L14 - Aggression Pt 2 Flashcards
How do Cues affect aggression?
- Aggressive stimulus: object whose mere presence can increase the probability of aggression
- Can be presented in different ways: pictures, words, media and supra/subliminal
Study on cues:
1) Ppts primed with aggressive/neutral stimuli
- See word on screen and read asap
- Aggressive prime facilitated processing of aggressive words
2) Saliva sample taken from male ppts to measure testosterone
- Ppts interact with gun/kids toy
- Remeasure testosterone levels
- Asked to add hot sauce to water that will be consumed by the next participant
- Those who touched gun = larger testosterone increase & added more hot sauce
What is learning theory?
Social Learning Theory: learn to be aggressive by observing others and imitating them
What was the Bobo doll study?
- Kids see adults play with toys, either aggressively or not and either with rewards/not
- When kids play = imitate model for both physical and verbal aggression
What is the link between media violence and violence?
- More violence watched on TV as kids = violence exhibited as teens/adults
- Correlational study
What were the studies showing media violence?
1) Longitudinal study: measured violent TV viewing AND aggression at ages 8, 19 and 30
- Looked at TV before and after and if it predicted Violent behaviour over time. Predicted if violent behaviour led to more TV violence
- Found that high frequency of violent viewing at age 8, crime at 30 is higher
2) Looked at how much TV someone watched, controlled for other/alternative related variables
- TV watching at age 11 predicted how many fights resulted in injury later in life
3) 6-10 yo were followed up 15 years later
- Childhood exposure to violent media leads to increased aggression in adulthood for both females and males
4) Experimental data where ppts viewed either violent/non-violent film
- Then shown letter strings and asked if they were words
- Ppts who watched violent movie were faster on aggression words and also give more violent free associations
What did Bushman and Anderson do?
- Ppts play violent or control video games for 20 mins before reading a story showing anger and then asked to list 20 things the main character would do
- Those who played the violent video game had a lot more aggressive responses when asked to say what they would do/say, think and feel compared to non-violent video game
- Another study found that the effects of video games were strongest among individuals higher in dispositional anger
What is the role of desensitisation in facilitating aggression? (What did Carnagey do?)
- Ppts play aggressive/control video game
- Then watch 10 min TV show with violence with physiological measures taken
- At baseline, there is no difference between 2 groups, but heartrate is higher in the non-violent game but a much smaller increase in the violent game condition. Same with skin response - violent game condition had lower levels of arousal
What was a study looking at violence and densensitisation?
- Ppts play violent/control video games for 20 mins before hearing a staged fight
- Looking at if they helped, how long they took, if they heard the fight and the severity of the flight
- If they helped = no diff between conditions
- Speed of helping - sig effect that longer for aggressive condition, violent condition found fight less severe
- Minor emergency staged outside movies, before/after a film and if the film was violent/non-violent and did ppts help?
- Before film = both conditions matched, after film = violent condition took a longer delay to help them
What did Fischer do?
- Ppts play aggressive or non-aggressive game with personalised or general character
- DV = amount of hot sauce
- When personalised = aggressive game had higher chilli sauce but non-personalised was a lot less. (no sig diff between non-aggressive regardless of personalisation)
What did Hollingdale do?
- Call of Duty vs Little Big Planet, unrelated task requiring chilli sauce assignment
- Found no effect, same thing if you play online/irl, just more hot sauce in violent condition
What is the link between catharsis and aggression?
- Catharsis = blowing off steam
- Suggests that trying to reduce anger by acting violently increases subsequent aggression
What is the study showing relationship between catharsis and aggression?
- Make ppts angry then there was EITHER punching bag with target in mind (catharsis) OR punching bag with distraction in mind (get fit) OR no punching bag
- DV = administering loud, unpleasant noise to target
- Catharsis group were the most aggressive and doing nothing was more effective at reducing aggression
- Ppts who were told Catharsis works = more aggressive than those who weren’t told
- Ppts who believed catharsis is effected were more attracted to violent video games esp among individuals who want to get rid of their anger
at effect do green spaces have on reducing aggression?
- STUDY: Examined police reports of violence taking place near housing project in Chicago
- Residents assigned to building, all residents had similar backgrounds
- Likelihood of violent crime was lower near buildings surrounded by green spaces
What are positive media effects on aggression?
- Children were more helpful after 4 episodes of Mr Rogers
- Beneficial effects of Sesame Street for children initially in low pro-social behaviour
- Mr Rogers was beneficial for all children
