sports). The length of each of the violent or emotional scenes was between 1–4 minutes; these scenes were separated by a black screen that appeared for 30 seconds which signaled the next scene. The level of valence and intensity of each of the violent and emotional scenes was evaluated internally in the laboratory (data not shown) for valence and intensity and sequenced to optimize with the dynamics of FDG uptake (most intense scenes during the first 10 minutes of FDG uptake period). During the movie presentations, state levels of emotional reactivity were assessed using the Positive and Negative Affective Schedule (PANAS) with adjectives of mood states (ranked from 1, slightly to 5, extremely) [33] . The PANAS was completed by the subjects 5 minutes before the media presentations, 10 minutes into the presentations, and at the end of the media presentations. Table 2 shows PANAS adjectives where differences were found between the groups at p<0.05 during the violent as compared to emotional media presentations. Systolic and diastolic BP was monitored with a compression cuff that operated automatically (Propaq Encore) on the participant’s non-dominant arm starting 5 minutes before the imaging and continued throughout the scanning sessions occurring at 5-minute intervals. For Figure 1 systolic BP data was first averaged within each group at each point in the time series during the violent and during the emotional media presentation. Then, the percentage changes in BP (delta) were calculated from the emotional to the violent media within each group [(violent-emotional)/emotional].

Ag (red) individuals show reduction in systolic blood pressure while watching the violent media versus Na (blue) individuals who show progressive increase in systolic blood pressure. Systolic blood pressure measures were averaged for each group at each time point and a percent change and a trend line were calculated (Y-axis). Error bars (joined and filled) reflect the standard deviation of the data that are presented.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0107260.g001

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0107260.t002

PET Imaging

The 25 subjects were scanned 3 times with PET-FDG in counterbalanced order on separate days and under 3 conditions: resting baseline, violent scenes, non-violent emotional scenes. The scanning procedure is standardized and was described before [34] . The violent and neutral video presentations started 10 min prior to FDG injection and continued for a total of 40 min. PET imaging was conducted with a Siemens HR+ tomograph (resolution 4.5×4.5×4.5 mm 3 full-width half-maximum, 63 slices) in 3D dynamic acquisition mode. Static emission scan started 35 min after FDG injection and continued for the next 20 min. Arterialized blood was used to measure FDG in plasma. During the uptake period of FDG, subjects were resting with eyes open (no stimulation) or watching a movie (violent or emotional) in a quiet dimly lit room with a nurse by their side to ensure that they did not fall asleep. Metabolic rates were computed using an extension of Sokoloff’s model [35] . The emission data for all the scans were corrected for attenuation and reconstructed using filtered back projection.

Image and Data Analyses

Prior to the analysis, each participant’s PET image was mapped onto the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) template and smoothed via a Gaussian kernel with full width half maximum at 16 mm. Normalized metabolic images were analyzed using Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM) [36] . The normalized images (relative images) were obtained by dividing the signal level of each voxel by the global mean, which was the average signal level of all voxels in the PET image. Analyses were performed in SPM8 with a flexible factor model design with one between-subject factor (Ag and Na groups) and one within-subject factor (baseline, violent, emotional conditions). Main effects of group were tested separately ( Figure 2 ) as well as group x condition interactions. The cluster threshold used was p<0.001, cluster extent >100; given the number of subjects, these parameters were chosen to ensure a minimum of t = 3.00 for each cluster reported. After the SPM results were obtained, cubic regions of interest (ROIs) with 125 voxels were centered at the peak coordinates of relevant activation clusters to compute average metabolic values within these ROIs. Pearson linear correlations were used to assess the association between average ROI measures and BP.

Left panel: Relative glucose metabolism (Y-axis) in Ag (red) and Na (blue) in response to the violent media. On the left of the dotted line are results from Ag>Na contrast and on the right of the dotted line are results from the Ag<Na contrast. Right panel: Glucose metabolism results in response to the emotional media Ag>Na. There were no significant results for Ag<Na. Standard error is presented in the corresponding error bars.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0107260.g002

The behavior and personality indices ( Table 1 ) were analyzed using independent-samples t-tests Bonferroni corrected for multiple comparisons [37] . The changes in BP (delta) were calculated from the emotional to the violent media within each group [(violent-emotional)/emotional] ( Figure 1 ). We tested whether the progressive change in systolic BP was significantly different between the groups with a general linear model (GLM), where time points and group were independent variables while the BP delta was the dependent variable. Two separate linear regression models were fitted within each group and used to test whether the delta in BP changed significantly over time and whether the slopes were significantly different between the groups. Analysis of PANAS responses to the violent and emotional media presentations was done by calculating differences in responses between violent and emotional presentations at 3 time points (pre, 10 min and end) using a GLM ( Table 2 ).

Traits, Inhibitory Control, and Resting Metabolism

As documented in Table 1 , the groups were not different on demographics and media exposure and no differences were found on MPQ personality traits of PEM which includes the subscales Well Being , Social Potency , Social Closeness and Achievement . Not surprisingly, the groups were substantially different on Negative Emotionality and inhibitory control. Individuals from the Ag group, reported more NEM, with high scores on the NEM subscales, Alienation , Aggression and Stress Reaction . The Ag group also demonstrated poor inhibitory control, reporting less self- Control on the MPQ and also showed increased latency to respond specifically in the Conflict condition of the ANT. This performance measure of inhibitory control correlated with self-reported aggression such that more latency as a result of conflict in attention was seen in those with more trait aggression as measured by two different self-report scales (Buss-Perry Physical Aggression scale r = .76, P<0.0001, and MPQ Aggression (r = .66, P<0.001).

The normalized brain metabolic measures were characterized by robust group effects at resting baseline, involving hyperactivity in the DMN and caudate, and dampened OFC metabolism in Ag as compared to Na ( Table 2 ). These resting metabolic measures in precuneus correlated positively across participants with NEM (R = .56, p<.01) and negatively with Control (R = −.46, 0<.05) whereas those in OFC showed the opposite pattern revealing a negative correlation with NEM (R = −.40, p<.05) and positive correlation with Control (R = .48, p<.05).

Glucose Metabolism and Mood Reactivity during Media Viewing

Listed in Table 2 are the main effects of group for each condition separately. These results show similar group differences at resting baseline than for the comparisons during violent media presentation, involving hyperactivity in the DMN and caudate, and dampened OFC metabolism in Ag than Na participants ( Figure 2, left panel ). While viewing the emotional media presentation, the only significant difference between groups was higher glucose metabolism in bilateral lingual gyrus in the Ag group ( Figure 2, right panel ). Group x condition interactions were not significant at our threshold or at a reduced threshold of p<0.005.

As documented in Table 3 , differences emerged between the groups in state reactivity 10 minutes into and at the end of the media presentations. During the violent media presentation as compared to the emotional media presentation, Ag participants when compared with the Na participants reported feeling less Upset ( Figure 3 ) and Nervous and more Inspired and Determined ( Table 3 ). In-line with the mood reactivity data, there were divergent responses between the groups in systolic BP across time. In the Na group, percent BP change progressively increased over time (t 16 = 3.26, p = 0.002) while in the Ag group, systolic BP progressively decreased (t 16 = −4.23, p = 0.0003) in response to the violent media as compared to emotional media ( Figure 1 ). A comparison of the trend lines between the groups shows that the trend lines were significantly opposite (F 1, 32 = 27.60, p<0.0001). Systolic and diastolic BP did not differ between the groups at resting baseline (p>0.05). Diastolic BP was not different between the groups in any of the conditions.

Self-report of being Upset immediately before, during, and at the end (EOV) of the violent media viewing. Standard error is presented in the corresponding error bars.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0107260.g003

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0107260.t003

To examine the coupling of BP with glucose metabolism between the groups, we conducted ROI analyses to assess the correlation between regional metabolism during the violent media exposure and changes in systolic BP at time 37 (when most accentuated differences in BP were found between groups, as shown in Figure 1 ). In the Na, increases in BP were positively associated with increased metabolism in the right OFC (x = 22, y = 34, z = −26; r = 0.74; p<0.005) whereas the correlation was negative in (r = −0.56, p<0.005) ( Figure 4 ) in whom decreases in BP were also associated with metabolism in precuneus (R = −.81, p<.001). That is, in Na participants increases in BP were associated with higher metabolism in OFC whereas in Ag participants decreases in BP were associated with increased metabolism in the OFC and precuneus.

On the y-axis is response in the OFC response to violent media compared with emotional media; on the x-axis is systolic BP change between violent media compared with emotional media at time 37 into the media viewing.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0107260.g004

This study documented brain, behavior, and blood-pressure response as a function of trait aggression. Results showed that Ag had heightened traits of NEM and poor inhibitory control compared to Na. These constitutional differences between the groups were apparent in their brain function at resting baseline and during the violent media viewing, where Ag had higher relative metabolism in the retrosplenial DMN, and lower relative metabolism in OFC, gyrus rectus, and posterior cerebellum. While watching the violent compared to emotional media, the Ag viewers reported being more Inspired and Determined, less Upset and Nervous, and showed a progressive decline in systolic blood-pressure compared with controls in whom systolic BP increased. Furthermore, the BP findings were differentially coupled with glucose metabolism between the groups. While viewing violent media, increased blood-pressure in Na was associated with increased metabolism in OFC; in Ag, the observed reduced blood-pressure was associated with increased metabolism in this same region and also in the precuneus.

The Value of Pre-Selection Based on Abnormal Aggression Traits

In pre-selecting participants based on trait aggression this study revealed important baseline differences in brain and behavior compared with controls. Elevated trait aggression is found specifically in individuals with associated disorders, such as antisocial personality disorder and intermittent explosive disorder, as it has straightforward face validity [38] . In addition to elevated trait aggression, Ag also reported more Alienation and Stress Reaction and demonstrated poor inhibitory control, as measured by the ANT conflict [39] , which are part of externalizing behaviors in adults [40] . Studies show that inhibitory control (as documented here using the ANT) play an important role in violent media effects and aggression [41] . Similarly, high levels of NEM as Neuroticism have shown robust connections with violence and aggression [30] . These results on characterizing personality in trait aggression, lend support to the GAM theory, documenting the specificity of trait aggression in its effects on other personality traits [42] and their potential cognitive substrates. Those who endorse few or no aggression items, hence, the Na group, scored at the norms in NEM and PEM, demonstrating that it is normative to endorse very few aggression questions, providing an adequate control for Ag. Importantly, PEM and its subscales were comparable between the groups, perhaps validating a characterization of trait aggression specifically involving NEM while having normative PEM [42] . Supportive of the GAM theory on the role of traits in media viewing, these trait results are important in setting the context of brain metabolism comparisons between the groups.

Characterization of Trait Aggression through Resting Brain Metabolism

The most robust finding in this study is relative hyperactivity of the DMN during resting baseline with relative hypoactivity of the OFC and cerebellum in Ag compared to Na. The documented over-activity in components of the DMN may reflect a neural marker of enduring traits fostering inwardly directed attention to self-referential information stemming from years of social and cognitive learning [43] . Each of the DMN nodes and their network is associated with awareness and conscious information processing [44] , mental imagery, perspective taking, and autobiographical memory retrieval [45] – [47] needed to facilitate an enduring brain activity pattern of behavioral patterns (i.e., trait) [48] , [49] . Several studies mapped DMN regions with trait profiles; for example, Neuroticism (NEM in this study), was associated with lower volumetric measures and lower metabolism of the OFC [50] , [51] in line with our results of hypoactive OFC in Ag. Conducting direct correlations between resting metabolism and NEM as well as with trait Control , we found that the lower resting metabolism in the OFC the higher were NEM and lower Control scores. In contrast the higher resting metabolism in precuneus the higher was NEM and lower Control trait scores. Supporting this finding are recent findings of higher precuneus with reduced conscientiousness and openness [49] both associated with NEM and characteristic of those with high trait aggression.

Other over activated regions at baseline among Ag participants included the sensory motor area and caudate. One could speculate that this increased activity during rest would have a role in compromised responses during a cognitive task. A recent study proposed that striatal dopamine circuits, particularly the caudate, may provide a mechanism for the active suppression of the DMN under conditions that require increased processing of external stimuli (e.g., an attention demanding cognitive task) relative to internal, self-directed processing [52] . This might be related to a recent finding where heightened trait aggression is associated with reduced dopamine in striatum [53] and that striatal dopamine influences the DMN to affect shifting between internal states and cognitive demands [54] .

Brain Metabolism during Violent Media Viewing

The fusiform gyrus was uniquely activated during violent media viewing in Ag, perhaps suggesting increased attention to facial representation of socially relevant cues [55] . Aside from the fusiform activation, while viewing the violent media presentation, the Ag participants compared with the Na showed similar patterns of activation as they had during resting baseline. As such, it appears that DMN regions are active during passive viewing of visual stimuli (e.g., movie) [56] , [57] . We postulate that the violent media condition reflects congruence between the trait and the visual stimuli, such that the stimuli are syntonic (oscillating together) with internal processing, perhaps indicating personal experience with this material. Since resting baseline refers to mind wondering, it could be that participants in the Ag group have had aggressive thoughts that were instigating similar brain networks as during violent media viewing. A study in children during exposure to violent media documented engagement of the posterior cingulate and hippocampi, which was postulated to link memory and emotion to motor activation integrating existing aggression-related thoughts, thereby making them strongly accessible scripts over time [58] . The amygdala is a likely target for cortical arousal in violence viewing. Mathiak and Weber (2006) documented amygdala activation during active game-play in fMRI environment [59] . Their activation pattern showed signal decrease in the amygdala during players’ virtual violent behavior. Our study did not document amygdala responses possibly as a result of the passive nature of the viewing violent media or alternatively, amygdala was not documented because of the temporal resolution differences between PET and fMRI.

Hypoactivity of the Orbitofrontal Cortex

In our study, the Ag participants showed a pattern of reduced OFC activity relative to the Na in the both resting baseline and violent media conditions. The OFC plays a role in externalizing/impulsive behavior, and regulating emotional and social behavior [13] , [60] – [64] . Specific damage to the OFC is associated with impulsive and aggressive behavior [64] , and individuals with such damage show little control over their emotions as well as limited awareness of the moral implications of their actions, and poor decision making [65] . Impulsive aggressive personality disordered patients demonstrate impaired emotion regulation, and exhibit blunted prefrontal, including OFC, metabolism in response to a serotonergic challenge [66] . Deficits in the orbitofrontal lobes as represented by atrophy, lesion, or hypoactive metabolism have been observed across a number of psychiatric populations prone to aggression (e.g., antisocial personality disorder, psychopathy, borderline personality disorder, intermittent explosive disorder) [66] – [68] and suggest that OFC hypo-function may be a common mechanism underlying the pathophysiology of aggressive behavior in general (e.g., both impulsive and premeditated forms). Hypoactivity of the OFC in this study and its correlation with high NEM and low Control scores further support the reliable implication of OFC in the externalizing continuum.

This OFC hypoactivity is consistent with other studies where exposure to violent media is associated with decreased OFC activation. In a study that examined components of the fronto-parietal network in response to aggressive video cues, reduced levels of OFC activation were found [19] . It is possible that OFC hypoactivation reflects desensitization to violence and disrupts the process of moral evaluation of the violent visual stimuli [69] .

Familiarity with violent material could breed desensitization [69] – [71] . It could be that Ag have exhibited reduced inhibition and blunted evaluative categorization of violent stimuli as supported in other studies [71] such that they demonstrate a response (physiological/behavioral/cortical) that is suggestive of an overall desensitization to media violence [72] , [73] .

Under-reactive Emotional and Autonomic Response to Violent Media

There is further evidence in this study supporting the desensitization hypothesis. The Ag group reported being less Nervous and Upset and more Inspired and Determined during the media violence (compared with emotional media) while their systolic BP progressively decreased. In stark contrast, The Na mood and BP responses to the violent media may be associated with a threat evaluation producing sympathetic activation, resulting in BP increase in the Na group. In a study with healthy adolescents, participants viewing violent movie clips experienced increased BP compared to baseline; however, prior exposure to violence was associated with lowered BP [21] . Autonomic under-arousal to threat stimuli has been documented in individuals who exhibit low levels of fear [74] . Angered subjects permitted to commit aggression against the person who had annoyed them often display a drop in systolic blood pressure. They seem to have experienced a physiological relaxation, as if they had satisfied their aggressive urges [75] , [76] .

Indeed, the documented pattern of BP under-reactivity in Ag was associated with hypoactivations in the OFC ( Figure 3 ) and hyperactivation of the precuneus. Behaviorally-evoked changes in cardiovascular (e.g., blood pressure, heart rate) and cardiac-autonomic (e.g., heart rate variability) activity are correlated directly with neural activity within areas of the anterior cingulate cortex, OFC, medial prefrontal cortices, and the amygdala and often in interaction with activity in the insula, and relay regions of the thalamus and brainstem [22] , [77] , [78] . Based on neuroimaging and lesion evidence, a neurobiological model of cardiovascular reactivity shows that physiological and behavioral reactions are instantiated in the corticolimbic brains systems (e.g., medial/prefrontal corticies, insula, and amygdala) [79] . Afferent feedback, appraised by the OFC is integral in generation of somatic markers which trigger an emotional response, subsequently biasing overt behavior [80] . It is important to note here, that these results are relative to responses to emotional media viewing. It appears from our results that non-violent, yet emotionally salient action stimuli increase BP in the Ag individuals, whereas violent stimuli have the opposite effect of decreasing BP in these individuals. The specificity of hypo-response to violent content supports our assertion that the effects of violent media on individuals depend on theme-related traits, in this case aggression, and the brain of the beholder.

There are several limitations in this study that constrain our interpretation power and generalizability. First, there may have been too few participants in the study to ascertain group by condition interactions and to conduct correlations between trait and brain measures. Second, the inclusion of males only in this study was done to control for potentially differential emotional reaction patterns of activation as a function of sex. However, this approach prevents us from making any claims about female response to violent media. Future studies must include females. Third, the experimental design did not include an acute test of aggression following the media condition. Future studies could include such a test to document aggressive responses following violent media as a function of brain response during the violent media. Fourth, there are brain activity results during violent video games finding anterior cingulate involvement [59] , [81] . These results may not be comparable to this study since playing video games requires task-dependent active attention compared to passive attention maintained during movie viewing as we show in our results; therefore more studies are needed to distinguish responses to media sources requiring active attention such as video games from those requiring only passive attention as movie scenes [82] .

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the contributions of all members of the Brookhaven PET team for advice and assistance in different aspects of this study.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: NAK NDV RZG JSF GJW. Performed the experiments: NAK MCJ CW DT. Analyzed the data: NAK MAP WZ CW. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: WZ CW DT. Contributed to the writing of the manuscript: NAK SJM RPC RZG NDV MAP.

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The role of media violence in violent behavior

Affiliation.

1 Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106-1248, USA. [email protected]
PMID: 16533123
DOI: 10.1146/annurev.publhealth.26.021304.144640

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Desensitization to media violence: Links with habitual media violence exposure, aggressive cognitions, and aggressive behavior

2011, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

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This review specifies mediating factors between the viewing of violent media and aggressive behavior. The role of cognitive and emotional arousal processes are discussed, as is the interplay among these factors and attitudes toward aggression. Included in these discussions are attention and comprehension of the viewed media, as well as attributions and moral evaluations of the perpetrators of violence. Finally, the effects of media exposure on arousal, emotional desensitization, and the excitement of the observer's aggressive inclinations are presented.

Jia Domingo

Exposure to media violence affects an individual's aggressive and violent behaviour but the extent to which parts of a particular media clip influences its viewers has not been given much thought. In this study, a 2 4 factorial design has been implemented. An experiment involving the presence of four (4) factors are analyzed in terms of having an influence on a viewer's behaviour after watching a randomly assigned video clip. Some media factors are undisputably believed to affect spectators but in reality are not really valid with much investigation, statistically speaking, particularly the form of violence involved as to whether violent act depicted is either verbal or physical. So long as the act committed is violent, it will have an effect on an individual no matter its form. Meanwhile, two interactions between factors were found to be significant namely the interaction between justification and type of media, and the interaction between justification and gender of perpetrator. These interactions indicate that the presence of justification, type of media as to whether it is live-action or animated, and the gender of perpetrator can greatly affect the changes in the aggression behavior of the viewer.

Nora Volkow , Rebecca Preston-Campbell

Mark D Griffiths

It has been hypothesized that high exposure to vicarious violence effectively results in a kind of ‘psychological blunting’ of the normal emotional responses to violent events. The current explanation of these events has been in terms of the desensitization process. This assumes that a scene of violence (CS) elicits fear or anxiety (CR) and is associated with an anxiety competing response (e.g. food or relaxation) so as to produce a state of relaxation with the scenes of violence (UCR 2). However desensitization theory leaves numerous questions unexplained. Why do we find television violence entertaining? Why do we watch aggression if it is so anxiety-provoking? Therefore to interpret and overcome some of the anomalies of this theory, a new model is forwarded attempting to explain the desensitization to television violence in terms of conditioning theory involving ideational processes.

Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine

Brad Bushman

Journal of youth and adolescence

Youth are exposed to large amounts of violence in real life and media, which may lead to desensitization. Given evidence of curvilinear associations between exposure to violence and emotional distress, we examined linear and curvilinear associations of exposure to real-life and movie violence with PTSD symptoms, empathy, and physiological arousal, as well emotional and physiological reactivity to movie violence. College students (N = 209; mean age = 18.74) reported on their exposure to real-life and televised violence, PTSD symptoms, and empathy. Then, students were randomly assigned to view a series of violent or nonviolent high-action movie scenes, providing ratings of emotional distress after each clip. Blood pressure was measured at rest and during video viewing. Results showed that with increasing exposure to real-life violence, youth reported more PTSD symptoms and greater identification with fictional characters. Cognitive and emotional empathy increased from low to medium le...

Journal of aggression, …

Christopher Ferguson

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Moreland AD , Rancher C , Davies F, et al. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Among Adults in Communities With Mass Violence Incidents. JAMA Netw Open. 2024;7(7):e2423539. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.23539

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Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Among Adults in Communities With Mass Violence Incidents

1 Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston
2 School of Public Health, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts
3 Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston
4 Department of Public Health Sciences, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston
Invited Commentary Understanding the Public Health Implications of Mass Violence Incidents Erika D. Felix, PhD JAMA Network Open

Question Do adults in communities that experienced a mass violence incident (MVI) have higher prevalence of and factors associated with past-year and current posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)?

Findings In this cross-sectional survey of a probability sample of 5991 adults living in communities that had experienced an MVI, there was a high prevalence of past-year (23.7%) and current (8.9%) PTSD. Being female, having a history of physical or sexual assault, and having a history of other potentially traumatic events were associated with the greatest risk of PTSD.

Meaning These findings suggest that the outcomes of MVIs in communities extend beyond direct survivors, including persistent PTSD in many adults, and are exacerbated by exposure to prior traumatic events; thus, screening efforts for mental health services after MVIs should not focus exclusively on those directly exposed to MVIs.

Importance Mass violence incidents (MVIs) are prevalent in the US and can have profound and long-lasting psychological consequences on direct survivors, but their outcomes among the broader communities where the MVI occurred are unknown.

Objective To investigate the prevalence of and factors associated with past-year and current posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among adults in communities that experienced an MVI.

Design, Setting, and Participants This cross-sectional survey was completed between February and September 2020 with a household probability sample of adults from 6 communities that had experienced an MVI between 2015 and 2019: Dayton, Ohio; El Paso, Texas; Parkland, Florida; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; San Bernadino, California; and Virginia Beach, Virginia. Address-based sampling was used to identify randomly selected households, mail invitations, and select 1 adult per household to complete a self-administered paper or online survey. Data analysis was performed from September to November 2023.

Main Outcomes and Measures The primary outcome was presumptive diagnostic-level past-year PTSD and current (past month) PTSD determined using American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fifth Edition) ( DSM-5 ) PTSD criteria.

Results A total of 6867 adults aged 18 years or older accessed the website with a description of the study and consent materials. Of these, 5991 (87.2%) agreed to participate and completed the survey, 343 (6.3%) partially completed the survey, and 443 (6.5%) did not meet eligibility criteria or refused to participate. Most of the 5991 respondents were female (3825 individuals [53.5%]) and had a mean (SD) age of 45.56 (17.58) years. A total of 1261 of 5931 individuals (21.0%) reported high exposure to the MVI (either they or a close friend and/or family member was on site during the shooting). Nearly one-quarter (23.7%; 1417 of 5977 participants reporting PTSD) met presumptive DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for past-year PTSD, with 8.9% (530 participants) meeting the criteria for current PTSD. Regression analyses found that being female (odds ratio, 2.32; 95% CI, 2.01-2.68) and having a history of both physical or sexual assault and other potentially traumatic events (odds ratio, 9.68; 95% CI, 7.48-12.52) were associated with the greatest risk of past-year PTSD.

Conclusions and Relevance In this survey study of 5991 participants, presumptive PTSD was quite prevalent long after the MVI among adults in communities that have experienced an MVI, suggesting that MVIs have persistent and pervasive public health impacts on communities, particularly among those with prior exposure to physical or sexual assault and other potentially traumatic events. Focusing exclusively on direct exposure to MVIs is not sufficient. Incorporating these findings into screening should improve efforts to identify the individuals most in need of prevention or mental health service after MVIs.

Mass violence incidents (MVIs) have profound and long-lasting psychological and behavioral effects on survivors, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 1 - 3 The impact of MVIs may extend far beyond directly affected survivors and their families, because ripple effects can extend to the entire affected community. Specifically, studies following the attacks of September 11, 2001 (9/11), indicated that members of the community reported high levels of PTSD following the attack. Although individuals with highest exposure to the MVI had the highest rates of PTSD, individuals with indirect exposure also reported substantial mental health concerns. 4 , 5

The majority of findings on MVI impact on broad communities focus on a specific community or event, most commonly the 9/11 terrorist attacks 5 or school campus shootings. 6 Less is known about the mental health outcomes, especially rates of PTSD, on entire communities affected by MVIs. Previous reviews suggest that, among individuals exposed to MVI, rates of PTSD vary greatly according to demographic characteristics, level of exposure, other mental health and pre-MVI characteristics, and latency since the MVI. 1 Specifically, higher rates of PTSD following MVI exposure were seen among female individuals, low-income or unemployed individuals, and those with lower education. 1 Factors specific to the MVI, including direct exposure and shorter time since the event, were also associated with PTSD. 1 , 7 Prior exposure to potentially traumatic events (PTEs) has also been found to increase rates of PTSD among individuals exposed to MVIs. 8 , 9 Several studies show that prior exposure to PTEs involving physical or sexual assault in particular is an important risk factor for PTSD following natural disasters, 10 exposure to toxic chemicals, 11 and new incidents of violent crime. 12 This suggests it is important to examine the extent to which exposure to physical or sexual assault is associated with increased risk of PTSD following MVIs, beyond that of other PTEs.

Given the increasing rate of MVIs in the US over the past decade 13 and the major consequences associated with high rates of PTSD among individuals, it is imperative to further examine rates of PTSD among individuals residing in broad communities impacted by mass violence. Thus, this article reports survey results from a household probability sample of adults from 6 communities impacted by MVIs from 2015 to 2019. Objectives included assessing rates of PTSD (past-year and current) following MVIs across demographic characteristics (age, race and ethnicity, gender, income, and education), risk factors unrelated to the MVI (exposure to physical or sexual assault PTEs, other PTEs, and low social support), and risk factors specific to the MVI (number of months since the MVI and level of exposure). We hypothesized that individuals with prior exposure to PTEs, low social support, and higher levels of exposure to MVI would report more symptoms of PTSD. Results of this study have potential public health implications, given the substantial disease burden associated with PTSD and related mental health concerns, 14 for response and treatment needs of communities following MVIs.

This report follows the 11 transparency initiative disclosure elements outlined by American Association for Public Opinion Research ( AAPOR ) reporting guidelines. 15 Data were collected sequentially between February and September 2020, with data collection for each site lasting approximately 2 months, from a household probability sample of adults living in 6 communities that experienced an MVI between 2015 and 2019 (Dayton, Ohio; El Paso, Texas; Parkland, Florida; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; San Bernadino, California; and Virginia Beach, Virginia) using address-based sampling. Letters with a brief description of the study were sent to randomly selected households within specified geographic areas. One adult per household was randomly selected and asked to complete an online or mail survey about their experiences with and responses to the MVI. Participants gave electronic or written informed consent, and the Institutional Review Board for Human Research at the Medical University of South Carolina approved the study. The participant enrollment flowchart is shown in eFigure 1 in Supplement 1 . Several procedures encouraged participation and willingness to provide candid responses about sensitive matters. Names and contact information were not attached to survey responses. Respondents were informed that we had a Privacy Certificate from the Department of Justice that provides total confidentiality, including protection from disclosure via subpoena in federal or state court. Respondents who completed the survey were reimbursed $15. Further details on sampling, data collection, and key measures are provided in eAppendixes 1 and 2 and eTable 1 in Supplement 1 .

PTSD was measured using the National Stressful Events Survey PTSD Module developed in conjunction with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fifth Edition) ( DSM-5 ) PTSD Workgroup 16 (eAppendix 1 in Supplement 1 ). Participants completed 20 items assessing each DSM-5 PTSD symptom, as well as 2 items assessing whether symptoms have resulted in substantial distress or impairment. This measure further assesses how recently diagnostic criteria have been met (ie, within the past year or within the past month). Responses were aggregated and coded to determine presumptive diagnostic-level PTSD for both past-year and current PTSD (see eAppendix 1 in Supplement 1 for more details). For the present sample, α = .93.

Participants completed an 11-item measure of exposure to PTEs from the National Stressful Events Survey PTSD Module that included combat exposure, serious accidents, life-threatening illnesses, and physical or sexual assault (eg, “Has anyone ever used physical force or threats of force to make you have some type of unwanted sexual contact?”). Responses to each PTE were no (0) or yes (1). Responses were coded to create 4 groups of participants: those who had experienced (1) physical and sexual assault PTEs, (2) other PTEs, (3) both physical and sexual assault PTEs and other PTEs, and (4) no history of any PTEs.

Participants completed 5 items from the Medical Outcomes Study module assessing the social support they received in the past 6 months (eg, “How often was someone available to confide in or talk about your problems?”) 17 (eAppendix 1 in Supplement 1 ). Responses had a 4-point scale, ranging from 1 (none of the time) to 4 (all of the time). Higher scores on this measure (range, 5-20) have been associated with lower levels of psychological distress, with a score of 15 or lower indicating low social support. Numerous studies have used this measure, including studies of the 9/11 terrorist attacks 4 and hurricanes in Florida. 16 , 18 In the present sample, α = .91.

The length of time since the MVI was calculated by subtracting the survey completion date from the date of the MVI. Latency is reported in months.

Participants completed 12 items assessing their level of exposure to the MVI specific to their community (eg, “You personally were shopping or working at the Walmart Supercenter near the Cielo Visto Mall in El Paso, Texas when the shooting happened,” or “You were the parent, guardian, other relative, or close friend of a student or worker who was at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School the day of the shooting”). Responses to items were coded to indicate whether participants had high levels of exposure (0 = no, 1 = yes) to the MVI defined as either they or a close friend and/or family member was on site during the shooting.

Participants completed self-report items assessing their demographic characteristics (eg, gender, race, and ethnicity). Data on race and ethnicity are included in this study to provide valuable information regarding potential difference in MVI impact among subgroups.

Data analysis was performed from September to November 2023. To examine our hypotheses, we conducted univariate comparisons to examine between-group differences in the prevalence of past-year and current PTSD across demographic characteristics (age, race and ethnicity, gender, income, and education), risk factors unrelated to the MVI (exposure to PTEs and low social support), and risk factors specific to the MVI (short latency since the MVI and high levels of exposure). The threshold for statistical significance was 2-sided. Next, we simultaneously entered the demographic characteristics, risk factors unrelated to the MVI, and risk factors specific to the MVI into logistic regression analyses to assess which variables were uniquely associated with PTSD after accounting for the other variables in the model. We ran separate models for past-year and current PTSD.

All analyses were weighted to adjust for potential nonresponse bias by first weighting to adjust for household size and likelihood of household nonresponse and then using iterative proportional fitting to align with population benchmarks on gender, age, education, race, ethnicity, and stratum. The weighting parameters were based on the US Census Bureau’s 2018 American Community Survey 5-year estimates. The weighted demographics matched or were very close to all Census benchmarks for each community. See eAppendix 2 and eTable 2 in Supplement 1 for more detail.

Analyses were conducted using SPSS statistical software version 28 (IBM). A missing values analysis indicated all items had less than 5% missingness, and preliminary examination of our regression model indicated 10% missing cases; therefore, we conducted available case analysis. A sensitivity power analysis indicated that with 10 independent variables, α = .05, and our most conservative sample of 5402 participants, power exceeded 0.99 to detect small effect sizes ( f 2 = 0.02).

Invitations were mailed to 110 289 addresses in 6 communities that had experienced an MVI. A total of 6867 adults aged 18 years or older accessed the website with a description of the study and consent materials. Of these, 5991 (87.2%) agreed to participate and completed the survey (response rate, 5.4%), 343 (6.3%) partially completed the survey, and 443 (6.5%) did not meet eligibility criteria or refused to participate. Among the final sample of 5991 respondents, most were female (3825 individuals [53.5%]) and had a mean (SD) age of 45.56 (17.58) years. Demographic characteristics are reported in Table 1 . Most participants self-identified as White (70.6%; 4528 of 5880 reporting race) and non-Hispanic (74.4%; 4623 of 5951 reporting ethnicity); 63 participants (1.0%) were American Indian or Alaska Native, 231 (4.1%) were Asian, 617 (16.5%) were Black or African American, 1328 (25.6%) were Hispanic, and 441 (7.8%) identified as other races and ethnicities (eg, biracial, Jamaican, Caribbean, Taino, North African, Middle Eastern, or Jewish). Latency, or time since the MVI, ranged from 8 to 56 months (mean [SD], 18.94 [11.61] months). Less than 3.0% of participants (160 participants) reported they were personally on site and 19.0% (1136 participants) reported a close friend and/or family member was on site at the MVI, resulting in 21.0% of participants (1261 of 5931 reporting exposure) with high levels of exposure to the MVI. Most participants experienced at least 1 PTE, with 4.8% (283 of 5976 participants reporting PTEs) reporting physical or sexual assault alone, 38.7% (2406 participants) reporting other PTEs, and 37.9% (2240 participants) reporting both physical or sexual assault and other PTEs. Only 18.4% (1046 participants) reported no history of any PTEs. Most participants (56.0%; 3273 of 5843 participants reporting social support) reported low social support (defined as scores ≤15).

Nearly one-quarter of participants (23.7%; 1417 of 5977 participants reporting PTSD) met presumptive DSM-5 criteria for past-year PTSD, and 8.9% (530 participants) met criteria for current PTSD. Prevalence of PTSD across each community is presented in eFigure 2 in Supplement 1 . Correlations among study variables are presented in Table 2 . Differences in demographic characteristics across PTSD prevalence are presented in Table 3 . See additional descriptions of PTSD prevalence across variables in eTable 3 in Supplement 1 . Among the demographic characteristics, being younger, being female, and reporting lower annual household income and educational attainment were associated with both past-year and current PTSD prevalence. Among the risk factors unrelated to the MVI, exposure to both physical or sexual assault and other PTEs and low social support were also associated with increased risk for past-year and current PTSD. Participants reporting high levels of MVI exposure were also more likely to experience past-year and current PTSD. Shorter latency since the MVI was only associated with past-year PTSD.

We simultaneously entered the factors potentially associated with PTSD into logistic regression analyses ( Table 4 ). Results indicated that younger age, female gender; lower income; experiencing either physical or sexual assault, other PTEs, or both physical or sexual assault and other PTEs; lower levels of social support; and high exposure to the MVI were each uniquely associated with both past-year and current PTSD. Specifically, for past-year PTSD, being female (odds ratio [OR], 2.32; 95% CI, 2.01-2.68), experiencing a history of both physical or sexual assault and other PTEs (OR, 9.68; 95% CI, 7.48-12.52), and high levels of exposure to the MVI (OR, 1.66; 95% CI, 1.40-1.96) were associated with the largest proportions of explained variance. Similarly, for current PTSD, being female (OR, 2.20; 95% CI, 1.77-2.73), experiencing a history of both physical or sexual assault and other PTEs (OR, 16.54; 95% CI, 9.53-28.72), and high levels of exposure to the MVI (OR, 1.82; 95% CI, 1.45-2.28) were associated with the greatest relative risk for current PTSD. Sensitivity analyses examining the regression models within each community indicated that female gender, experiencing a history of both physical or sexual assault and other PTEs, and social support were associated with PTSD across each community.

The findings of this survey study confirm a high prevalence of exposure to PTEs, PTSD, and risk factors for PTSD among communities affected by MVIs. Using the diagnostic criteria for PTSD, nearly one-fifth (19.0%) of community members had experienced a Criterion A level of exposure to the MVI (ie, either they or a close friend and/or family member was on site during the shooting). Regarding PTSD prevalence, approximately 1 in 4 individuals met criteria for past-year and 1 in 10 for current PTSD diagnosis, far exceeding past-year PTSD prevalence of 4.7% among US adults. 16 , 19 Rates of current PTSD were lower than rates of past-year PTSD, which is consistent with research showing rates of PTSD decrease over time for several reasons including normal recovery, improvement in a sufficient number of symptoms to no longer meet full criteria, or receiving successful treatment. 20 Among studies of direct survivors of MVIs, PTSD prevalence rates range from 9% to 91% 1 ; our findings provide important perspective on the broader impact of MVIs measured by PTSD among members of the larger community.

The present findings also have important implications for identifying those at most risk for developing PTSD following MVIs. Specifically, we found that individuals who are younger, are female, have low social support, have experienced a higher number of PTEs, and have a history of physical or sexual assault were more likely to have PTSD. These findings are consistent with literature on PTSD risk factors in the context of PTEs, 19 including MVIs. 21 Decades of research have found that female individuals are more vulnerable to PTSD than male individuals. 22 Reasons for this remain unclear, but it may be due to female individuals having higher rates of physical and sexual assault, greater vulnerability to the impact of stressors for biological or psychosocial reasons, or a greater willingness than male individuals to disclose symptoms. Our exploratory analyses highlight the importance of assessing for a history of PTEs—particularly physical or sexual assault—among community members affected by MVIs. Overall, our findings suggest that future response and recovery initiatives should assess for sociodemographic characteristics, history of PTEs, and access to social support to allocate resources to those individuals most at risk for experiencing PTSD in communities affected by MVIs.

The degree of exposure to the MVI plays an important role in PTSD risk. Although there is much variation in the course of PTSD, 23 prevailing evidence suggests that many individuals who initially meet the criteria for PTSD diagnoses report some degree of natural recovery over time. Nevertheless, given the high prevalence of PTSD and mean latency in our sample of 18.94 months relative to other studies, 8 the elapsed time since the MVI may play a less prominent role for a variety of reasons, such as the recent increase in MVI occurrence and corresponding media coverage. 2 , 24 This further accords with longitudinal studies that have found exposure to intentional trauma (ie, events that involve deliberate actions to inflict harm) not only produces a more enduring course of PTSD, but may be associated with increased prevalence of PTSD over time. 25

It is also important to consider that the rates of community PTSD may be influenced by unique features of each MVI and vulnerabilities inherent to the community. Although the majority of PTSD cases occurred in those with high exposure to the MVI, many respondents with no direct exposure met the criteria for past-year (21.0%) and current (8.9%) PTSD. Community-level factors may be especially important to consider for MVI sites with an extensive history of community violence. 26 Indeed, important heterogeneity existed between sites with respect to ethnicity, income, time since the MVI, and degrees of exposure. Future research should consider the impact community-level differences, such as racial injustice and history of community violence, may have on rates of PTSD.

The present findings contribute important insight into the PTSD disease burden, as well as heightened risk for PTSD among female individuals with prior PTEs, 14 but there are some limitations. We assessed PTSD with a highly structured, well-validated, self-reported measure. However, because we did not confirm PTSD diagnoses with clinician-administered interviews that are commonly considered the criterion standard for mental health diagnoses, caution should be used when interpreting prevalence estimates. An additional limitation relates to our address-based sampling method. This is a well-accepted, widely used method in epidemiological research that enabled us to mail invitations to 110 289 addresses in 6 communities that had experienced MVI, but there was no way for us to determine the number of vacant buildings, how many households had eligible respondents, the number of individuals who opened letters, or the number who read invitations but declined to participate. Given these limitations, our overall response rate was less than 10%, raising the possibility of nonresponse bias. However, the data were weighted to correct for nonresponse; a high percentage of community members who accessed the survey and read consent documents agreed to participate and completed the online survey, and our response rate does not depart drastically from recent large-scale community surveys assessing PTSD. 11 Another limitation is that only a small number of participants reported they were personally on site during the MVI. This reflects the reality that only a small proportion of the population of large communities are actually present at MVIs, but it precludes analyses specifically comparing those who were on site vs those who were not.

Another limitation is that we cannot draw causal inferences from cross-sectional studies. This means that it is not possible to determine with certainty the causal sequence of when PTSD symptoms developed or whether they resulted exclusively from MVI exposure vs from a combination of factors, including exposure to the MVI, another PTE, or other factors associated with demographic characteristics or aspects of the community and related anxiety symptoms, especially for female individuals with higher rates of PTEs and PTSD. Although this study used a cross-sectional design and, therefore, causal attributions should be cautioned, the assessment of PTSD was in direct reference to the MVI, and significant associations were found between exposure to MVI and PTSD prevalence, both of which strengthen our confidence in our findings. Nevertheless, longitudinal analyses that include pre-MVI and post-MVI data points would be ideal to account for the influence of preexisting psychopathology on PTSD.

The prevalence of MVIs in the US has garnered widespread media attention and captured the public’s consciousness. High rates of presumptive past-year and current PTSD were found among individuals residing in 6 communities affected by an MVI within the past decade, which portends possible enduring negative consequences for these communities. Rates of PTSD were associated with a variety of individual and MVI-specific factors, such as a history of physical or sexual abuse and degree of exposure to the MVI. These findings should be leveraged to inform response and recovery efforts in the aftermath of a future MVI in order to efficiently and accurately identify those most vulnerable to adverse mental health consequences.

Accepted for Publication: May 15, 2024.

Published: July 26, 2024. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.23539

Corresponding Author: Angela D. Moreland, PhD, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Medical University of South Carolina, 67 President St, Charleston, SC 29425 ( [email protected] ).

Author Contributions: Dr Moreland had full access to all of the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.

Concept and design: Moreland, Rancher, Galea, Abdalla, Schmidt, Kilpatrick.

Acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data: Rancher, Davies, Bottomley, Galea, Abba-Aji, Abdalla, Schmidt, Vena, Kilpatrick.

Drafting of the manuscript: Moreland, Rancher, Davies, Bottomley, Kilpatrick.

Critical review of the manuscript for important intellectual content: Rancher, Bottomley, Galea, Abba-Aji, Abdalla, Schmidt, Vena, Kilpatrick.

Statistical analysis: Rancher, Davies, Bottomley, Abba-Aji, Kilpatrick.

Obtained funding: Moreland, Galea, Kilpatrick.

Administrative, technical, or material support: Moreland, Rancher, Galea, Abba-Aji, Abdalla, Schmidt, Vena.

Supervision: Moreland, Galea, Kilpatrick.

Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Dr Galea reported serving on the board of Sharecare. No other disclosures were reported.

Funding/Support: This project was funded by the Office for Victims of Crime (award numbers 2017-MU-GX-K144, 2020-V7-GX-K002, and 15POVC-22-GK-00327-AERX) to the Medical University of South Carolina. Dr Rancher was supported by grant K99HD111677 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Role of the Funder/Sponsor: The funders had no role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; and decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

Disclaimer: The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, or the Office for Victims of Crime.

Data Sharing Statement: See Supplement 2 .

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July 18, 2024

The Trump Assassination Attempt Caused Psychological Distress and Fueled Polarization

Political violence has a different effect on people today than it did in the past because of social media and extreme partisanship

By Tanya Lewis

Secret service agents carry a wounded Donald Trump off stage

The attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump during a Pennsylvania campaign rally may have produced a kind of collective trauma, as people attempted to make sense of the event through real-time media coverage and online images.

Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images

The attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump was a massive shock that has jarred society, regardless of where one falls on the political spectrum. The shooting at Trump’s Pennsylvania campaign rally appeared to have nicked the candidate’s ear and bloodied his face, killed one bystander and critically wounded two others. And it came amid profound and increasingly dangerous social divisions in the country. Experts have found that dramatic instances of political violence can have distressing psychological effects, not only on those who witness them in person but also on the millions of people exposed to such events through online images, videos and social media.

From the assassination of then president John F. Kennedy to the shooting of then U.S. representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, violence toward a political leader or public figure often triggers not just an initial sense of shock but also a need to make sense of what has happened—and what it says about the society each us is part of. Yet unlike when these earlier tragedies occurred, people had to process graphic images and nonstop media coverage of the Trump shooting in close to real time.

“What’s different here, of course, is the growth of social media—the fact that we can see pictures and videos of the shooting or the shooting’s aftermath or former president Trump with blood streaming down his face instantaneously,”says Roxane Cohen Silver, a professor of psychological science, medicine and public health at the University of California, Irvine. Exposure to these images and the news coverage surrounding them can lead to a form of collective trauma , she says.

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Silver’s research focuses on how people cope with traumatic events, such as the September 11 attacks and the Boston Marathon bombings . When 9/11 happened, most people got their news from television coverage. Today many people get their news online, often via a smartphone they carry with them all the time. “The speed with which we can access graphic images, the speed in which we can transmit graphic images, the overwhelming number of images that can be distributed rapidly without context [are] unprecedented,”Silver says.

Her research on the Boston Marathon bombings found that exposure to bloody, graphic images had a serious effect on people’s psychological functioning. One study that she and her colleagues published found that being exposed to six or more daily hours of media related to the bombings in the week afterward was linked to higher levels of acute stress than direct, in-person exposure to the attacks themselves. While perhaps not quite as graphic, the images and video of the recent Trump shooting showed blood dripping down the side of a former president’s face, and there were videos of the shooter’s body on the roof of a nearby building after he was killed by the Secret Service.

Another key difference from some previous violent events is that the Trump shooting took place in an environment of extreme political polarization—which led individuals to interpret the same event very differently. While some people reacted to the attempted assassination with outrage or distress, others did so with apathy or sarcasm, even making jokes about how the bullet had missed its mark.

And this polarization itself can be severely stressful. Silver and her colleagues have been conducting a study of several thousand people they have been following since the early days of the COVID pandemic. The study has since focused on other events, such as mass shootings, climate disasters and the police murder of George Floyd . Some of the data are still under review for publication, but “we found that political polarization was... one of the most stressful experiences that people reported,” Silver says. Although she doesn’t yet have data on how the Trump shooting affected people’s views, her team plans to collect more survey information before the November 5 presidential election.

Silver also highlights the potential for misinformation and disinformation after events like the attempted Trump assassination. Indeed, conspiracy theories about the shooting arose immediately afterward at both ends of the political spectrum. At times like these, she says, it’s crucial to verify that information is coming from a reputable source.

When we experience a collective trauma like this, “we need to take a step back,” says Robin Gurwitch, a psychologist and a professor at Duke University Medical Center, who works with people who have been exposed to traumatic events such as mass shootings. “When these events happen, one of the things we have to do is take a breath and consider, ‘What do I really know, and how does this fit into my understanding of the world around me?’” Gurwitch says.

Not everyone reacts the same. “You may have some people who use this as a sign that we need to take a step back. We need to consider our actions and our words, how we treat each other and how we talk about each other,” Gurwitch says. “Others’ first response may be wanting to double down and come out louder and stronger.” But she cautions against meeting violence with violence. “Before taking any action, we should decide ‘what is our overall goal, and what will be the most productive and effective way to accomplish this goal?’” she says.

After these kinds of events, experts recommend that people limit their media consumption as needed to protect their mental health. “ We do advocate that people monitor their media exposure to graphic images,” Silver says. “There’s likely to be no psychological benefit to seeing graphic images over and over again.” Journalists, in particular, are often exposed to traumatic images or topics through their reporting, and there are resources to help cope with that.

It’s also important for parents to talk to their children about what has happened, Gurwitch says. “First and foremost, you need to make sure, as the adult, that you’ve thought through your emotions, thoughts, ideas, beliefs and values. What’s the message you want to communicate?” she says. If you seem stressed or scared, she adds, your children are going to pick up on that, so you want to be open about discussing it.“When these kinds of events happen, this is also an opportunity for us to communicate to our children: ‘How do we think about it? What are our values about handling disagreements?’” Gurwitch says. It’s not necessary to expose your children to gruesome details, she says, but you should explain the news in a manner that’s appropriate for their age and level of understanding. The National Child Traumatic Stress Network is one organization that offers resources to help parents talk to their children about mass violence.

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Border Security
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Vice President Kamala Harris waves as she boards Air Force Two after a campaign event July 23, 2024, in Milwaukee. (AP)

'Border czar'? Kamala Harris assigned to tackle immigration's causes, not border security

If your time is short.

In March 2021, President Joe Biden tasked Vice President Kamala Harris with working alongside officials in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to address the issues driving people to leave those countries and come to the United States.

The Biden-Harris administration said it would focus on five key issues: economic insecurity, corruption, human rights, criminal gang violence and gender-based violence.

Border security and management is the Homeland Security secretary’s responsibility.

Vice President Kamala Harris might soon get a new official title: 2024 Democratic presidential nominee. In the meantime, Republicans have revived a title they gave her in 2021: "border czar."

Claims that President Joe Biden named Harris the "border czar" and that she is responsible for overseeing U.S. border enforcement gained prominence at the Republican National Convention as the party sought to link her to his immigration policy.

The refrain intensified once Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris. It was echoed in ads and by Trump campaign surrogates, including Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance , the Republican vice presidential nominee.

"Here’s Biden appointing Kamala Harris to be his border czar to deal with illegal immigration," a narrator says in a video the Republican National Committee posted on its X account, @GOP. "And here are a record number of illegal immigrants — 10 million and counting — flooding over the border after Harris was put in charge of stopping illegal immigration."

We’ve repeatedly fact-checked claims about the number of people entering the U.S. illegally under Biden. The federal data tracks how many times officials encountered a person trying to cross the southern border, but it doesn’t reflect the number of people let in. And if one person tries to cross the border multiple times, that counts as multiple encounters, even if it’s the same person.

For this fact-check, we’re focused on the scope of Harris’ border responsibilities.

"Border Czar Kamala Harris' reversal of President Trump's immigration policies has created an unprecedented and illegal immigration, humanitarian and national security crisis on our southern border," Trump campaign National Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told PolitiFact in a statement.

But Biden didn’t put Harris in charge of overseeing border security.

In a meeting with Harris in March 2021 , Biden said Harris would lead U.S. diplomatic efforts and work with officials in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to stem migration to the U.S. Biden said that when he was vice president, he "got a similar assignment" and that the Obama administration secured $700 million to help countries in Central America.

"One of the ways we learned is that if you deal with the problems in country, it benefits everyone. It benefits us, it benefits the people, and it grows the economies there," Biden said then.

Biden asked Harris "to be the chief diplomatic officer with Central American countries" and address the root causes that make people leave their home countries, said Michelle Mittelstadt, communications director for the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.

Managing the border "has always been" the Homeland Security secretary’s role, Mittelstadt said.

Biden tasked Harris with addressing the root causes influencing people’s decisions to migrate to the United States.

"I’ve asked her … to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle and the countries that help — are going to need help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border," Biden said in March 2021.

Biden held a similar role as vice president to former President Barack Obama. In a 2015 New York Times opinion piece, Biden said he would work with the Northern Triangle’s leaders on security, anti-corruption and investment efforts in the region.

"Donald Trump’s administration didn’t really sustain this strategy, but what Harris sought to revive in 2021 ran along the same lines," said Adam Isacson, defense oversight director at Washington Office on Latin America, a group advocating for human rights in the Americas.

Within weeks of Biden’s remarks about Harris’ role, Republicans including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., began calling Harris the " border czar " often in tandem with pointing out she had not yet been to the border.

In April 2021, when a reporter asked Harris whether she would visit the border, she said that her role is addressing the factors that make people leave their home countries, not managing the border.

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"The president has asked (Homeland Security) Secretary (Alejandro) Mayorkas to address what is going on at the border. And he has been working very hard at that, and it’s showing some progress because of his hard work," Harris said at an event . "I have been asked to lead the issue of dealing with root causes in the Northern Triangle, similar to what the then-vice president did many years ago."

Harris said she’d focus on economic struggles, violence, corruption and food insecurity in the countries.

In June 2021, Harris visited El Paso, Texas, with Mayorkas. They outlined their responsibilities to reporters. Harris said she was addressing "the root causes of migration, predominantly out of Central America," and Mayorkas said, "It is my responsibility as the Secretary of Homeland Security to address the security and management of our border."

But this distinction didn’t stop critics from linking Harris with U.S.-Mexico border security.

"The administration’s messaging on this in mid-2021 was not as clear as it should have been," Isacson said. "But at no time did Harris or the White House state that her duties included the U.S.-Mexico border, or border security."

Immigration experts said it’s hard to measure Harris’ success in her role, and that a "root causes" approach implies that the results will be seen long term, not immediately.

In July 2021, the administration published a strategy , with Harris writing the lead message, for confronting the factors that drive migration in Central America. The plan focused on economic insecurity, corruption, human rights, criminal gang violence and gender-based violence.

In March 2024, the administration said it secured more than $5.2 billion in private sector investments to the region. However, only about $1 billion has been distributed, the Partnership for Central America, a group working with the administration, reported .

The White House said the investments have generated more than 70,000 new jobs in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, provided job training to 1 million people and expanded digital access to 4.5 million people.

"Still, her engagement on this issue has been sporadic," Isacson said. "She has not traveled very often to the region or otherwise sought to make ‘root causes in Central America’ a central theme of her vice presidency."

Illegal immigration at the U.S. southern border from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador has dropped since 2021. Encounters with people from other countries, Venezuela, have risen .

"But it’s hard to prove that U.S. assistance is a central reason" for the Northern Triangle countries’ decline, Isacson said.

The issues pushing people to leave Central American countries "are extremely complex and require deep restructuring of so much in those societies," said Cecilia Menjivar, a sociology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles who specializes on immigration. "So it’s very difficult for one person to change all that, even if it is a powerful person."

Immigration patterns at the U.S.-Mexico border have more to do with conditions in Latin American countries than "any U.S. policy," Mittelstadt said.

For example, a humanitarian crisis in Venezuela has displaced nearly 8 million people since 2014, according to the United Nations. Political, economic and security crises in Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Ecuador have also led to more migration from these countries, Mittelstadt said.

In contrast, immigration encounters with people from El Salvador have dropped in past years, partly because of the country’s crime crackdown .

The Republican National Committee said Biden appointed Harris "to be his border czar to deal with illegal immigration...Harris was put in charge of stopping illegal immigration."

Biden tasked Harris with addressing the root causes that drive migration to the United States. He did not task her with controlling who and how many people enter the southern U.S. border. That's the Homeland Security secretary’s responsibility.

Experts say that seeing the results of addressing root causes driving people out of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras — violence, economic insecurity and corruption — takes time.

The statement contains an element of truth, but it ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False.

Read About Our Process

The Principles of the Truth-O-Meter

Our Sources

Truth Social, post , July 22, 2024

The Hill, House Republicans tee up vote condemning Harris as ‘border czar’ , July 23, 2024

C-SPAN, Sen. J.D. Vance campaign rally in Radford, Virginia , July 22, 2024

GOP, post on X , July 21, 2024

PolitiFact, Francis Suarez’s misleading claim about millions of migrants getting free cellphones, plane tickets , July 28, 2024

PolitiFact, There aren’t 20 million to 30 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally, as Sen. Marco Rubio claimed , June 11, 2024

The White House, Remarks by President Biden and Vice President Harris in a meeting on immigration , March 24, 2021

PolitiFact, Central America and the root causes of migration to the US , June 7, 2021

The New York Times, Joe Biden: A Plan for Central America , Jan. 29, 2015

The White House, Remarks by Vice President Harris at virtual roundtable of experts on the Northern Triangle , April 14, 2021

The White House, Remarks by Vice President Harris, Secretary of Homeland Security Mayorkas, Chairman Durbin, and Representative Escobar in press gaggle , June 25, 2021

Fox News, Obama-era DHS secretary: 'There's a real problem' when you have 'bipartisan outrage' , July 23, 2024

The White House, FACT SHEET: Strategy to address the root causes of migration in Central America , July 29, 2021

The White House, FACT SHEET: Vice President Harris announces public-private partnership has generated more than $5.2 billion in private sector commitments for Northern Central America , March 25, 2024

Migration Policy Institute, Shifting patterns and policies reshape migration to U.S.-Mexico border in major ways in 2023 , October 2023

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Venezuela crisis explained , April 17, 2024

PolitiFact, Donald Trump fact-check: 2024 RNC speech in Milwaukee full of falsehoods about immigrants, economy , July 19, 2024

CBS News, The facts about Kamala Harris' role on immigration in the Biden administration , July 23, 2024

Email interview, Michelle Mittelstadt, communications director for the Migration Policy Institute, July 22, 2024

Email interview, Adam Isacson, defense oversight director at Washington Office on Latin America, July 22, 2024

Email interview, Henry Ziemer, research associate for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, July 22, 2024

Email interview, Cecilia Menjivar, sociology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, July 22, 2024

Statement, Karoline Leavitt, Trump campaign national press secretary, July 23, 2024

Browse the Truth-O-Meter

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'Border czar'? Kamala Harris assigned to tackle immigration's causes, not border security

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JD Vance says the media twisted his remarks on abortion and domestic violence. We looked closer.

At the rnc, vance took questions from sean hannity and addressed criticism about his previous comments.

During the Republican National Convention’s opening night, Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, spoke to Fox News for his first interview as former President Donald Trump’s vice presidential nominee.

Sitting in the Fiserv Forum, the convention’s Milwaukee venue, Vance took questions from host Sean Hannity and addressed criticism about his previous comments on domestic violence, abortion and his 2016 disapproval of Trump.

A couple of times, Vance accused the media of twisting controversial comments about violent marriages and abortion exemptions. We took a closer look at four of his claims.

Vance mischaracterizes Biden’s stance on abortion

Vance addressed his own and Trump’s position on abortion. He described Trump’s position “to let voters in states” decide abortion laws as “reasonable,” contrasting it with Biden’s.

“Donald Trump is running against a Joe Biden president who wants taxpayer-funded abortions up until the moment of birth,” Vance said.

This is False and misleads about how rarely abortions are performed later in pregnancy.

The vast majority of abortions in the U.S. — about 91% — occur in the first trimester. About 1% take place after 21 weeks, and far less than 1% occur in the third trimester and typically involve emergencies such as fatal fetal anomalies or life-threatening medical emergencies affecting the pregnant woman.

Biden has said he supported Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion and was overturned in June 2022, and wants federally protected abortion access.

Roe didn’t provide unrestricted access to abortion. It legalized abortion federally but also enabled the states to restrict or ban abortions once a fetus is viable, typically around 24 weeks into pregnancy. Exceptions to that time frame typically were allowed when the pregnant woman’s life or health was at risk.

The Democratic-led Women’s Health Protection Act of 2021, which failed to pass the Senate, would have effectively codified a right to abortion while allowing for similar postviability restrictions as Roe.

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Biden promised to repeal the Hyde Amendment, which says federal funds can’t be used to pay for abortions, except in cases of rape, incest or to save the woman’s life. However, the amendment has continued to be included in congressional spending bills.

Vance’s comments about women in violent marriages

Hannity asked Vance to explain controversial 2021 comments about women staying in violent marriages.

“Both me and my mom actually were victims of domestic violence,” Vance told Hannity. “So, to say ‘Vance has supported women staying in violent marriages,’ I think it’s shameful for them to take a guy with my history and my background and say that that’s what I believe. It’s not what I believe. It’s not what I said.”

The comments in question came from a 2021 event Vance participated in at Pacifica Christian High School in California. In a conversation about his 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” the event moderator asked Vance about his experience being raised by his grandparents, following his mother’s divorces and struggles with drug addiction.

“What is causing one generation to give up on fatherhood when the other one was so doggedly determined to stick it out even in tough times?” the moderator asked.

Vance talked about the economic effect of men losing manufacturing jobs then discussed his grandparents’ marriage.

In his memoir, Vance detailed his grandparents’ relationship and told a story about Vance’s grandmother pouring lighter fluid on his grandfather and striking a match after he came home drunk. She had previously threatened to kill her husband if he came home drunk again, according to a 2016 review of the book in The Washington Post.

Vance commended his grandparents for staying together, comparing it with younger generations.

“This is one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace, which is the idea that like, ‘Well, OK, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy. And so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that’s going to make people happier in the long term.’

“And maybe it worked out for the moms and dads, though I’m skeptical. But it really didn’t work out for the kids of those marriages.”

In response to a 2022 Vice News story highlighting the comments, Jai Chabria, a strategist for Vance, said the media missed Vance’s point.

“This is a comment that he made where he’s talking about how it’s important that couples stay together for the kids, that we actually have good kids first,” he said. “All he is saying is that it is far too often the case where couples get divorced, they split up and they don’t take the kids’ needs into consideration.”

Vance’s comments about rape, abortion and ‘inconvenience’

Hannity asked Vance to discuss his position on abortion, allowing the senator to address his past comments that have been criticized.

“Let me go back to the issue of abortion,” Hannity said. “And there was this article that said ‘Oh, J.D. Vance said it’s inconvenient.”

Vance told Hannity, “The Democrats have completely twisted my words. What I did say is that we sometimes in this society see babies as inconveniences, and I absolutely want us to change that.”

We looked into comments Vance made on abortion while he was running for Senate in 2022 and his opponent claimed Vance had said that rape was inconvenient. We found that’s not directly what Vance said.

In a 2021 interview Vance was asked whether laws should allow women to get abortions if they were victims of rape or incest. He said society should not view a pregnancy or birth resulting from rape or incest as “inconvenient.”

“My view on this has been very clear and I think the question betrays a certain presumption that is wrong,” Vance said in 2021. “It’s not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term, it’s whether a child should be allowed to live, even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society. The question really, to me, is about the baby.”

Vance on Biden’s opposition to busing to integrate schools

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Vance criticized Trump. Hannity asked Vance about his comments before bringing up Vice President Kamala Harris’ disagreements with Biden during the 2019 Democratic primary.

Hannity pointed to Harris’ contentious moment during a debate with Biden in which she criticized Biden’s opposition to busing students to integrate schools.

“There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools and she was bused to school every day. That little girl was me,” Harris said.

“What she was referring to is the fact that Joe Biden had partnered with a former Klansman and tried to stop the integration of public schools,” Hannity said. “In Joe Biden’s words, he didn’t want those schools to become racial jungles.”

Vance reiterated Hannity’s comments.

“Kamala Harris basically said, ‘Joe Biden wouldn’t want a little black girl like me to live in her neighborhood.’ He also palled around with Klansmen,” Vance said. “She said this months before she joined his ticket Sean, I said some bad things about Donald Trump 10 years ago.”

We previously rated a similar claim Half True . In a 1977 congressional hearing , Biden, then a senator from Delaware, described his opposition to federally mandated busing.

During the hearing he said, “Unless we do something about this, my children are going to grow up in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle with tensions built so high that it is going to explode at some point.”

Biden advocated for “orderly integration,” specifically of housing, and he supported many other aspects of desegregation and civil rights. But, as The New York Times reported, Biden also pushed an “anti-busing agenda into the early 1980s.”

It’s unclear what Vance was referring to when he said Biden “palled around with Klansmen.” We have previously fact-checked a 2008 photo of Biden with former West Virginia Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd.

Byrd was once a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Byrd renounced his views and publicly expressed his regret and shame over his involvement in the group.

This article was originally published by PolitiFact , which is part of the Poynter Institute.

IFCN’s $12 million Global Fact Check Fund opens applications for second round of ‘GROW’ grants

The deadline for GROW, funded by Google and YouTube, is Sept. 3, 2024.

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Large language models don’t behave like people, even though we may expect them to

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One thing that makes large language models (LLMs) so powerful is the diversity of tasks to which they can be applied. The same machine-learning model that can help a graduate student draft an email could also aid a clinician in diagnosing cancer.

However, the wide applicability of these models also makes them challenging to evaluate in a systematic way. It would be impossible to create a benchmark dataset to test a model on every type of question it can be asked.

In a new paper , MIT researchers took a different approach. They argue that, because humans decide when to deploy large language models, evaluating a model requires an understanding of how people form beliefs about its capabilities.

For example, the graduate student must decide whether the model could be helpful in drafting a particular email, and the clinician must determine which cases would be best to consult the model on.

Building off this idea, the researchers created a framework to evaluate an LLM based on its alignment with a human’s beliefs about how it will perform on a certain task.

They introduce a human generalization function — a model of how people update their beliefs about an LLM’s capabilities after interacting with it. Then, they evaluate how aligned LLMs are with this human generalization function.

Their results indicate that when models are misaligned with the human generalization function, a user could be overconfident or underconfident about where to deploy it, which might cause the model to fail unexpectedly. Furthermore, due to this misalignment, more capable models tend to perform worse than smaller models in high-stakes situations.

“These tools are exciting because they are general-purpose, but because they are general-purpose, they will be collaborating with people, so we have to take the human in the loop into account,” says study co-author Ashesh Rambachan, assistant professor of economics and a principal investigator in the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS).

Rambachan is joined on the paper by lead author Keyon Vafa, a postdoc at Harvard University; and Sendhil Mullainathan, an MIT professor in the departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and of Economics, and a member of LIDS. The research will be presented at the International Conference on Machine Learning.

Human generalization

As we interact with other people, we form beliefs about what we think they do and do not know. For instance, if your friend is finicky about correcting people’s grammar, you might generalize and think they would also excel at sentence construction, even though you’ve never asked them questions about sentence construction.

“Language models often seem so human. We wanted to illustrate that this force of human generalization is also present in how people form beliefs about language models,” Rambachan says.

As a starting point, the researchers formally defined the human generalization function, which involves asking questions, observing how a person or LLM responds, and then making inferences about how that person or model would respond to related questions.

If someone sees that an LLM can correctly answer questions about matrix inversion, they might also assume it can ace questions about simple arithmetic. A model that is misaligned with this function — one that doesn’t perform well on questions a human expects it to answer correctly — could fail when deployed.

With that formal definition in hand, the researchers designed a survey to measure how people generalize when they interact with LLMs and other people.

They showed survey participants questions that a person or LLM got right or wrong and then asked if they thought that person or LLM would answer a related question correctly. Through the survey, they generated a dataset of nearly 19,000 examples of how humans generalize about LLM performance across 79 diverse tasks.

Measuring misalignment

They found that participants did quite well when asked whether a human who got one question right would answer a related question right, but they were much worse at generalizing about the performance of LLMs.

“Human generalization gets applied to language models, but that breaks down because these language models don’t actually show patterns of expertise like people would,” Rambachan says.

People were also more likely to update their beliefs about an LLM when it answered questions incorrectly than when it got questions right. They also tended to believe that LLM performance on simple questions would have little bearing on its performance on more complex questions.

In situations where people put more weight on incorrect responses, simpler models outperformed very large models like GPT-4.

“Language models that get better can almost trick people into thinking they will perform well on related questions when, in actuality, they don’t,” he says.

One possible explanation for why humans are worse at generalizing for LLMs could come from their novelty — people have far less experience interacting with LLMs than with other people.

“Moving forward, it is possible that we may get better just by virtue of interacting with language models more,” he says.

To this end, the researchers want to conduct additional studies of how people’s beliefs about LLMs evolve over time as they interact with a model. They also want to explore how human generalization could be incorporated into the development of LLMs.

“When we are training these algorithms in the first place, or trying to update them with human feedback, we need to account for the human generalization function in how we think about measuring performance,” he says.

In the meanwhile, the researchers hope their dataset could be used a benchmark to compare how LLMs perform related to the human generalization function, which could help improve the performance of models deployed in real-world situations.

“To me, the contribution of the paper is twofold. The first is practical: The paper uncovers a critical issue with deploying LLMs for general consumer use. If people don’t have the right understanding of when LLMs will be accurate and when they will fail, then they will be more likely to see mistakes and perhaps be discouraged from further use. This highlights the issue of aligning the models with people's understanding of generalization,” says Alex Imas, professor of behavioral science and economics at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, who was not involved with this work. “The second contribution is more fundamental: The lack of generalization to expected problems and domains helps in getting a better picture of what the models are doing when they get a problem ‘correct.’ It provides a test of whether LLMs ‘understand’ the problem they are solving.”

This research was funded, in part, by the Harvard Data Science Initiative and the Center for Applied AI at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

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From Honor Student to the Gunman Who Tried to Kill Donald Trump

Thomas Crooks was a brainy and quiet young man who built computers and won honors at school, impressing his teachers. Then he became a would-be assassin.

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An aerial view of a grassy field with bleachers; red, white and blue bunting; and a large American flag waving in the wind.

By Emily Cochrane Steve Eder William K. Rashbaum Amy Julia Harris Jack Healy and Glenn Thrush

The reporters conducted about 60 interviews with classmates, teachers, neighbors and officials in Bethel Park, Pa., and reviewed law enforcement bulletins and extensive school records for this article.

For Thomas Crooks, the suburban Pittsburgh nursing home where he served meals and washed dishes for $16 an hour was another solitary corner of a nearly invisible life. He was polite but distant, a former co-worker said, ate lunch alone in the break room and rarely spoke with anyone.

But as western Pennsylvania geared up last week for the boisterous spectacle of hosting a rally for former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Crooks approached his bosses with a request, law enforcement officials said: He wanted to take Saturday off.

He told them he had something important to do.

It was one of the few hints to emerge so far that the 20-year-old engineering sciences graduate was planning to become a political assassin. A week after Mr. Crooks opened fire at the rally and was killed by the Secret Service, his ideology and motives remain a vexing question for investigators and the people who crossed paths with him.

In dozens of interviews, former classmates, teachers and neighbors said they still could not square their memories of Mr. Crooks — an awkward, intelligent teenager who liked to tinker with computers and spent his weekends playing video games — with the image of the stringy-haired gunman at the rally, armed with his father’s AR-15-style rifle as he clambered onto a rooftop and took aim at the former president. Mr. Trump suffered an injury to his ear, and three spectators were wounded, one of them fatally.

“That’s where I’m struggling — I’ve looked at horrific pictures of an individual that I stood six inches away from, shaking his hand, calling on him in class,” said Xavier Harmon, who saw Mr. Crooks almost daily in the computer technology class he taught at a technical school.

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IMAGES

Is violence media good?
The History of Media Violence (400 Words)
(DOC) The Influence of Media Violence on Children
≫ Media Violence Is Everywhere You Look Free Essay Sample on Samploon.com
Research Paper: "Domestic Violence"
(PDF) SPSSI research summary on media violence

COMMENTS

Violence, Media Effects, and Criminology
Media violence and its impact on audiences are among the most researched and examined topics in communications studies (Hetsroni, 2007). Yet, debate over whether media violence causes aggression and violence persists, particularly in response to high-profile criminal incidents. Blaming video games, and other forms of media and popular culture ...
Media violence and youth aggression
Most media violence research involves youth aggression rather than violence, noted Douglas Gentile (Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA). Aggression is defined as any behaviour—physical, verbal, or relational—that is intended to do harm, he said, whereas violence is "a very narrow subtype of aggression that is physical and extreme, [and ...
The Impact of Electronic Media Violence: Scientific Theory and Research
Theoretical Explanations for Media Violence Effects. In order to understand the empirical research implicating violence in electronic media as a threat to society, an understanding of why and how violent media cause aggression is vital. In fact, psychological theories that explain why media violence is such a threat are now well established.
Violent Media in Childhood and Seriously Violent Behavior in
The current study aims to fill noted research gaps. First, while extant research examines exposure to violence on television and in video games, exposures through other media, such as music, are less well studied yet constitute a large part of youth media diets. ... In this paper, we examine data from baseline (Wave 1) and five years later ...
Violent media use and aggression: Two longitudinal network studies
Violent media and aggression. In 2015, the American Psychological Association published a press release stating that playing violent video games is linked to aggression (APA, Citation 2015).This decision proved controversial, as some believe that there is no link between violent media and aggression (Ferguson et al., Citation 2020).In particular, it has been argued that experimental studies of ...
(PDF) The Influence of Media Violence on Youth
the short term, exposure to media violence causes increases in. children's, adolescents', and young adults' physically and ver-. bally aggressive behavior, as well as in aggression-related ...
The influence of violent media on children and adolescents: a public
16. The aim of this review is to consider research evidence on the effects of violent media on children and adolescents from a public-health perspective. WHO has emphasised the necessity of adopting a public-health approach to the prevention of violence and the reduction of mortality and morbidity in societies. 17.
The Influence of Media Violence on Youth
Furthermore, many children and youth spend an inordinate amount of time consuming violent media. Although it is clear that reducing exposure to media violence will reduce aggression and violence, it is less clear what sorts of interventions will produce a reduction in exposure. The sparse research literature suggests that counterattitudinal and ...
Media Violence: The Effects Are Both Real and Strong
Abstract. Fifty years of research on the effect of TV violence on children leads to the inescapable conclusion that viewing media violence is related to increases in aggressive attitudes, values, and behaviors. The changes in aggression are both short term and long term, and these changes may be mediated by neurological changes in the young viewer.
The Influence of Media Violence on Youth
A number of professional groups have also addressed the state of relevant research on media violence (e.g., Eron, Gentry, & Schlegel's, 1994, report for the American Psychological Association), as have other federal agencies (e.g., Federal Trade Commission, 2000). Indeed, six medical and public-health professional organizations held a ...
The Influence of Media Violence on Intimate Partner Violence
Introduction. In the United States, more than 12 million men and women become victims of domestic violence each year [].In fact, every minute, roughly 20 Americans are victimized at the hands of an intimate partner [].Although both men and women are abused by an intimate partner, women have a higher likelihood of such abuse, with those ages 18-34 years being at the highest risk of victimization.
The Impact of Media Violence on Child and Adolescent Aggression
As a result, children and adolescents frequently encounter violence in the media. in a variety of forms, which has an effect on their behavior. Previous research has found that. exposure to media ...
(PDF) Media And Violence
in these studies refers to aggressive thoughts and feelings, for example, the. MEDIA AND VIOLENCE 99. desire to punch someone or to take revenge. "Aggressive behavior" refers. to a display of ...
The Role of Media Violence in Violent Behavior
Abstract Media violence poses a threat to public health inasmuch as it leads to an increase in real-world violence and aggression. Research shows that fictional television and film violence contribute to both a short-term and a long-term increase in aggression and violence in young viewers. Television news violence also contributes to increased violence, principally in the form of imitative ...
Reactions to Media Violence: It's in the Brain of the Beholder
Media portraying violence is part of daily exposures. The extent to which violent media exposure impacts brain and behavior has been debated. Yet there is not enough experimental data to inform this debate. We hypothesize that reaction to violent media is critically dependent on personality/trait differences between viewers, where those with the propensity for physical assault will respond to ...
Media Violence, Desensitization, and Psychological Engagement
Media researchers have just begun to aggressively investigate desensitization to violence as an outcome of exposure to media violence (Funk, 2005; Huesmann & Kirwil, 2007; Krahe et al., 2010).One logical next step is to determine what factors might lead one person to become desensitized to violence and another to remain unaffected.
The role of media violence in violent behavior
Abstract. Media violence poses a threat to public health inasmuch as it leads to an increase in real-world violence and aggression. Research shows that fictional television and film violence contribute to both a short-term and a long-term increase in aggression and violence in young viewers. Television news violence also contributes to ...
(PDF) Desensitization to media violence: Links with habitual media
Desensitization to media violence: Links with habitual media violence exposure, aggressive cognitions, and aggressive behavior ... Department of Social Psychology, Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw, Poland. The research reported in this paper was supported by German Research Foundation Grant Kr 972/8-1 to Barbara Krahé ...
PDF Media and Violence
The paper highlights where research is scarce, incomplete, or outdated; includes an assessment of the research findings; and offers some thoughts on promising ... Research on the amount of violence in media consumed by children and teenagers is woefully out of date and incomplete. The presence of violent images in advertising seen by chil-dren ...
Media Violence
Pediatrics (2009) 124 (5): 1495-1503. Exposure to violence in media, including television, movies, music, and video games, represents a significant risk to the health of children and adolescents. Extensive research evidence indicates that media violence can contribute to aggressive behavior, desensitization to violence, nightmares, and fear ...
PDF Media Violence and Aggression among Young Adults
Research Paper The International Journal of Indian Psychology ISSN 2348-5396 (Online) | ISSN: 2349-3429 (Print) Volume 9, Issue 3, July- September, 2021 DIP: 18.01.039.20210903, DOI: 10.25215/0903.039 ... Media violence poses a threat to public health in as much as it leads to an
PDF Report of the Media Violence Commission
It may also be published in the ISRA Bulletin.". What follows is the final report of the Media Violence Commission, delivered in May, 2012. This statement was written by a group of internationally recognized active researchers in the field of media violence to summarize current knowledge about the strength of the link between violent media ...
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Among Adults in ...
Importance Mass violence incidents (MVIs) are prevalent in the US and can have profound and long-lasting psychological consequences on direct survivors, but their outcomes among the broader communities where the MVI occurred are unknown.. Objective To investigate the prevalence of and factors associated with past-year and current posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among adults in communities ...
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JD Vance says the media twisted his remarks on abortion and domestic violence. We looked closer. At the RNC, Vance took questions from Sean Hannity and addressed criticism about his previous comments
Large language models don't behave like people, even though we may
Rambachan is joined on the paper by lead author Keyon Vafa, a postdoc at Harvard University; and Sendhil Mullainathan, an MIT professor in the departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and of Economics, and a member of LIDS. The research will be presented at the International Conference on Machine Learning. Human generalization
Impact of Media Violence on Children's Aggressive Behaviour
This research paper examines how media violence, particularly in video games and movies, impacted youth behaviour during Uzbekistan's pandemic-imposed lockdown period in 2020. The research deploys ...
From Honor Student to the Gunman Who Tried to Kill Donald Trump
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Article contents

Media Exposure, Violence, and Aggression

Media Exposure and Copycat Crimes

Media Exposure and Violent Crimes

Theoretical Perspectives on Media Effects

Criminology and the “Media/Crime Nexus”

Further Reading

Related Articles

Annual Review of Public Health

Most Read This Month

Reactions to Media Violence: It’s in the Brain of the Beholder

Introduction

Ethics Statement

Participants

Personality and Behavioral Measures

Imaging Conditions and State Reactivity

PET Imaging

Image and Data Analyses

Traits, Inhibitory Control, and Resting Metabolism

Glucose Metabolism and Mood Reactivity during Media Viewing

The Value of Pre-Selection Based on Abnormal Aggression Traits

Characterization of Trait Aggression through Resting Brain Metabolism

Brain Metabolism during Violent Media Viewing

Hypoactivity of the Orbitofrontal Cortex

Under-reactive Emotional and Autonomic Response to Violent Media

Acknowledgments

Author Contributions

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