How are we affected by media?

How are we affected by media?

How are we affected by media?

When looking at various media types and how they affect consumers, it is helpful to consider the most extreme and explicit content areas, as it would be assumed they would have the most considerable influence.

One important form of extreme media to consider is violent video games. Results from many studies have agreed that exposure to and engagement with violent video games increases aggression and the likelihood of violence occurring. According to the General Aggression Model (Anderson & Bushman, 2001), violent media teaches viewers how to aggress by priming scripts and schemas, influencing affect, and causing higher arousal levels. This, in turn, leads to an overall negative association between viewing violent video games and engaging in prosocial behavior. Effects remain consistent among both males and females, but are most damaging to children, youth, and college-aged consumers (Driesmans et al, 2016). Violent media creates violent thoughts (Bushman & Green, 1990), which often lead to violent behavior.

Effects of aggressive media content elicit more than just violent cognitions, with physical changes of increases in systolic blood pressure, heart rate, and galvanic skin response measured upon viewing violent videos (Bushman & Green, 1990) (Coyne et al., 2018). While immediate physical effects experienced during and after viewing violence help explain the subsequent aggressive behavior that has been observed in various experiments, it should be noted that research also exists exploring these effects outside the laboratory. Huesmann et al. (2003) conducted a longitudinal study finding that the viewing of TV violence during childhood was significantly correlated with aggression in adulthood fifteen years later.

If viewing on-screen violence can lead to violence in real life, it is logical that other types of harmful messaging might also have an impact on behavior. Even music with sexually explicit content (such as rap or hard rock) increases sexual aggression in laboratory settings (Hall & Hirschman, 1991) by further solidifying negative gender role stereotypes (Lawrence & Joyner, 1991) and cognitive distortions about violence against women (Barongan & Hall, 1995). This is important especially because music lacks the visual component of media consumption. If simply listening to music can negatively impact an individual’s beliefs and actions, imagine the implications this might have for more involved types of media.

Some types of extreme media have direct implications on relationships rather than just on individuals. Pornography, for example, is known to create unrealistic expectations in viewers that harm real life relationships by decreasing levels of commitment and intimacy, while increasing levels of psychological distress between partners (Lambert et al., 2012). One possible explanation for the change in relationship health and well-being might derive from the idea of cyber infidelity, which posits that there is a perceived feeling of physical and sexual infidelity or disloyalty that arises when one partner engages in the consumption of media like pornography (Adam, 2019).

Pornography has also been linked to physical violence and aggression. One correlational study found that the male partners of female victims of physical abuse consumed more pornographic media than the male partners of unabused females (Sommers & Check, 1987). Similarly, another correlational study (Marshall, 1988) found that rapists and sex offenders used pornographic materials more than the nonoffender control group. Several studies have found that viewing pornographic materials often leads to a belief change, specifically regarding those surrounding rape (Russell, 1993) (Sommers & Check, 1987) (Malamuth & Check, 1985).

Research by Coyne et al. (2008) found that viewing physical aggression in media actually produced higher occurrences of both physical and relational aggression in the laboratory environment. This opens the door for a whole new avenue of research—one that focuses on the impact of viewing social aggression and how it translates to real life behavior. One study by Mares and Braun (2013) found that young females who watched tween sitcoms containing elements of relational aggression were more likely to endorse social exclusion as an acceptable part of group behavior. In many of these programs, relational aggression is an aspect of humor that adds to a plot and helps the desirable characters be successful. Furthermore, one content analysis in kids’ programs found social aggression to be depicted about 14 times each hour (Martins & Wilson, 2012). This is an important concern because kids might learn from this modeled behavior, and relational aggression might be trivialized by the humor that masks it.

Effects of media consumption on behavior and beliefs extend far beyond just violence and aggression. These areas are simply easier to research than other types of cognition and behavior. One study found that children who watched more than two hours of television daily (no restrictions on the genre of content) were more than five times as likely as their peers who watched less than that to begin smoking (Gidwani et al., 2002). Research by Tiggemann (2003) found that although different types of media influence consumers differently, both magazines and television do relate to body dissatisfaction (potentially in varying strengths depending upon the consumer’s baseline self-esteem levels).

Whether it is through music, TV, or online videos, the research agrees that media has an impact on our beliefs and behaviors. Certain types of content depicted in media, such as sexual or aggressive, can actually prime us to engage with others in a dangerous and damaging way.

How are we affected by media?

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