PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST
VOL. 4, NO. 3, DECEMBER 2003 Copyright © 2003 American Psychological Society 81
Summary—Research on violent television and ﬁlms, video
games, and music reveals unequivocal evidence that media violence
increases the likelihood of aggressive and violent behavior
in both immediate and long-term contexts. The effects
appear larger for milder than for more severe forms of aggression,
but the effects on severe forms of violence are also substantial
(r ϭ .13 to .32) when compared with effects of other
violence risk factors or medical effects deemed important by
the medical community (e.g., effect of aspirin on heart attacks).
The research base is large; diverse in methods, samples, and
media genres; and consistent in overall ﬁndings. The evidence
is clearest within the most extensively researched domain, television
and ﬁlm violence. The growing body of video-game research
yields essentially the same conclusions.
Short-term exposure increases the likelihood of physically
and verbally aggressive behavior, aggressive thoughts, and
aggressive emotions. Recent large-scale longitudinal studies
provide converging evidence linking frequent exposure to violent
media in childhood with aggression later in life, including
physical assaults and spouse abuse. Because extremely
violent criminal behaviors (e.g., forcible rape, aggravated assault,
homicide) are rare, new longitudinal studies with
larger samples are needed to estimate accurately how much
habitual childhood exposure to media violence increases the
risk for extreme violence.
Well-supported theory delineates why and when exposure
to media violence increases aggression and violence. Media
violence produces short-term increases by priming existing
aggressive scripts and cognitions, increasing physiological
arousal, and triggering an automatic tendency to imitate observed
behaviors. Media violence produces long-term effects
via several types of learning processes leading to the acquisition
of lasting (and automatically accessible) aggressive
scripts, interpretational schemas, and aggression-supporting
beliefs about social behavior, and by reducing individuals’
THE INFLUENCE OF MEDIA
VIOLENCE ON YOUTH
Craig A. Anderson,1
Leonard Berkowitz,2
Edward Donnerstein,3
L. Rowell Huesmann,4
James D. Johnson,5
Daniel Linz,6
Neil M. Malamuth,7
and Ellen Wartella8
1
Department of Psychology, Iowa State University; 2
Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin;
3
College of Social & Behavioral Sciences, University of Arizona; 4
Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan;
5
Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina-Wilmington;6
Department of Communication and Law and Society Program,
University of California, Santa Barbara; 7
Department of Communication/Speech, University of California, Los Angeles;
and 8
College of Communication, University of Texas at Austin
normal negative emotional responses to violence (i.e., desen-
sitization).
Certain characteristics of viewers (e.g., identiﬁcation with
aggressive characters), social environments (e.g., parental inﬂuences),
and media content (e.g., attractiveness of the perpetrator)
can inﬂuence the degree to which media violence
affects aggression, but there are some inconsistencies in research
results. This research also suggests some avenues for
preventive intervention (e.g., parental supervision, interpretation,
and control of children’s media use). However, extant research
on moderators suggests that no one is wholly immune
to the effects of media violence.
Recent surveys reveal an extensive presence of violence in
modern media. 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 parental-mediation interventions are likely to yield beneﬁcial
effects, but that media literacy interventions by themselves
are unsuccessful.
Though the scientiﬁc debate over whether media violence
increases aggression and violence is essentially over, several
critical tasks remain. Additional laboratory and ﬁeld studies
are needed for a better understanding of underlying psychological
processes, which eventually should lead to more effective
interventions. Large-scale longitudinal studies would help
specify the magnitude of media-violence effects on the most severe
types of violence. Meeting the larger societal challenge of
providing children and youth with a much healthier media diet
may prove to be more difﬁcult and costly, especially if the scientiﬁc,
news, public policy, and entertainment communities fail
to educate the general public about the real risks of media-violence
exposure to children and youth.
Address correspondence to Craig A. Anderson, Department of Psychology,
W112 Lagomarcino Hall, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011-3180;
e-mail: caa@iastate.edu.
For more than ﬁve decades, Americans have been concerned
about the frequent depiction of violence in the mass media and
the harm these portrayals might do to youth. Reﬂecting this
concern, several major United States Government investigations
and reports have examined the research on the association
between youthful media consumers’ exposure to television violence
and their aggressive behavior—the 1954 Kefauver hear-
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82 VOL. 4, NO. 3, DECEMBER 2003
ings, the 1969 National Commission on the Causes and
Prevention of Violence, the 1972 Surgeon General’s report
Television and Growing Up (U.S. Surgeon General’s Scientiﬁc
Advisory Committee, 1972), and the 1982 National Institute of
Mental Health (NIMH) report Television and Behavior. In
1972, U.S. Surgeon General Jesse Steinfeld testiﬁed before
Congress that “the overwhelming consensus and the unanimous
Scientiﬁc Advisory Committee’s report indicates that
televised violence, indeed, does have an adverse effect on certain
members of our society” (Steinfeld, 1972, p. 26). The 1982
NIMH report reinforced this conclusion, and professional organizations
took a similar position in viewing media violence as a
serious threat to public health because it stimulates violent behavior
by youth. By the early 1990s, most researchers in the
ﬁeld had arrived at a consensus that the effect of media violence
on aggressive and violent behavior was real, causal, and
signiﬁcant.
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 publichealth
professional organizations held a Congressional Public
Health Summit on July 26, 2000, and issued a Joint Statement
on the Impact of Entertainment Violence on Children. This
statement noted that “entertainment violence can lead to increases
in aggressive attitudes, values, and behavior, particularly
in children.” The statement also concluded that the
research points “overwhelmingly to a causal connection between
media violence and aggressive behavior in some children”
(Joint Statement, 2000, p. 1). The six signatory organizations
were the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy
of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, American Medical Association,
American Psychological Association, American Academy
of Family Physicians, and American Psychiatric Association.
These reports, coupled with mounting public concern, stimulated
a search for ways to reduce the adverse effects of media
violence, and were responsible, in part, for the passage of the
Telecommunications Act of 1996, which mandated that new
TV sets be manufactured with a V(for violence)-chip that permits
parents to block objectionable content.
For a variety of reasons, it is now time for a new assessment
of what is known scientiﬁcally about how media violence affects
young people and what can be done to mitigate these adverse
effects. The body of research on TV violence continues
to grow, both in depth and in breadth. In addition, important
changes are occurring in the landscape of entertainment-media
use, and some of these changes have stimulated new areas of
research. The rise of new media—particularly interactive media
(such as video games and the Internet)—has introduced
new ways children and youth can be exposed to violence. The
roles of these new media in producing youthful violence
should be considered in light of existing theory and new research.
It is especially advisable to ascertain what contribution
media violence makes to serious interpersonal physical violence
among older children and adolescents given the current
national concern about this problem.
It is also important to present this report because of the disparity
between, on one side, the actual research ﬁndings and,
on the other side, the intransigent assertions made by a number
of vocal critics. That is, although research shows the adverse
effects of media violence, and there is increasing consensus
among researchers in this area about these effects, the critics
continue to pronounce that media violence cannot be affecting
youth (e.g., Fowles, 1999; Freedman, 1984, 2002; Rhodes,
2000). Also indicative of this difference in views, a recent statistical
analysis of the media-violence research (Bushman &
Anderson, 2001) demonstrated that although the scientiﬁc evidence
has grown considerably stronger over the past three decades,
recent news reports imply that the scientiﬁc evidence is
weaker than did earlier news reports.
In this report, we do not deal directly with recent critiques
of the ﬁeld. A number of carefully reasoned essays already
point out ﬂaws in the critiques and explain why the proposition
that media violence can have adverse effects on its audience is
so strongly opposed by various interest groups (Bushman &
Anderson, 2001; Hamilton, 1998; Huesmann, Eron, Berkowitz,
& Chaffee, 1992; Huesmann & Moise, 1996; Huesmann &
Taylor, 2003). Rather, our purpose is to summarize current scientiﬁc
knowledge about ﬁve critical questions:
What does research say about the relation—both short-term
and long-term—between media violence and aggressive and
violent behavior? (Overview of Empirical Research)
How does media violence produce its effects on aggressive
and violent behavior? (Theoretical Explanations)
What characteristics of media violence are most inﬂuential,
and who is most susceptible to such inﬂuences? (Research
on Moderator Effects)
How widespread and accessible is violence in the media
(television, movies, music videos, video games, Internet)?
(Research on Media Use and Content)
How can individuals and society counteract the inﬂuence of
media violence? (Research on Interventions)
We summarize our observations in the Discussion section,
which also identiﬁes crucial areas for additional research.
In reading through this monograph, a few important points
should be kept in mind: First, researchers investigating the impact
of media violence on youth have focused mostly on how it
affects the viewer’s aggression. Aggression is deﬁned by psychologists
as any behavior that is intended to harm another person.
There are many forms of aggression. For example, verbal
aggression usually refers to saying hurtful things to the victim.
Relational or indirect aggression refers to behavior that is intended
to harm the target person but is enacted outside of the
target person’s view (e.g., behind his or her back), such as telling
lies to get the person in trouble or to harm his or her interpersonal
relationships. The aggressive behaviors of greatest
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C. A. Anderson et al.
VOL. 4, NO. 3, DECEMBER 2003 83
concern usually involve physical aggression. Physical aggression
may range in severity from less serious acts, such as pushing
or shoving, to more serious physical assaults and ﬁghting,
extending to violent acts that carry a signiﬁcant risk of serious
injury. There is no clear-cut consensus-based line separating
“violence” from milder forms of physical aggression, nor is
one needed to understand the research ﬁndings on media violence.
We use the term violence to refer to the more extreme
forms of physical aggression that have a signiﬁcant risk of seriously
injuring their victims.
Some studies have focused on the impact of media violence
on aggressive thinking, including beliefs and attitudes that promote
aggression. Other studies have focused on the inﬂuence
of media violence on aggressive emotions—that is, on emotional
reactions, such as anger, that are related to aggressive behavior.
It is important to keep these three types of outcome
variables (behavior, thoughts, emotions) separate, and to reserve
the labels “aggression” and “violence” for behaviors intended
to harm another person.
Second, as we and others have frequently noted, the weight
of evidence indicates that violent actions seldom result from a
single cause; rather, multiple factors converging over time contribute
to such behavior. Accordingly, the inﬂuence of the mass
media is best viewed as one of the many potential factors that
help to shape behavior, including aggression. When we use
causal language, we do not mean that exposure to media violence
is either a necessary or a sufﬁcient cause of aggressive
behavior, let alone both necessary and sufﬁcient (Anderson &
Bushman, 2002c). To our knowledge, no media-violence researcher
has ever made such an extreme claim. The 14-year-old
boy arguing that he has played violent video games for years
and has not ever killed anybody is absolutely correct in rejecting
the extreme “necessary and sufﬁcient” position, as is the
45-year-old two-pack-a-day cigarette smoker who notes that he
still does not have lung cancer. But both are wrong in inferring
that their exposure to their respective risk factors (violent media,
cigarettes) has not causally increased the likelihood that
they and people around them will one day suffer the consequences
of that risky behavior.
Third, a developmental perspective is essential to an adequate
understanding of how media violence affects youthful
conduct and to the formulation of a coherent public-health response
to this problem. Most youth who are aggressive and engage
in some forms of antisocial behavior do not go on to
become violent teens and adults. However, research has shown
that a signiﬁcant proportion of aggressive children are likely to
grow up to be aggressive adults, and that seriously violent adolescents
and adults often were highly aggressive and even violent
as children. In fact, the best single predictor of violent
behavior in older adolescents and young adults is aggressive
behavior when they were younger (Huesmann & Moise, 1998;
Tremblay, 2000). Thus, inﬂuences that promote aggressive behavior
in young children can contribute to increasingly aggressive
and ultimately violent behavior many years later. It is
therefore important to identify factors—including media violence—that,
singly and together, may play a role in these outcomes
in childhood.
Fourth, it is important to avoid the error of assuming that
small statistical effects necessarily translate into small practical
or public-health effects. There are many circumstances in
which statistically small effects have large practical consequences.
Perhaps the most relevant circumstances are when
small effects accumulate over time and over large proportions
of the relevant population. For example, when Abelson (1985)
asked a group of Yale University psychology scholars knowledgeable
both about the concept of statistical variance and
about baseball “to estimate what percentage of the variance in
whether or not the batter gets a hit is attributable to skill differentials
between batters” (p. 131), he found that these statistically
sophisticated psychologists greatly overestimated the
variance due to skill differences. The median estimate was
25%, whereas the correct statistical answer is actually about
0.3%. But this small effect of batting-skill differences has a
huge impact on outcomes such as team win/loss records, career
runs batted in, league championships, and World Series championships,
because even small differences in batting skill accumulate
across large numbers of times at bat within a season and
across a career.
Similarly, even small statistical effects of media violence on
aggressive behavior can have important societal consequences
for at least three different reasons. First, a large portion of the
population (almost everyone, in fact) is exposed to this risk factor
(accumulation across a large population). Second, the deleterious
effects of exposure to media violence are likely to
accumulate (via learning) within the individual with repeated
exposure. Third, even short-lived effects of a single exposure
(via priming effects—see the Theoretical Explanations section)
can add signiﬁcant amounts of aggression and violence to society
because at any given waking hour a large portion of the
population either is currently being exposed to violent media or
has been exposed to such violence within the past 20 min.
Medical scientists and public-health ofﬁcials seem to have
avoided the problem of underestimating the public-health importance
of small effects by translating their ﬁndings into cancer
rates or heart attack rates or death rates for the entire U.S.
population, but behavioral scientists have not traditionally done
this type of population-rate translation. Thus, people are frequently
shocked to learn that many behavioral science effects
are considerably larger than key medical science effects that
are deemed extremely important (e.g., Bushman & Huesmann,
2001). For example, Rosenthal (1990) reported that the major
study on aspirin’s ability to reduce heart attacks was stopped
prematurely because the initial results were so strong that it
was deemed ethically irresponsible to continue giving placebos
to the control group; aspirin’s effect accounted for about 0.1%
of the variance. Our point: Conclusions about small statistical
effect sizes need to be made with caution and in this broader
context.
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84 VOL. 4, NO. 3, DECEMBER 2003
Finally, it must be recognized that the ﬁrmest evidence
about the effects of media violence, or any other presumed
causal inﬂuence, on aggression is provided by true experiments
in which participants are randomly assigned to conditions experiencing
different “doses” of the factor under investigation.
There have been many such experiments involving media violence.
Out of ethical necessity, these generally have not examined
effects on the most serious types of physical aggression.
However, longitudinal studies (as reviewed in a later section)
reveal that children who exhibit relatively high levels of the
mild forms of aggression common in childhood are more likely
than other children to engage in more severe forms of aggression
in adolescence and adulthood. Similarly, methodological
research designed to test the generality of laboratory measures
of aggression (e.g., Anderson & Bushman, 1997; Carlson,
Marcus-Newhall, & Miller, 1989) has demonstrated that high
levels of the mild forms of aggression typical of laboratory
studies correlate well with each other and with more extreme
forms of physical aggression measured in real-world contexts.
Consequently, experiments on media violence add signiﬁcantly
to understanding of the causal effects of media violence on aggression,
and are especially valuable when their ﬁndings are integrated
with the results of more naturalistic surveys and
longitudinal studies dealing with serious forms of physical aggression
and violence. In other words, no single methodological
approach can provide unequivocal answers to the key
questions about media violence, but converging results from
studies using multiple methodologies can enhance conﬁdence
in the validity of the conclusions drawn. This triangulation approach
to science is effective precisely because different methodologies
have different inherent strengths and weaknesses,
and converging results essentially rule out competing alternative
explanations (e.g., Anderson & Bushman, 2001).
OVERVIEW OF EMPIRICAL RESEARCH ON
MEDIA VIOLENCE AND AGGRESSION
Most studies of the effects of media violence have examined
passive visual media (dramatic television and movies, television
news, and music videos), that is, media that viewers observe
only. However, there have also been a limited number of
investigations of interactive visual media (video games and the
Internet), media that viewers both observe and interact with. In
this section, we examine both kinds of studies. Within each
genre, we begin with experimental studies, in which cause and
effect are unambiguous but the effects observed are short term.
Of necessity, the outcomes in these experiments tend to be
physical aggression that is not life threatening, or else verbal
aggression, aggressive thoughts, or aggressive emotions. We
then turn to surveys, or cross-sectional studies, that provide a
snapshot of the relation at one point in time between individuals’
habitual consumption of media violence and their aggressive
behavior.1
These surveys often deal with more serious
forms of physical aggression, but this type of methodology by
itself is not as conclusive about causation as experimental studies
are. For genres for which longitudinal studies exist, we conclude
our review by examining how youths’habitual consumption
of violence affects their violent and aggressive behavior later in
life. Like cross-sectional investigations, longitudinal studies
often examine serious physical aggression, but they generally
provide better evidence about causal inﬂuences than can crosssectional
studies.
Because of space constraints, we provide illustrative examples
of carefully selected key studies in each area, rather than
an exhaustive review of the research literature. However, in addition
to discussing these selected studies, we describe (if
available) meta-analyses that have aggregated the results of
most major investigations to reach overall estimates of effect
sizes. A meta-analysis essentially averages the effect sizes of
multiple studies, and allows the researcher to ask whether a
particular factor (e.g., exposure to media violence) is signiﬁcantly
linked to a particular outcome (e.g., violent behavior).
There are several commonly used measures of effect size, any
of which can be applied to experimental, correlational, and longitudinal
types of studies. To provide a common metric for this
discussion, we have converted all effect sizes to correlation coefﬁcients
(rs).
Dramatic Television and Movies
Randomized experiments: Examples
A substantial number of laboratory and ﬁeld experiments
over the past half-century have examined whether exposure to
violent behavior on ﬁlm or television tends to increase aggressive
behavior in the short term (see reviews by Bushman &
Huesmann, 2001; Comstock, 1980; Geen, 1990; Geen & Thomas,
1986; Huesmann, Moise, & Podolski, 1997). The consistent
ﬁnding from such randomized experiments is that youths
who watch violent scenes subsequently display more aggressive
behavior, aggressive thoughts, or aggressive emotions than
those who do not.
In the typical experimental paradigm, researchers randomly
assign youths to see either a short violent or a short nonviolent
ﬁlm, and then observe how they interact with other people after
1. Although we focus primarily on studies that measured exposure to violent
media, we also include the occasional study that assessed only a more general
measure of total media time (e.g., total time spent watching television per
week). In the few studies that have reported both types of measures (e.g.,
Anderson & Dill, 2000, Study 1), the more speciﬁc measure of violent-media
exposure typically yielded a much higher correlation with aggressive or violent
behavior than did the more general measure of total media time. Nonetheless,
because a high proportion of entertainment media contains violence (see Research
on Media Use and Content), it seems appropriate to include studies that
measured total media time only when they provide tests of media-violence hypotheses
in contexts where studies using the more speciﬁc measure of violent
media exposure are lacking. For both theoretical and empirical reasons, studies
using the more general measures likely underestimate the true association between
media violence and aggressive-violent behavior.
PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST
C. A. Anderson et al.
VOL. 4, NO. 3, DECEMBER 2003 85
viewing the ﬁlm. Both physical and verbal aggression toward
others may be assessed. The time period for testing the effects
is short—from a few minutes to a few days after seeing the
ﬁlm—and generally there is no attempt to test for lasting effects
of the single exposure. With older teenagers and college
students, physical aggression has often been measured by the
willingness of participants to inﬂict an electric shock or a loud
aversive noise on a peer. This person has sometimes been an individual
who provoked them earlier, but in other investigations
has been a neutral bystander. The participants are typically
given a weak rationale for harming the other person (e.g., the
punishment is an unfavorable evaluation of the peer’s work on
an assigned task).
In the following paragraphs, we describe several studies selected
from the large number of studies of this type, in part because
their outcome measure was physical aggression against
another person, in part because the authors reported enough information
that effect sizes could be computed, and in part because
they illustrate the wide range of settings, participant
populations, experimental procedures, and measures used.
Bjorkqvist (1985) exposed 5- to 6-year-old Finnish children
to either violent or nonviolent ﬁlms. Two raters who did not
know which type of ﬁlm the youngsters had seen then observed
the children playing together in a room. Compared with the
children who had viewed the nonviolent ﬁlm, those who had
just watched the violent ﬁlm were rated much higher on physical
assault (hitting other children, wrestling, etc.), as well as
other types of aggression. The results for physical assault were
highly signiﬁcant (p Ͻ .001), and the effect size was substantial
(r ϭ .36).
Josephson (1987) randomly assigned 396 seven- to nineyear-old
boys to watch either a violent or a nonviolent ﬁlm before
they played a game of ﬂoor hockey in school. Observers
who did not know what movie any boy had seen recorded the
number of times each boy physically attacked another boy during
the game. Physical attack was deﬁned to include hitting, elbowing,
or shoving another player to the ﬂoor, as well as
tripping, kneeing, pulling hair, and other assaultive behaviors
that would be penalized in hockey (the only verbal act included
in the measure was insulting another player with an abusive
name). One added element in this study was that a speciﬁc cue
that had appeared in the violent ﬁlm (a walkie-talkie) was carried
by the hockey referees in some conditions. This particular
cue presumably reminded the boys of the movie they had seen
earlier. Josephson found that for aggressive boys (those who
scored above average on a measure of aggressiveness), the
combination of seeing a violent ﬁlm and seeing the movieassociated
cue stimulated signiﬁcantly more assaultive behavior
than any other combination of ﬁlm and cue (p Ͻ .05). The
effect size was moderate (r ϭ .25).
Two related randomized experiments demonstrated that exposure
to media violence can lead to increased physical assaults
by teenage boys, at least in the short run. In a home for
delinquent boys in Belgium, Leyens, Camino, Parke, and
Berkowitz (1975) assigned boys in two cottages to see violent
movies every night for ﬁve nights while boys in the other two
cottages saw nonviolent ﬁlms. The boys were observed interacting
after the movies each evening and were rated for their
frequency of hitting, choking, slapping, and kicking their cottage
mates. Those boys who were exposed to the violent ﬁlms
engaged in signiﬁcantly more physical assaults (p Ͻ .025) on
their cottage mates. The effect sizes for such physical aggression
were not published, but the best estimates from the published
data suggest a substantially larger effect for the boys
who were initially more aggressive (r ϭ .38) than for the boys
who were initially less aggressive (r ϭ .14). In similar ﬁeld experiments
with American youth in a minimum-security penal
institution for juvenile offenders, Parke, Berkowitz, Leyens,
West, and Sebastian (1977) found similar effects of exposure to
violent ﬁlms on overall interpersonal attacks (physical or verbal),
although they did not report the effects on frequency of
physical assault separately. These two experiments are especially
important because they demonstrate that violent movies
can generate serious physical aggression even in a setting
where this behavior is counter to ofﬁcially prescribed rules.
Although witnessed violence can evoke aggression in people
who are not highly emotionally aroused at the time, several
experiments have shown that emotionally or physically excited
viewers are especially apt to be aggressively stimulated by violent
scenes. For example, in the experiment by Geen and
O’Neal (1969), college men who had been provoked by another
student and who were also exposed to loud noise shocked
their provocateur signiﬁcantly more intensely (p Ͻ .01) after
they had watched a ﬁlm of a prizeﬁght than after they had seen
a movie of a track meet. The effect size was quite large (r ϭ
.75) and seemed to be accentuated by the viewers’ noise-generated
excitement. This study has been replicated with variations
of ﬁlm content and provocation with essentially identical results
(see Berkowitz, 1993).
Finally, Donnerstein and Berkowitz’s (1981) study demonstrated
that combining violent portrayals with sexual stimulation
is particularly potent at stimulating male viewers to be
more physically assaultive toward females who have provoked
them. In this experiment, male university students watched either
a movie portraying sex and violence, a nonviolent sex ﬁlm,
or a movie that was neither sexual nor violent and were then
given an opportunity to retaliate against a woman who had angered
them earlier, by giving her electric shocks. The men who
had viewed the violent sex ﬁlm punished the woman more intensely
than did their counterparts who had watched either the
neutral ﬁlm or the nonviolent sex movie. Again, the effect size
was quite large (r ϭ .71).
The six key experiments we have just reviewed all examined
the immediate causal effect of media violence on physical aggression.
A great many studies have also examined the immediate
effect of media violence on aggressive thoughts or
emotions (for reviews, see Berkowitz, 1993; Bushman & Huesmann,
2001; Geen, 2001; Rule & Ferguson, 1986). These stud-
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86 VOL. 4, NO. 3, DECEMBER 2003
ies are important to consider because research has shown that
the risk of physically aggressive behavior against other people
is increased among youth who believe that violence against
others is acceptable (Huesmann & Guerra, 1997), in part because
they believe that their targets are “bad” people and that
punishing them is justiﬁed (e.g., Berkowitz, 1965; Berkowitz
& Geen, 1967). Similarly, people who accept violence toward
females (Byers & Eno, 1991; Lackie & de Man, 1997), who
view others as being hostile (Dodge & Frame, 1982), who believe
that retaliation is “honorable” (Nisbett & Cohen, 1996),
who fantasize about violence (Rosenfeld, Huesmann, Eron, &
Torney-Purta, 1982), or who just simply think about violent
words (Carver, Ganellen, Froming, & Chambers, 1983) also
are at high risk for physical aggression against others.
Typically, randomized experiments reveal that exposure to
media violence can cause immediate increases in aggressive
thoughts and tolerance for aggression in both children and
older youth. For example, in studies with young children
(Drabman & Thomas, 1974, 1975; Thomas & Drabman, 1975),
youngsters shown a brief violent ﬁlm clip were slower to call
an adult to intervene when they saw two younger children
ﬁghting than were peers who had watched a neutral ﬁlm. The
single violent clip appeared to make the children more tolerant
of aggression, at least temporarily. Similarly, Malamuth and
Check (1981) found an increased acceptance of physical aggression
toward women by college men several days after they
had watched violent sex scenes. Still other studies have shown
that college students randomly assigned to view a short violent
ﬁlm segment display more aggressive thoughts (e.g., Bushman,
1998) or more aggressive emotions (e.g., Anderson, 1997) than
comparable students who are assigned to view a nonviolent
ﬁlm segment. Using a somewhat longer time frame, Zillmann
and Weaver (1999) reported an experiment in which collegeage
males and females viewed either four violent or four nonviolent
feature ﬁlms on consecutive days. One day after viewing
the last ﬁlm, all participants took part in a supposedly
unrelated study in which level of hostile behavior was assessed.
Those who previously had seen the violent ﬁlms exhibited signiﬁcantly
more hostility than did those who previously had
seen the nonviolent ﬁlms.
Randomized experiments: Meta-analysis and summary
Three meta-analyses in the past 15 years have computed the
overall effect sizes for randomized experiments investigating
the inﬂuence of TV and movie violence on aggression
(Hearold, 1986; Paik & Comstock, 1994; Wood, Wong, &
Chachere, 1991). The most recent and comprehensive of these
was the analysis of Paik and Comstock, who examined effect
sizes from 217 studies published between 1957 and 1990. On
the basis of 432 independent tests of effects in the randomized
experiments they reviewed, Paik and Comstock found a moderate
to large average effect size (r ϭ .38). When the analysis
was limited to experiments in which the outcome was classiﬁed
as physical violence against a person, the 71 independent
effect sizes yielded an average r of .32. The studies in the review
reported 32 independent effect sizes for criminal violence
against a person; among this group, the average effect size was
smaller but still signiﬁcant, r ϭ .13.
In summary, many well-controlled, randomized experiments
have examined how exposure to violent TV and ﬁlm media affects
aggression in youths of all ages. The evidence from these
experiments is compelling. Brief exposure to violent dramatic
presentations on TV or in ﬁlms causes short-term increases in
youths’ aggressive thoughts, emotions, and behavior, including
physically aggressive behavior serious enough to harm others.
The effect sizes are moderate on the average but vary greatly depending
on the outcome measure used; usually, effect sizes are
smaller for more serious outcomes than for less serious outcomes.
There is some evidence that youth who are predisposed
to be aggressive or who recently have been aroused or provoked
are somewhat more susceptible to these effects than other
youngsters are, but there is no evidence of any totally immune
group. The average effect sizes, even for relatively serious physical
aggression, are large enough to warrant social concern.
Cross-sectional surveys: Examples
Cross-sectional surveys over the past 40 years have consistently
provided evidence that the current physical aggression,
verbal aggression, and aggressive thoughts of young people are
correlated with the amount of television and ﬁlm violence they
regularly watch (see reviews by Chaffee, 1972; Comstock,
1980; Eysenck & Nias, 1978; Huesmann & Miller, 1994).
Moreover, the studies reporting signiﬁcant correlations have
used a variety of research methods and examined youngsters of
different ages and from different cultures (e.g., Huesmann &
Eron, 1986). In some studies, the aggression assessed has included
physically aggressive acts serious enough to ﬁt our deﬁnition
of violence. For example, McLeod, Atkin, and Chaffee
(1972) studied the correlations between “aggressive behavioral
delinquency” (ﬁghting, hitting, etc.) and viewing of TV violence
in samples of Wisconsin and Maryland high school and
junior high school students. They found signiﬁcant correlations
ranging from .17 (p Ͻ .05) to .28 (p Ͻ .01) for both males and
females. In a study of English 12- to 17-year-old males, Belson
(1978) reported 49% more violent acts in the past 6 months by
heavy TV violence viewers than by light violence viewers.
The cross-sectional correlations have generally been in the
small to moderate range. On the average, they have been
slightly higher for elementary-school children than for teenagers
and adults, particularly when general aggression is assessed.
For example, Eron, Huesmann, Lefkowitz, and Walder
(1972) obtained a signiﬁcant correlation of .21 for 8-year-old
boys and a nonsigniﬁcant correlation for the same boys when
they were 19. Similarly, Huesmann, Moise-Titus, Podolski,
and Eron (2003) reported a correlation of .18 (p Ͻ .05) between
TV-violence viewing and general aggression for 6- to
10-year-old males, but a nonsigniﬁcant correlation between
general aggression and concurrent TV-violence viewing for the
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same males when they were in their 20s. For females in their
20s, however, Huesmann et al. reported a signiﬁcant correlation
(r ϭ .23, p Ͻ .01). Other studies also have found signiﬁcant
correlations at older ages.
Cross-sectional surveys: Meta-analysis and summary
Paik and Comstock’s (1994) meta-analysis examined crosssectional
surveys published between 1957 and 1990. For 410
tests of the hypothesis that viewing television violence is positively
correlated with aggressive behavior, they reported an average
r of .19. Perhaps more important for the current review,
these authors identiﬁed 200 tests of the hypothesis in which the
dependent measure of aggressive behavior was actual physical
aggression against another person. The effect size was essentially
the same for these studies as for all surveys combined
(i.e., r ϭ .20).
These cross-sectional surveys provide convincing evidence
that frequent viewing of violence in the media is associated
with comparatively high levels of aggressive behavior. The surveys
also support the causal conclusions of the experimental
studies, and suggest that ﬁndings of short-term effects in the
laboratory may well be generalizable to longer-term effects on
real-world aggression. However, these cross-sectional surveys
alone do not indicate whether media violence causes aggression,
whether aggressive youth are attracted to media violence,
or whether some other factor predisposes the same youth to
both watch more violence and behave more aggressively than
their peers. Longitudinal surveys investigating the subsequent
effects of exposure to media violence at an early age provide
better evidence regarding these possibilities.
Longitudinal surveys: Examples
A small group of studies have examined the effects of television
violence on aggressive behavior over time. Four of the
key studies are discussed here. In a study of a representative
sample of 856 youth in Columbia County, New York, beginning
in 1960, Eron and his colleagues found that a boy’s exposure
to media violence at age 8 was signiﬁcantly related to his
aggressive behavior 10 years later, after he graduated from
high school (r ϭ .31, N ϭ 184, p Ͻ .01; Eron et al., 1972;
Lefkowitz, Eron, Walder, & Huesmann, 1977). At both times,
aggressive behavior was measured primarily by peer nomination,
a technique in which the youths answer a series of questions
about their classmates’ aggressiveness. The researchers
assessed both physical aggression (e.g., “Who pushes and
shoves other kids?”) and verbal aggression (e.g., “Who makes
up stories and lies to get other kids in trouble?”). The longitudinal
correlation remained above .25 even when there was statistical
control of other potentially relevant factors, such as initial
aggressiveness of the child, IQ of the child, family socioeconomic
status (SES), parents’ aggressiveness, and parents’ punishment
and nurturance of the child. Furthermore, additional
statistical analyses evaluating the connection between scores at
the two ages cast doubt on the possibility that the longitudinal
relation was merely a consequence of highly aggressive youth
liking to watch more violence than their less aggressive counterparts.
Aggressiveness at age 8 did not predict viewing of violence
at age 18. In contrast to the ﬁndings obtained for the
boys (and to the results obtained in other investigations—see
Huesmann & Eron, 1986; Huesmann, Lagerspetz, & Eron,
1984; Huesmann et al., 2003), the ﬁndings for the girls revealed
no relation between exposure to TV violence and aggressive
behavior.
In a longitudinal study of boys and girls ages 7 to 16 from two
Midwestern cities (conducted by the NBC television company),
Milavsky, Kessler, Stipp, and Rubens (1982) examined the effects
of television violence on aggression using measures that
included serious physical aggression and delinquency. The youth
were surveyed up to ﬁve times during a 3-year period (1970–
1973). Cross-sectional correlations between viewing of TV violence
and concurrent levels of aggression were obtained for
the total sample within each time of assessment; they were signiﬁcant
and comparable to those found in most other cross-sectional
studies, that is, .13 to .23 for boys and .21 to .37 for girls.
The investigators then examined the longitudinal correlations
between aggressive behavior at one point in time and TV
violence viewing at an earlier time, while statistically controlling
for earlier aggression. They examined these correlations
over 15 intervals ranging from 5 months to 3 years apart. For
elementary-school boys, 12 of the 15 correlations were positive,
although only 2 were statistically signiﬁcant. Ten of the 15
correlations were positive for girls, although only 3 were statistically
signiﬁcant. A comparable analysis carried out in a subsample
of teenage boys showed a positive correlation in 6 of 8
cases, but only 1 such “lag” yielded a signiﬁcant effect. In all
cases, adding SES as a covariate reduced the signiﬁcant effects
further. However, it should be noted that these predictive analyses
were based on subsamples from which the research team
had deleted the data of many of the most aggressive children
(25% of boys and 16% of girls in the initial sample), because
they supposedly had not reported their TV viewing accurately.
Given that highly aggressive youths appear to be more likely
than others to be aggressively stimulated by violent scenes, it
may well be that discarding these data artiﬁcially decreased the
reported effects.
In the late 1970s, Huesmann and his colleagues began a longitudinal
study of the effects of TV violence in ﬁve countries
(Huesmann & Eron, 1986; Huesmann et al., 1984; Huesmann
et al., 2003). Representative samples of middle-class youth in
each country were examined at three times as they grew from 6
to 8 or from 8 to 11 years of age. Aggression was assessed by
peer nominations in response to questions about physical and
verbal behaviors, among other things. The cross-sectional correlations
between aggression and overall exposure to TV violence
were positive and small to moderate in all countries, with
signiﬁcant correlations being obtained for both boys and girls
in the United States. However, the extent to which earlier viewing
of TV violence predicted later aggression varied substan-
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88 VOL. 4, NO. 3, DECEMBER 2003
tially between the genders and among the countries. In the
United States, girls’ viewing of TV violence had a signiﬁcant
effect (r ϭ .17, p Ͻ .05) on their later aggression even after
taking into account their early levels of aggression, SES, and
scholastic achievement. For the boys in the U.S. sample, TV
violence alone did not predict later aggression, but those who
had watched violent programming frequently in their early
childhood and who also reported a strong identiﬁcation with
aggressive TV characters were generally regarded by their
peers as the most aggressive (r ϭ .19, p Ͻ .05).
Fifteen years after the study started, more than 300 participants
in the U.S. sample were reinterviewed when they were in
their early 20s (Huesmann et al., 2003). Results from this 15year
follow-up suggest a delayed effect of media violence on
serious physical aggression. The researchers found signiﬁcant
correlations between television violence viewing during childhood
and a composite measure of aggression (physical, verbal,
and indirect) during young adulthood, for both men (r ϭ .21,
n ϭ 153, p Ͻ .01) and women (r ϭ .19, n ϭ 176, p Ͻ .01).
When the outcome examined was restricted to physical aggression
or violence (e.g., punch, beat, choke, threaten or attack
with a knife or gun), the correlations were still signiﬁcant (rs ϭ
.17 and .15, respectively). Furthermore, when the people who
had watched violent programs frequently in childhood were
compared with their counterparts who viewed these programs
much less often, it was found that the former, as adults, committed
signiﬁcantly more acts of physical aggression, such as
having “pushed, grabbed, or shoved their spouses” (p. 210;
42% vs. 22% in the case of males) or “shoving, punching, beating
or choking” (p. 210) someone who had made them angry
(17% vs. 4% for females). Finally, analyses showed that for
both men and women, frequent exposure to TV violence during
childhood resulted in high levels of aggressive behavior later,
whereas high aggressiveness during childhood did not lead to
frequent viewing of television violence later.
These effects of frequent childhood exposure to TV violence
on later aggression remained signiﬁcant even when the
researchers controlled statistically for parents’ education and
children’s achievement. Although analyses of the data from the
other countries are not yet completed, preliminary results indicate
that childhood exposure to media violence also predicts
adult aggression in males and females in Finland and in males
in Israel, but not in Poland, where the social transition of the
1980s seems to have changed the relations (Huesmann &
Moise-Titus, 1999; Viermero, 2002).
A ﬁnal longitudinal study worth discussing examined effects
of TV habits in adolescence and early adulthood on later
violent behavior (J.G. Johnson, Cohen, Smailes, Kasen, &
Brook, 2002). Total amount of television watching (rather than
amount of violent TV viewing more speciﬁcally) was assessed
at ages 14 and 22. Although this is not the ideal measure of violent
TV exposure, the high proportion of television programs
that contain violence (see the section on Violent Content of
Media) suggests that, on average, those people who watch a lot
of television usually are also getting the most exposure to violent
TV. Moreover, in analyzing total time watching TV rather
than the more speciﬁc time watching violent TV, the study
probably underestimated the actual effect of exposure to violent
television on later aggressive behavior (Anderson & Bushman,
2002a).
The most relevant results of this study have to do with effects
on “assault or physical ﬁghts resulting in injury” (pp.
2469–2470), which was assessed at age 16 or 22 in one analysis,
and at age 30 in another analysis. TV exposure at age 14
signiﬁcantly predicted assault and ﬁghting behavior at 16 or 22
years of age, even after controlling statistically for family income,
parental education, verbal intelligence, childhood neglect,
neighborhood characteristics, peer aggression, and school
violence. The effect size across all participants was in the small
range (r ϭ .17). In addition, TV exposure at age 22 signiﬁcantly
predicted assault and ﬁghting behavior at age 30; the
size of this effect was in the medium range (r ϭ .35). There
were many additional ﬁndings of interest involving differences
in effect size for males versus females at different time periods
and for different measures of aggression. But the most important
implication of this study is that television watching (and
presumably exposure to violent TV) may have important adverse
effects on much older populations than was previously
believed.
Longitudinal surveys: Meta-analysis and summary
The only meta-analysis to look at longitudinal studies of
media violence separately was conducted by Anderson and
Bushman (2002c). Although this analysis pooled studies of all
types of media violence, the great majority were investigations
of violent TV. Anderson and Bushman found a statistically signiﬁcant
average effect size of .17 across 42 independent tests
involving almost 5,000 participants. Given these meta-analytic
results and the speciﬁc outcomes of the key longitudinal studies
we have already discussed, it seems safe to draw a conclusion
from this research: High levels of exposure to violent TV
programs in childhood can promote aggression in later childhood,
adolescence, and even young adulthood. The effect sizes
are small to medium, depending on the time lag. There also is
some evidence that more aggressive children tend to watch
more violence than their less aggressive peers, but the evidence
is stronger that seeing a lot of media violence is a precursor of
increased aggression even when social class, intellectual functioning,
prior level of aggressiveness, and parenting are statistically
controlled. Furthermore, the most recent studies suggest
that this increased aggression in young adulthood includes very
serious forms of aggression and violence.
Studies on the Introduction of TV
Television was not introduced in all communities at the same
time. A few researchers have taken advantage of this variation in
timing to examine TV’s effects on aggression within a society
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(Joy, Kimball, & Zabrack, 1985). For example, Centerwall
(1989a, 1989b, 1992) carried out time-series analyses using aggregated
data on crime and media viewing to examine the effect
of the introduction of TV on violence in the United States, Canada,
and South Africa (where television came on the scene only
recently), comparing crime rates before and after the introduction
of television. He concluded that the introduction of television,
combined with frequent portrayal of violent acts, increases
interpersonal violence in a society. However, this analysis must
be viewed with caution because of other factors that might have
inﬂuenced national crime rates at the same time.
For methodological reasons, more convincing evidence is
provided by Williams (1986), who found an increase in the
level of children’s aggression in one Canadian community after
TV was introduced to it, although two comparable communities
(without TV) showed no such increase. Even in this case,
though, caution must be exercised in drawing any conclusions,
because Williams assessed the total amount of TV viewing, not
the amount of media violence to which the children were being
exposed. Finally, Hennigan et al. (1982) reported that rates of
larceny went up more in American cities in which TV was introduced
than in comparable American cities in which TV was
not yet available. Again, caution is required in interpreting
these results, because there is no way to know what aspect of
TV might be responsible (e.g., rising consumer desires promoted
by commercials might lead to increases in stealing). In
summary, the investigations of the relatively immediate aftereffects
of the introduction of television do not contradict the
conclusion, drawn from the other types of studies, that TV violence
stimulates aggression in young viewers, but these investigations
do not provide much corroborative support either.
Studies on Television News Violence
Does seeing violence in news coverage encourage imitative,
or “copycat,” behavior? There are many anecdotal reports of
people imitating ﬁctional violence. For example, it has been
claimed that the movie Taxi Driver led directly to John Hinckley’s
attack on President Reagan. Despite the frequency of
these presumed instances of a “contagion of violence,” however,
there has been relatively little research examining how
news stories of aggressive events affect behavior. Most such investigations
have been time-series ﬁeld studies that have compared
data on a community’s violence rate before and after
some highly publicized news of a violent occurrence. On the
whole, these studies support the notion of a contagion effect,
with some of the best evidence indicating that stories of a wellknown
person’s suicide increase the likelihood that other people
will also take their own lives (Phillips, 1979, 1982; Simon,
1979; Stack, 1989). Other investigations indicate there might
also be a contagion of criminal violence. For example, a study
by Berkowitz and Macaulay (1971) showed that there was a
jump in the number of violent crimes, but not property crimes,
after several high-proﬁle murder cases in the early and mid-
1960s, including the assassination of President Kennedy. However,
some of the research in this area has been questioned, and
the results are subject to various interpretations. For example,
Phillips’s (1983) frequently cited ﬁnding of increases in violent
crimes following televised prizeﬁghts has not been widely accepted
by researchers because of methodological challenges
(Baron & Reiss, 1985; see Phillips & Bollen, 1985, for a response)
and the difﬁculties in explaining the speciﬁc pattern of
results (e.g., increases only exactly 3 days after the event).
Studies of Music Videos and Music Lyrics
Music videos are also of concern because these videos are
sometimes replete with violence. Even those that do not have
explicit aggressive content often have antisocial overtones
(Baxter, De Riemer, Landini, Leslie, & Singletary, 1985;
Caplan, 1985; Rich, Woods, Goodman, Emans, & DuRant,
1998), and music videos are widely watched by adolescents.
Randomized experiments
No experimental studies to date have examined how exposure
to music videos affects youths’ physically aggressive behavior.
However, Waite, Hillbrand, and Foster (1992) observed
a signiﬁcant decrease in aggressive behavior on a forensic inpatient
ward after removal of Music Television (MTV). Barongan
and Hall (1995) reported a study suggesting that antisocial
lyrics (without video) can affect behavior, but the assessed behavior
was not clearly aggressive. In this investigation, male
college students listened to misogynous or neutral rap music,
viewed three vignettes (neutral, sexual and violent, assaultive),
and then chose one of the three vignettes to be shown to an unknown
female (who was actually a member of the research
team). Those who had listened to the misogynous music were
signiﬁcantly more likely than those in the neutral-music condition
to select the assaultive vignette.
Several research groups have examined how music videos
affect adolescents’ aggressive thinking and attitudes. For example,
J.D. Johnson, Adams, Ashburn, and Reed (1995) randomly
assigned African American adolescents to an experimental
condition in which they viewed nonviolent rap music videos
containing sexually subordinate images of women or to a nomusic-video
control condition. When queried about their attitudes,
the young women who saw the demeaning videos indicated
greater acceptance of teen dating violence than did
comparable women in the control condition. In related work
with young African American men, J.D. Johnson, Jackson, and
Gatto (1995) found that exposure to violent rap music videos
increased endorsement of violent behavior in response to a hypothetical
conﬂict situation. Peterson and Pfost (1989) found
that exposing males to nonerotic violent music videos led to a
signiﬁcant increase in adversarial sexual beliefs and negative
affect. Similarly, college students shown rock music videos
with antisocial themes reported a greater acceptance of antiso-
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90 VOL. 4, NO. 3, DECEMBER 2003
cial behavior compared with the students in the control group,
who were not shown antisocial rock music videos (Hansen &
Hansen, 1990). Students were also more likely to accept stereotypic
sex role behavior after being exposed to music videos
that displayed such behavior (Hansen, 1989; Hansen & Hansen,
1988).
Several experiments have examined the inﬂuence of violent
songs without video on aggression-related variables. Some of
these failed to obtain reliable effects of the lyric content (e.g.,
Ballard & Coates, 1995; St. Lawrence & Joyner, 1991; Wanamaker
& Reznikoff, 1989). For example, participants in Ballard
and Coates’s investigation heard one of six songs varying
in genre (rap vs. heavy metal) and lyric content (homicidal,
suicidal, neutral). Lyric content had no impact on participants’
rating of their mood, including anger. In most studies showing
no effect, the genre of the songs (heavy metal) made the lyrics
nearly incomprehensible, a problem noted by the researchers
themselves. Other studies have reported mixed results. Wester,
Crown, Quatman, and Heesacker (1997) had male undergraduates
listen to (a) sexually violent music and lyrics, (b) the same
music without lyrics, (c) sexually violent lyrics without music,
or (d) no music or lyrics. Analyses yielded no differences
in negative attitudes toward women among the four groups.
However, participants exposed to violent lyrics viewed their relationships
with women as more adversarial than other participants
did.
More recently, Anderson, Carnagey, and Eubanks (2003) reported
a series of ﬁve experiments on the effects of music lyrics.
The experiments were designed to avoid the problems of
comprehensibility and music genre encountered in earlier
work. Across studies, seven violent songs by seven artists and
eight nonviolent songs by seven artists were used to ensure that
results were not due to one or two speciﬁc songs, artists, or
genres. These ﬁve experiments provided consistent evidence
that songs with violent lyrics increase aggression-related
thoughts (r ϭ .21) and affect (r ϭ .27).
Cross-sectional surveys
We found no published cross-sectional studies of the effects
of exposure to violent music videos on aggressive behavior.
However, Roberts, Christenson, and Gentile (2003) summarized
the results of an unpublished study that found a positive
correlation between amount of MTV watching and physical
ﬁghts among third- through ﬁfth-grade children. In addition,
children who watched a lot of MTV were rated by peers as
more verbally aggressive, more relationally aggressive, and
more physically aggressive than other children. Teachers rated
them as more relationally aggressive, more physically aggressive,
and less helpful.
Several studies suggest a connection between the kind of
music youths listen to and whether their behaviors and attitudes
are maladaptive. Rubin, West, and Mitchell (2001) found
that college students who preferred rap and heavy metal music
reported more hostile attitudes than students who favored other
genres of music. Heavy metal listeners held more negative attitudes
toward women, whereas rap music fans were more distrustful.
Similarly, Took and Weiss (1994) found a correlation
between preference for rap and heavy metal music and belowaverage
academic performance, behavior problems in school,
drug use, arrests, and sexual activity. Still other studies have
obtained correlations between music preferences and a variety
of maladaptive behaviors. But these studies have not speciﬁcally
linked lyric preferences to those behaviors.
Summary of studies of exposure to music videos and lyrics
The experimental studies provide substantial evidence that
watching violent music videos creates attitudes and beliefs that
are relatively accepting of violence in young viewers, at least
in the short term. The cross-sectional studies also link violent
music videos to more long-term maladaptive attitudes and beliefs
in youth, but provide no direct evidence on the reasons for
this connection. Studies of music lyrics without video show
less consistency, perhaps because of the methodological problems
mentioned earlier. However, the better controlled experiments
suggest that understandable violent lyrics can increase
aggressive thinking and affect. There are no published longitudinal
studies of the effects of violent music videos or violent
lyrics without video. Such studies are clearly needed before a
deﬁnitive conclusion about long-term effects of exposure to violent
music videos and lyrics can be reached.
Studies of Video Games
Violent video games have recently surpassed violent music
videos and even violent TV as a matter of concern to parents
and policymakers. There are several reasons for this. First, children
are spending an increasingly large amount of time playing
video games. Second, a large portion of these games contain
violence. Third, because the children playing these games are
active participants rather than observers, they may be at increased
risk of becoming aggressive themselves. The impact of
exposure to violent video games has not been studied as extensively
as the impact of exposure to TV or movie violence; however,
on the whole, the results reported for video games to date
are very similar to those obtained in the investigations of TV
and movie violence (Anderson & Bushman, 2001; Anderson et
al., in press).
Randomized experiments
In several studies, children were randomly assigned to play
violent or nonviolent video games and then were observed when
given an opportunity to be aggressive. Most of these studies
found that the violent game signiﬁcantly increased youths’ aggressive
behavior. For example, Irwin and Gross (1995) assessed
physical aggression (e.g., hitting, shoving, pinching, pulling at
clothes or hair, kicking) between boys who had just played either
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VOL. 4, NO. 3, DECEMBER 2003 91
a violent or a nonviolent video game. Those who had played the
violent video game were more physically aggressive toward
peers. The average effect size (r) across six measures of physical
aggression was .31. Also, several randomized experiments measured
college students’ propensity to be physically aggressive
(by delivering a mild shock or unpleasantly loud noise to someone
who had provoked them) after they had played (or not
played) a violent video game. For example, Bartholow and
Anderson (2002) found that college students who had played a
violent game subsequently delivered more than two and a half
times as many high-intensity punishments as those who played a
nonviolent video game. The effect of the violent game was signiﬁcant
for both women (r ϭ .50) and men (r ϭ .57).
A number of randomized experiments have examined the
effects of violent video games on aggressive thoughts, emotions,
and physiological arousal. For example, Calvert and Tan
(1994) had participants play the violent virtual reality game
Dactyl Nightmare or engage in movements similar to those of
Dactyl Nightmare players, and then used a procedure in which
participants listed their thoughts to assess aggressive cognitions.
The participants who had played the violent game generated
signiﬁcantly more aggressive thoughts than those who had
simply mimicked its movements (r ϭ .50). Other studies have
found similar effects using a wide array of measures to assess
aggressive thinking, including time taken to read aggressive
and nonaggressive words (Anderson & Dill, 2000), aggressive
content of written stories (Bushman & Anderson, 2002), and
hostile explanations for hypothetical unpleasant interpersonal
events (Kirsh, 1998).
Several randomized experiments have tested the effects of
video games speciﬁcally selected to differ in violent content but
not in arousal or affective properties. For example, Anderson et
al. (in press) tested the effects of 10 video games on physiological
arousal and several affect-relevant dimensions, including
frustration, difﬁculty, and enjoyment (Experiment 1), and then
selected two games that were similar on these measures but different
in violent content. In two subsequent experiments, the violent
game signiﬁcantly increased aggressive behavior relative to
the nonviolent game (rs ϭ .25 and .19), demonstrating that the
effects of violent video games on aggression are independent of
the games’ effects on arousal or affect.
Cross-sectional surveys
Several survey studies have measured the correlation between
time spent playing violent video games and aggression.
For example, Anderson and Dill (2000) created a composite
measure of recent exposure to violent video games, and correlated
it with college students’ self-reported acts of aggressive
delinquent behavior in the past year (e.g., hitting or threatening
other students, attacking someone with the idea of seriously
hurting or killing him or her, participating in gang ﬁghts,
throwing objects at other people). The overall correlation between
exposure to violent video games and violent behavior
was signiﬁcant (r ϭ .46, p Ͻ .05). The magnitude of the association
decreased but remained signiﬁcant when analyses controlled
for antisocial personality, gender, and total time spent
playing any type of video game. Similarly, Gentile, Lynch,
Linder, and Walsh (in press) obtained a signiﬁcant correlation
between time playing violent video games and physical ﬁghts
among eighth and ninth graders (r ϭ .32).
Longitudinal surveys
There are no published longitudinal surveys speciﬁcally focusing
on effects of violent video games on aggression. However,
two recent longitudinal studies have linked such games to
increases in aggression. Slater, Henry, Swaim, and Anderson (in
press) surveyed sixth- and seventh-grade students from 20 middle
schools across the United States on four occasions over a
2-year period. The media-violence measure included three items
assessing the frequency of watching action movies, playing
video games involving ﬁring a weapon, and visiting Internet
sites that describe or recommend violence. The aggressiveness
measure included aggressive cognitions, values, and behavior,
and thus is not a pure aggression measure. Control variables included
gender, sensation seeking (a personality trait), general use
of the Internet, and age. The main result was that media-violence
exposure at one point in time was positively (and statistically
signiﬁcantly) related to aggressiveness at a later point in time
even after statistically controlling for earlier aggressiveness and
various other aggression-related variables. Interestingly, the longitudinal
effect of aggressiveness on later use of violent media
was not statistically signiﬁcant. Both of these ﬁndings are similar
to the longitudinal effects reported in the earlier section on
television violence (i.e., the effect of exposure to violent television
on later aggression is larger than the effect of early aggression
on later exposure to violent television).
The second longitudinal study was reported by Ihori, Sakamoto,
Kobayashi, and Kimura (2003). They studied Japanese
ﬁfth and sixth graders at two points in time separated by 4 to 5
months, measuring overall video-game exposure rather than
exposure to violent video games. They reported that amount of
exposure to video games was positively (and signiﬁcantly) related
to later levels of violent physical behavior after controlling
for earlier violent behavior.
Neither of these two longitudinal studies has all of the desired
features needed to draw strong longitudinal conclusions
about effects of violent video games on aggression. Nonetheless,
both are strongly suggestive.
Video-game violence: Meta-analysis and summary
The ﬁndings of the ﬁrst comprehensive meta-analysis of violent-video-game
effects (Anderson & Bushman, 2001) have
recently been corroborated in a new analysis (Anderson et al.,
in press) that examined methodological features of the studies
in greater detail. In the latest analysis, studies were divided into
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two categories—those without any of nine potential methodological
problems (the best-practices studies) and those that had at
least one of these problems. For each of ﬁve outcome variables
examined, the best-practices studies yielded a signiﬁcant effect
of exposure to violent video games, as can be seen in Figure 1.
Speciﬁcally, such exposure was related to increases in aggressive
behavior (r ϭ .27), aggressive affect (r ϭ .19), aggressive
cognitions (i.e., aggressive thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes; r ϭ
.27), and physiological arousal (r ϭ .22) and was related to decreases
in prosocial (helping) behavior (r ϭ Ϫ.27). Furthermore,
the best studies yielded larger effect sizes than the notbest
studies, contradicting claims by representatives of the
video-game industry and other critics of the video-game research
literature. Finally, experimental and cross-sectional studies
yielded essentially similar effect sizes for all ﬁve outcome
variables with one exception—there were no best-practices
cross-sectional studies of arousal to compare with best-practices
experimental studies of arousal.
Fig. 1. Effects of violent video games on aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, aggressive affect,
helping behavior, and physiological arousal. Results are shown separately for studies without any of nine
potential methodological problems (best-practices studies) and those that had at least one of these problems.
Vertical capped bars indicate 95% conﬁdence intervals. If a vertical capped bar does not include the
zero line, then the effect of violent video games on that outcome variable is statistically signiﬁcant for the
methodology category indicated. Adapted from “Violent Video Games: Speciﬁc Effects of Violent Content
on Aggressive Thoughts and Behavior,” by C.A. Anderson, N.L. Carnagey, M. Flanagan, A.J. Benjamin, J.
Eubanks, and J.C. Valentine, in press, in M. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol.
36, New York, Elsevier. Reprinted by permission from Elsevier.
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VOL. 4, NO. 3, DECEMBER 2003 93
Though the number of studies investigating the impact of violent
video games is small relative to the number of television and
ﬁlm violence studies, there are sufﬁcient studies with sufﬁcient
consistency (as shown by the meta-analysis results) to draw
some conclusions. These studies offer support for a connection
between playing violent video games and increased likelihood of
engaging in aggression. The experimental studies demonstrate
that in the short term, violent video games cause increases in aggressive
thoughts, affect, and behavior; increases in physiological
arousal; and decreases in helpful behavior. The crosssectional
studies link repeated exposure to violent video games
with aggressive and violent behavior in the real world. The longitudinal
studies further suggest long-term effects of repeated
exposure to violent video games on aggression and violence.
Studies of Internet Participation
The basic theoretical principles concerning the effects of exposure
to media violence should be applicable to Internet media.
To date, there are no published studies that address how exposure
to Web-based media violence affects aggressive and violent
behavior, attitudes, beliefs, and emotions. However, because of
the visual and interactive nature of Web material, we expect the
effects to be very similar to those of other visual and interactive
media. The Web materials with violence tend to be video games,
ﬁlm clips, and music videos, and there is no reason to believe
that delivering these materials into the home via the Internet,
rather than through other media, would reduce their effects.
Meta-Analyses Combined Across Media Type
Five major meta-analyses of general effects of media violence
have been published in the past 20 years (Anderson &
Bushman, 2002c; Bushman & Anderson, 2001; Hearold, 1986;
Paik & Comstock, 1994; Wood et al., 1991). The most recent
one (Anderson & Bushman, 2002c, based on data collected and
reported in Bushman & Anderson, 2001) examined all published
reports of effects of media violence on aggression
through the year 2000. A restrictive deﬁnition of aggression
(i.e., behavior intended to harm another person) was used to
ensure the validity and integrity of the results. The studies included
in the analysis covered all types of media: television,
movies, comic books, music, and video games. By far the most
frequent type of media violence investigated was the violence
in TV and movies, although the growing video-game literature
contributed a fair number of tests as well. More modern metaanalytic
procedures were used than in some earlier meta-analyses
of media-violence effects, such as averaging multiple effect
sizes when a study reported effects for more than one measure
of aggression, so that each group of participants was represented
in the meta-analysis only once. These modiﬁcations resulted
in somewhat lower numbers of “studies” of mediaviolence
effects than reported by Paik and Comstock, but the
basic conclusions of all of these meta-analyses are essentially
the same.
Figure 2 presents Anderson and Bushman’s (2002c) results
broken down into four separate categories: cross-sectional studies,
longitudinal studies, ﬁeld experiments, and laboratory experiments.
The ﬁgure shows considerable convergence in results
across methods: All four kinds of studies demonstrate highly reliable
effects of media violence on aggression. The average effect
sizes obtained were .17 for 42 longitudinal studies involving
4,975 participants, .18 for 86 cross-sectional studies involving
37,341 participants, .19 for 28 ﬁeld experiments involving 1,976
participants, and .23 for 124 laboratory experiments involving
7,305 participants. These results differ substantially from Paik
and Comstock’s (1994) results primarily in that the average effect
size for experiments is considerably lower in the more recent
analysis (.23 compared with .38), perhaps because of the
more conservative methodology employed in the later analysis.
Summary of Empirical Research
As this review of the empirical research has shown, exposure
to media violence has a statistically signiﬁcant association
Fig. 2. Effects of media violence on aggression for two types of experimental
studies and two types of correlational studies. Vertical
capped bars indicate 95% conﬁdence intervals. If a vertical capped bar
does not include the zero line, then the effect of violent video games
on that outcome variable is statistically signiﬁcant for the methodology
category indicated. Based on data reported in Anderson and Bushman
(2002c).
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with aggression and violence among youth. The ﬁndings are
generally consistent across media type and research methodology.
The experimental research clearly demonstrates that exposure
to media violence heightens the chances that a youth will
behave aggressively and have aggressive thoughts in the short
run. The cross-sectional surveys consistently indicate that the
more frequently youth are exposed to media violence, the
greater is the likelihood they will behave aggressively and have
aggressive thoughts. The longitudinal research consistently
shows that exposure to media violence in childhood is a predictor
of subsequent aggression in adolescence and young adulthood
even when many other possible inﬂuences are statistically
controlled. Furthermore, there is evidence that habitual exposure
even in late adolescence and early adulthood produces
similar increases in aggression and violence in later years. Although
the sizes of these effects are in the range that statisticians
call small to medium, the effects are generally of the
same magnitude as many other effects that are considered important
public-health threats (e.g., cigarette smoking, exposure
to asbestos; Bushman & Huesmann, 2001).
THEORETICAL EXPLANATIONS
One reason these empirical results have been increasingly
accepted by the scientiﬁc community over the 30 years since
the ﬁrst Surgeon General’s report on media violence is the
growing understanding of the psychological processes underlying
these effects. Although the underlying tenets of the current
theories of media-violence effects were formulated even before
that early Surgeon General’s report (see Bandura, 1973;
Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1961, 1963a, 1963b, 1963c; Berkowitz,
1962; Eron, Walder, & Lefkowitz, 1971), researchers from
a variety of disciplines, primarily psychology, communication,
and sociology, have developed, tested, and reﬁned ever-better
theoretical models accounting for the consequences of exposure
to media violence. The generally accepted theories that
have evolved not only explain why exposure to media violence
increases aggressive and violent behavior, but also suggest numerous
factors that might exacerbate or mitigate the effect.
These models generally fall under the rubric of social-cognitive,
information processing models. Such models focus on
how people perceive, think, learn, and come to behave in particular
ways as a result of interactions with their social world, a
world that includes observation of and participation in real social
interactions (e.g., with parents, peers), as well as ﬁctional
social interactions (e.g., various forms of media). Reviews of
several such formulations are available (Anderson & Bushman,
2002b; Anderson & Huesmann, 2003; Berkowitz, 1984, 1993;
Huesmann, 1997, 1998).
Within the framework of these theories, it is important to
distinguish between relatively immediate (or short-term) and
delayed (or long-term) effects. It is now generally agreed that
although some processes contribute to both kinds of effects,
others contribute primarily to one or the other. In particular,
short-term effects are thought to be due to observational learning
and imitation, arousal and excitation, and priming, whereas
long-term effects are thought to be due to observational learning,
automatization of aggressive schematic processing, and
desensitization or emotional habituation. We discuss each of
these processes in turn.
Observational Learning and Imitation
Humans begin imitating other humans at a very early age,
and the observation of others’ behaviors is the likely source of
many of a young child’s motor and social skills (Bandura,
1977; Meltzoff & Moore, 1977). Humans and chimpanzees are
now known to have speciﬁc neurological systems designed for
imitation (Rizzolati, Fadiga, Gallese, & Fogassi, 1996), and
these systems make it easy for very young primates to acquire
rudimentary social behaviors. Social interactions hone these
behaviors that children ﬁrst acquire through observation of others,
but observational learning remains a powerful mechanism
for the acquisition of new social behaviors throughout childhood
and maturity. As a child grows older, the behaviors and
the circumstances in which they are seen as appropriate or useful
become more abstract, and beliefs and attitudes are developed
from inferences made about observed social behaviors
(Guerra, Huesmann, & Spindler, in press). Theoretically, children
can be expected to learn from whomever they observe—
parents, siblings, peers, or media characters—and many researchers
now agree that such observational learning can contribute
to both the short- and the long-term effects of media
violence on aggressive behavior. Much of this learning takes
place without an intention to learn and without an awareness
that learning has occurred.
According to observational-learning theory, the likelihood
that an individual will acquire an observed behavior is increased
when the model performing the behavior is similar to
or attractive to the viewer, the viewer identiﬁes with the model,
the context is realistic, and the viewed behavior is followed by
rewarding consequences (Bandura, 1977).2
A child’s immediate
imitation of observed behaviors would probably be the simplest
example of observational learning though some scholars
would suggest that there should be a lag before the imitation
occurs for it to be called “learning.” Observational learning can
help to explain some of the short-term effects of exposure to violent
media, but what happens in the longer term? The reinforcements
a person receives when imitating a behavior are
largely responsible for whether the behavior persists. For example,
youngsters might be rewarded or punished by people in
their social environment (parents, teachers, peers) for the actions
they exhibit, or they might vicariously experience the re-
2. Though these factors facilitate observational learning, none are necessary
conditions for media violence to have effects. For example, cartoon characters
in television or video games are not very realistic, but numerous
randomized experiments have shown that exposure to violent cartoonish behavior
increases aggressive behavior.
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VOL. 4, NO. 3, DECEMBER 2003 95
wards or punishments other persons obtain when these others
imitate the portrayed behavior. Through imitation and reinforcement,
children develop habitual modes of behavior (e.g., Bandura,
1977, 1986; Huesmann, 1997). Whether observational learning
leads to long-term effects of media violence depends in part on
the consequences the imitated behaviors bring.
It is theorized that children not only learn speciﬁc behaviors
from models, but can also learn more generalized, complex social
scripts (sets of “rules” for how to interpret, understand, and
deal with a variety of situations, including conﬂict; e.g., Anderson
& Huesmann, 2003; Huesmann, 1988, 1998; Huesmann &
Miller, 1994). Once learned, such scripts serve as cognitive
guides for future behavior. For example, from observing violent
people, children may learn that aggression can be used to
try to solve interpersonal conﬂicts. As a result of mental rehearsal
(e.g., imagining this kind of behavior) and repeated exposure,
this approach to conﬂict resolution can become well
established and easily retrieved from memory. Finally, through
inferences they make from repeated observations, children also
develop beliefs about the world in general (e.g., is it hostile or
benign) and about what kind of behavior is acceptable.
Observational learning and imitation are often thought of as
conscious processes, but that need not be the case. Recent theoretical
and empirical work (e.g., Bargh & Chartrand, 1999;
Neuman & Strack, 2000) suggests that some types of imitative
behaviors are very automatic, nonconscious, and likely to be
short-lived. Similarly, observational learning of complex scripts
and schemas (e.g., beliefs, attitudes, and other types of knowledge
that guide perception, interpretation, and understanding)
can also occur outside of awareness, even with no immediate
imitation of behaviors. Theoretically, it should not matter much
for the long-term consequences of observation of violent behavior
whether or not the child is aware of its inﬂuence. Repeated
observation of aggressive behavior should increase the
likelihood that children will incorporate aggressive scripts into
their repertoires of social scripts, particularly if their own use
of those scripts is followed by reinforcement.
Priming and Automatization of Aggressive
Schematic Processing
Neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists have discovered
that the human mind often acts as an associative network
in which ideas are partially activated (primed) by associated
stimuli in the environment (Fiske & Taylor, 1984). An encounter
with some event or stimulus can prime, or activate, related
concepts and ideas in a person’s memory even without the person
being aware of this inﬂuence (Bargh & Pietromonaco,
1982). For example, exposure to violent scenes may activate a
complex set of associations that are related to aggressive ideas
or emotions, thereby temporarily increasing the accessibility of
aggressive thoughts, feelings, and scripts (including aggressive
action tendencies). In other words, aggressive primes or cues
make aggressive schemas more easily available for use in processing
other incoming information, creating a temporary interpretational
ﬁlter that biases subsequent perceptions. If these
aggressive schemas are primed while certain events—such as
ambiguous provocation—occur, the new events are more likely
to be interpreted as involving aggression, thereby increasing the
likelihood of an aggressive response. Priming effects related to
aggression have been empirically demonstrated both for cues
usually associated with violence, such as weapons (Anderson,
Benjamin, & Bartholow, 1998; Berkowitz & LePage, 1967; Carlson,
Marcus-Newhall, & Miller, 1990), and for initially neutral
cues that have been observed repeatedly to be connected to violence,
such as the color of a room in which violence is repeatedly
observed (Leyens & Fraczek, 1983). For example, the
mere presence of a weapon within a person’s visual ﬁeld can
increase aggressive thoughts and aggressive behavior (Bartholow,
Anderson, Benjamin, & Carnagey, in press).
Priming effects are often seen as purely short-term inﬂuences.
But research by cognitive and social-cognitive scientists
has shown that repeated priming and use of a set of concepts or
schemas eventually makes them chronically accessible. In essence,
frequently primed aggression-related thoughts, emotions,
and behavioral scripts become automatically and chronically
accessible. That is, they become part of the normal internal
state of the individual, thereby increasing the likelihood that
any social encounter will be interpreted in an aggression-biased
way, and therefore increasing the likelihood of aggressive encounters
throughout the individual’s life (e.g., Anderson &
Huesmann, 2003). This automatization process, which changes
short-lived increases in aggression-biased perceptions into relatively
long-lasting aggression-biased perceptual ﬁlters, is essentially
another type of learning process, one that has longterm
consequences.
Arousal and Excitation Transfer
Media violence is exciting (arousing) for most youth. That
is, it increases heart rate, the skin’s conductance of electricity,
and other physiological indicators of arousal. There is evidence
that this arousal can increase aggression in two different ways.
First, arousal, regardless of the reason for it, can energize or
strengthen whatever an individual’s dominant action tendency
happens to be at the time. Thus, if a person is provoked or otherwise
instigated to aggress at the time increased arousal occurs,
heightened aggression can result (e.g., Geen & O’Neal,
1969). Second, if a person who is aroused misattributes his or
her arousal to a provocation by someone else, the propensity to
behave aggressively in response to that annoyance is increased
(e.g., Zillmann, 1971, 1982). Thus, people tend to react more
violently to provocations immediately after watching exciting
movies than they do at other times. This kind of effect is usually
short-lived, perhaps lasting only minutes.
Such arousal-transfer effects can occur with any kind of exciting
activity, not just exciting movies, TV shows, music videos,
or video games. For this reason, the arousal properties of
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violent media have not drawn as much attention as their other
consequences. Nonetheless, it bears noting that frequent episodes
in which exposure to violent media is followed by frustrating
or provoking events could well lead to an increase in the viewers’
aggressive social encounters, which in turn can affect their
self-images and the aggressiveness of their social environment.
Indeed, recent research shows that playing a violent video
game for as little as 10 min increases the player’s automatic association
of “self” with aggressive actions and traits (Uhlmann
& Swanson, in press). In the same study, the researchers also
found that past history of exposure to violent video games was
positively associated with aggressive views of the self.
Emotional Desensitization
The term “desensitization” has been employed in so many
different ways that the exact meaning of any particular usage
can be quite unclear. We speciﬁcally use the label emotional
desensitization to refer to a reduction in distress-related physiological
reactivity to observations or thoughts of violence (Carnagey,
Bushman, & Anderson, 2003). In the present context,
emotional desensitization occurs when people who watch a lot
of media violence no longer respond with as much unpleasant
physiological arousal as they did initially. Because the unpleasant
physiological arousal (or negative emotional reactions) normally
associated with violence has an inhibitory inﬂuence on
thinking about violence, condoning violence, or behaving violently,
emotional desensitization (i.e., the diminution of the unpleasant
arousal) can result in a heightened likelihood of
violent thoughts and behaviors (Huesmann et al., 2003).
Habituation of neurophysiological responses over time is a
well-established psychological phenomenon (though some responses
resist habituation); repeated presentation of the same
stimulus usually results in smaller and smaller neurophysiological
responses to that stimulus. Similarly, systematic desensitization
procedures are highly successful in the treatment of
phobias (e.g., Bandura & Adams, 1977; Wolpe, 1958, 1982)
and other anxiety or fear disorders (e.g., Pantalon & Motta,
1998). For example, systematically exposing someone with a
snake phobia to snakes (initially under conditions designed to
minimize anxiety and later under more anxiety-producing conditions)
reduces the original anxiety reactions to such an extent
that the person is no longer snake phobic. One feature of modern
systematic desensitization treatments is to have the phobic
person observe other people (live or ﬁlmed) successfully interacting
with the feared stimulus (Bandura, Grusec, & Menlove,
1967; Bandura & Menlove, 1968).
Similarly, violent scenes do become less unpleasantly arousing
over time (see Cline, Croft, & Courrier, 1973), and more aggressive
(relative to less aggressive) college students do tend to
show decreased arousal to repeated scenes of violence (Titus,
1999). Research has shown that even relatively brief exposure to
media violence can reduce physiological reactions to the sight of
real-world violence (Carnagey et al., 2003; Thomas, Horton,
Lippincott, & Drabman, 1977) and can decrease helpful behavior
toward victims of aggression (Carnagey et al., 2003; Drabman
& Thomas, 1974, 1975; Thomas & Drabman, 1975).
However, it still has to be established whether or not such decreased
arousal in response to violent scenes stimulates violent
behavior, and it is therefore uncertain how big a role emotional
desensitization plays in the long-term cumulative effects of media
violence on the instigation of aggression. Unfortunately, there
have been few attempts to date to test this hypothesis directly.
RESEARCH ON MODERATOR EFFECTS
Although the psychological processes through which media
violence operates are present in every child, children are not affected
equally by media violence. Some studies indicate that
different children are affected differently by media violence.
Similarly, not all portrayals of violence in the media have the
same effect. It is therefore important to examine the characteristics
of individuals, of media content, and of social environments
that may increase or decrease—that is, moderate—the
inﬂuence of media violence on aggressive behavior. A number
of factors have been proposed as possible moderators, some on
the basis of the psychological theorizing reviewed in the previous
section, some because of empirical evidence that seems to
suggest their importance, and others for both reasons.
Viewer Characteristics
Many viewer characteristics have been hypothesized as
moderators of how people interpret and react to violent media
content. For example, developmental theory suggests that
younger children, whose social scripts, schemas, and beliefs
are less crystallized than those of older children, should be
more sensitive to this inﬂuence (Guerra et al., in press). Observational-learning
theory suggests that the viewers’ age and
gender can inﬂuence the extent to which they identify with the
depicted aggressive characters, which may in turn inﬂuence
learning and enactment of the observed aggression. Relatively
low intellectual competence might exacerbate the effects of exposure
when the story plots are fairly subtle and complicated.
A high level of aggressiveness might result in an enhanced susceptibility
to media-violence effects by affecting the perception
of violence in the observed scenes.
Age and gender of the viewer
Paik and Comstock (1994) reported an inverse relation between
viewers’ age and the magnitude of the effect of TV violence
on aggression and other antisocial behaviors. In other
words, as several developmental psychologists had theorized, the
media-violence effect was largest in the youngest age group (less
than 5 years old). However, the moderating inﬂuence of age was
found to be quite complicated: The effect size did not decrease
consistently as age increased. For example, the overall effect size
among college-age students matched or exceeded that for 6- to
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VOL. 4, NO. 3, DECEMBER 2003 97
11-year-olds in experimental studies. However, these comparisons
did not control for the different outcome measures used in
research with adults and children. Aggressive behavior is often
used as an outcome measure for children, whereas measures of
aggressive thoughts are often used for college students and
adults. In one of the two longitudinal investigations that used the
same behavioral measure of aggression on the same participants
at different ages, the longitudinal effect of media violence on aggressive
behavior was signiﬁcant for children (age 8) but nonexistent
for young adults (age 19; Eron et al., 1972). But what
constitutes an appropriate or “best” measure of aggression differs
for different ages and genders. Spousal violence is appropriate
for adult couples but not children, whereas classroom
aggression is more appropriate for children. To further complicate
matters, the recent study by J.G. Johnson et al. (2002) found
a larger longitudinal effect of television viewing on assault and
ﬁghting behavior at age 30 than at earlier ages (16, 22).3
Paik and Comstock (1994) also reported little difference in
the average effect size for females and males. Although some
early studies in the United States and some studies in other
countries found stronger relations between media-violence
viewing and aggression for boys than for girls (e.g., Eron et al.,
1972), more recent investigations seem to show mostly similar
effects. For example, in their recent study of children growing
up between 1977 and 1995, Huesmann et al. (2003) reported
similar effect sizes for males and females over 15 years old.
However, there were some gender differences in the kinds of
aggression associated with early childhood exposure to media
violence. For example, early exposure to violence predicted increased
use of indirect aggression (e.g., telling lies to get colleagues
in trouble, taking other people’s things out of anger) as
an adult among females but not males; and early exposure to
media violence had a stronger relation to physical aggression
as an adult among males than females. Several possible factors
have been suggested as contributors to these gender differences,
as well as to changes in gender differences over time.
One set concerns media violence itself: the difference in the
frequency with which aggressive males and females are depicted
in the mass media, the different kinds of aggression
those characters use, and the increase in the depiction of aggressive
females over the years. Another possible contributing
factor is the increasing acceptability of female aggression by
society—a change which makes it more likely that aggressive
inclinations will be enacted by females.
Aggressiveness of the viewer
Individuals who are characteristically more aggressive than
their peers are likely to have multiple risk factors predisposing
them toward aggressive behavior. Existing research indicates
that one of these risk factors may be a lower threshold for a media-violence-induced
activation of aggressive behavior. Studies
of violent television, ﬁlm, and video games (e.g., Anderson &
Dill, 2000, Study 1; Bushman, 1995; Bushman & Geen, 1990;
Friedrich & Stein, 1973; Josephson, 1987) have found that
highly aggressive individuals show greater effects (on aggressive
behavior, attitudes, emotions, and beliefs) of exposure to media
violence than their relatively less aggressive counterparts. Children
who are at the greatest risk to grow up to be very aggressive
are those who both were initially aggressive and watched relatively
high amounts of TV violence (Dorr & Kovaric, 1980;
Huesmann, Eron, Lefkowitz, & Walder, 1973). At the same time,
this does not mean that the relatively nonaggressive child is unaffected
by violent portrayals. Several studies have shown significant
effects of media violence on later aggression among
children with low levels of earlier aggression, as well as their
highly aggressive peers (e.g., Eron et al., 1972; Gentile & Anderson,
2003; Huesmann et al., 1973, 2003). Furthermore, studies
sometimes obtain essentially equal-size media-violence effects
for individuals with low and high aggressive tendencies (e.g.,
Anderson & Dill, 2000, Study 2) and sometimes ﬁnd that less
aggressive individuals are more affected by media violence than
more aggressive individuals are (e.g., Anderson, 1997).
Bandura’s (1977) concept of “reciprocal determinism”
helps to make sense of some of these ﬁndings. Different types
of people seek out different types of media content but then are
also affected differently by the content. Thus, children with
strongly aggressive predispositions may be especially attracted
to viewing violent media, perhaps because it helps them justify
their own behavior (Bushman, 1995; Fenigstein, 1979; Gunter,
1983; Huesmann et al., 2003; O’Neal & Taylor, 1989), but, as
noted, they may also be more likely than other children to be
inﬂuenced by such exposure. For example, they may perceive
the violence as more normative and may identify more with the
violent characters. Both of these factors should increase the
likelihood that the media exposure will inﬂuence them. Along
these lines, studies focusing on sexually violent media have
shown that young men who are relatively high in risk for sexual
aggression are more likely to be attracted to and aroused by
sexually violent media (e.g., Malamuth & Check, 1983) and
may be more likely to be inﬂuenced by exposure to such violent
media than those at low risk for sexual aggression (e.g.,
Malamuth & Check, 1985). Finally, it is important to realize
that experiments and longitudinal studies have shown that aggressive
youths’ attraction to violent media cannot explain
away the effect of the violent media on those youths. Rather,
their attraction is an added risk factor that increases the likelihood
they will be affected by the violence they observe.
Intelligence of the viewer
The relevant theories do not make a clear prediction about
the role of the viewers’ intelligence as a moderator of the effect
3. This study assessed television viewing time, not time spent viewing violent
television programs speciﬁcally. Nonetheless, the reversal in the relation
between age and effect size is very difﬁcult to explain, and suggests that the
nuances of the developmental effects on the relation between exposure to media
violence and aggression are incompletely understood.
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of media violence. On the one hand, children of lower intellectual
ability watch more television and see more television violence
(see Comstock & Paik, 1991, pp. 86–95) than children of
higher intelligence, and also are more at risk to behave aggressively
(Huesmann, Eron, & Yarmel, 1987). On the other hand,
children of higher intelligence usually learn more rapidly, through
either conditioning or observational learning, so one might expect
them to be inﬂuenced more. The existing empirical research
provides little support for either argument. Although
statistically controlling for intelligence has frequently lowered
observed media-violence correlations in cross-sectional and
longitudinal studies (see Milavsky et al., 1982), differences in
intelligence do not explain the media-violence effects on aggression,
and there is little evidence that either high or low intelligence
exacerbates the media-violence effects (see Eron et
al., 1972; Huesmann & Eron, 1986; Huesmann et al., 2003).
Perceptions of realism and identiﬁcation with aggressive
TV characters
Observational-learning theory suggests that children who
identify fairly strongly with an aggressive character or perceive a
violent scene as realistic are especially likely to have aggressive
ideas primed by the observed violence, to imitate the character,
or to acquire a variety of aggressive scripts and schemas (beliefs,
attitudes, interpretational biases). Of course, identiﬁcation and
realism depend on the portrayal as well as the viewer. Some evidence
indeed suggests that relatively realistic portrayals are more
likely to increase viewers’ aggression than those presented in a
more ﬁctionalized or fantastic fashion (Atkin, 1983; Berkowitz
& Alioto, 1973; Feshbach, 1972; Geen, 1975; Hapkiewicz &
Stone, 1974). Also, when people are asked to imagine themselves
as the protagonist in a violent ﬁlm, the effects of viewing
the ﬁlm are enhanced, perhaps because of the viewers’ relatively
greater psychological involvement (Leyens & Picus, 1973). In
longitudinal research, Huesmann and his colleagues (1986,
2003) found that children who thought that violent shows they
watched were telling about life “just like it really is” or who
identiﬁed with aggressive TV characters had relatively high average
scores on a measure of physical and verbal aggression 1
year later and scored higher on a composite measure of aggressiveness
(physical, verbal, and indirect or relational) 15 years
later. In both of these longitudinal analyses, those most at risk to
behave aggressively were children who both watched violence
and identiﬁed with the violent characters.
As with other moderator effects, though, it is important to
note that the occasional ﬁnding of increased risk when perceptions
of realism and identiﬁcation are high does not mean that
there are no deleterious effects when levels of realism or identiﬁcation
are low. For instance, numerous studies have found
signiﬁcant effects of media violence on aggression even when
the media violence is clearly ﬁctional and unrealistic (e.g., virtually
all experiments using cartoonish media-violence stimuli
and college-student participants).
Media Content Characteristics
Not all violent portrayals pose the same risk to viewers
(Wilson et al., 1997). A variety of studies—primarily laboratory
investigations involving children and young adults—indicate
that how violence or aggression is presented can alter its
meaning for the audience and may moderate viewers’ behavioral,
cognitive, and emotional reactions. We have already
noted that the effect of media violence is sometimes enhanced
when the violence seems like “real life” and is committed by
characters with whom the viewer can identify. However, some
other characteristics of the content also seem to be important.
Characteristics of the aggressive perpetrator
Given that identiﬁcation with the perpetrator may increase
the effects of his or her behavior on viewers, it is important to
consider what characteristics of a perpetrator might be conducive
to identiﬁcation. There is evidence suggesting that viewers
are particularly likely to identify with and be inﬂuenced by an
aggressive character portrayed as similar to themselves (e.g., in
age, gender, and race; Bandura, 1986, 1994). However, the
overall attractiveness, power, and charisma of the perpetrator
may be more important than any of these personal attributes by
themselves. For example, in the early 1970s, African American
children imitated the behavior of White male actors more than
African American actors (Neely, Hechel, & Leichtman, 1973).
Portrayed justiﬁcation and consequences of the aggression
According to observational-learning theory, when violence
is portrayed as justiﬁed, viewers are likely to come to believe
that their own aggressive responses to a perceived offense are
also appropriate, so they therefore are more apt to behave aggressively.
Supporting this contention, ﬁndings from experiments
that varied the extent to which the observed violence
was justiﬁed demonstrated that seemingly warranted media violence
increased the likelihood that angered participants would
assault people who had provoked them earlier (Berkowitz,
1965; Berkowitz & Geen, 1967; Berkowitz & Powers, 1979;
Geen & Stonner, 1973). Theoretically, rewarding perpetrators
for their aggression should also raise the likelihood that viewers
will model the aggressive act, and indeed, media portrayals
in which violence is rewarded have been shown to increase the
risk that viewers will behave aggressively (Bandura et al.,
1961, 1963a, 1963b, 1963c; Lando & Donnerstein, 1978).
However, violence does not need to be explicitly rewarded to
increase the risk of a harmful effect; seeing unpunished media
violence may also enhance learning of aggressive thoughts and
behaviors (Bandura, 1965; Walters & Parke, 1964).
Another important question concerns the effects of showing
the negative consequences to the victim of portrayed aggression.
Seeing the harm and pain resulting from violence might
serve as a vicarious punishment for the viewer who identiﬁes
with the aggressor, reducing the vicarious value of any rewards
associated with the aggressive act, and thereby reducing the
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VOL. 4, NO. 3, DECEMBER 2003 99
usual media-violence effect on aggressive behavior. However,
little research has been conducted to test this speculation.
Goranson (1970) summarized two unpublished experiments on
this topic. He reported that after being angered and then viewing
a ﬁlmed aggressive boxing match, participants who were
subsequently informed that the losing boxer had died behaved
less aggressively toward their earlier antagonist than those not
informed of the victim’s death. Malamuth and Check (1985)
obtained similar results. Participants in their study listened to
an audiotaped passage of a rape. For some participants, the
passage indicated that the victim was hurt and disgusted,
whereas others heard that the victim became sexually aroused
by the rape and was not hurt. A subsequent measure indicated
that those who heard about negative consequences to the rape
victim were less accepting of common rape myths than those
who heard about positive consequences to the victim.
However, there is some theoretical and empirical support for
the opposite view, that explicit portrayal of blood, gore, or
other painful consequences might increase aggressiveness on
the part of the viewer. Repeated exposure to such negative consequences
can lead the viewer to experience less of a negative
emotional reaction to future scenes of blood and gore and to
pain expressed by victims. Such habituation (or desensitization)
may well enable one to consider harming someone without
experiencing the negative emotional reactions that normally
inhibit aggression. Empirically, viewers who show less negative
emotional reactions to viewing violence are more likely to
behave aggressively than those who show more negative reactions
(Kirwil & Huesmann, 2003; Titus, 1999).
These few studies are not sufﬁcient for ﬁrm conclusions. It
may be that the short-term effects of portraying negative consequences
differ from the long-term effects, and there may well
be other complicating factors involved. In any case, it is clear
that additional research is needed on this question.
Social Environment
Little research to date has examined how cultural, environmental,
and situational variables (e.g., place, presence of coviewers)
moderate the impact of media violence. However, the
theories and the data we have already reviewed suggest that
such social factors might moderate the effect if they alter the
chances that the child will identify with aggressive characters,
alter the child’s perception of the scene’s reality, alter the
chances that the child will watch violence, or alter the chances
that the child will carry out aggressive behaviors learned from
watching the violence. Any of these factors might be inﬂuenced
by culture, neighborhood environment, or family.
Inﬂuence of culture
There have been many studies on media violence carried out
in countries other than the United States, but few studies have
examined the effect of media violence in non-Western cultures.
Within Western countries, the empirical results have mostly
been similar, but with important exceptions. For example,
Huesmann and Eron (1986) reported there was no relation between
viewing of TV violence and aggression among Israeli
children raised on a kibbutz, but found a moderate to strong relation
among Israeli children raised in a suburb. It may be that
cultural environments with strong sanctions against violence
within the group mitigate the expression of any aggressive behaviors
learned from media violence. This could also explain
why effects for U.S. females appear to be much stronger
among those who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s than among
those who grew up in the 1950s and early 1960s. However, the
lack of research in non-Western cultures and other anomalies
in the research in Western countries suggest that the full effects
of culture and society are not yet well understood. For example,
in the preliminary results from a 15-year follow-up among
Polish females who experienced the social upheavals of the end
of Communism as teenagers, Huesmann and Moise-Titus
(1999) reported that those girls who were more aggressive as
children and watched more violence became less aggressive
and more successful young adults than the girls who had been
less aggressive and watched less violence.
Inﬂuence of neighborhood and SES
Low-SES children on average watch more television and
television violence than high-SES children (Comstock & Paik,
1991). The SES link to television-viewing habits does not account
for the overall association between viewing media violence
and aggression among youth, however (Huesmann et al.,
2003). Nor is there much evidence that low SES increases or
decreases the effect of media violence on behavior. That is, the
effect of media violence on aggression appears essentially the
same on low- and high-SES children. However, the generally
high dose of media violence given to low-SES children is yet
another risk factor for adulthood violence in this population.
Inﬂuence of parents
From a theoretical standpoint, parents have the potential to
be important moderators of the effects of media violence on
children. Children and adolescents form attitudes and beliefs
and take action as a result of their exposure to media content,
but they also may discuss what they see with others—especially
parents and friends—and their responses may ultimately
be shaped by these interpersonal interactions. Singer and
Singer (1986a, 1986b) proposed that when parents take an active
mediating approach toward television viewing by their
children—including commenting regularly and critically about
realism, justiﬁcation, and other factors that could inﬂuence
learning—children are less likely to be inﬂuenced badly by
media content. Singer and Singer reported some data in support
of this view, and some recent research has provided additional
support. For example, Nathanson (1999) found that
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100 VOL. 4, NO. 3, DECEMBER 2003
children whose parents discuss the inappropriateness of television
violence with them or restrict access to violent television
shows report lower aggressive tendencies than children whose
parents do not discuss television violence or restrict access to
violent television shows. Other ﬁndings suggested that either
type of parental intervention may decrease the importance children
give to violent TV, which in turn may lower children’s aggressive
attitudes.
The few studies that have examined parents’ characteristics
as possible moderators have found little evidence that factors
such as parents’ aggressiveness, coldness, personality, or viewing
habits increase or decrease the effects of exposure to violence
(Huesmann et al., 2003). How parents control their
children’s viewing and what parents do when their children
view violence appear to be more important in mitigating the effects
of observing violence than who the parents are.
Summary and a Caveat
The studies discussed in this section on moderators suggest
potentially productive avenues for studies on preventive intervention.
One approach would be based on parental interventions
with the child during and after exposure to violence, as
well as parental restrictions on access to violent media. Another
would be based on altering violent presentations to reduce
the characteristics that increase observational learning,
desensitization, automatization, and priming effects. However,
such intervention studies will require a much more systematic
research base to more clearly identify the most important moderating
factors. Furthermore, although there is evidence of a
number of moderating factors (e.g., realism), there is no evidence
that any group is completely protected from the effects
of media violence or that any moderator provides complete
protection from these effects. For example, even though more
realistically presented media violence sometimes produces
larger effects than less realistic portrayals, and youth who perceive
violent media as more “real” are sometimes more affected
than peers who perceive it as less real, studies using
portrayals that are clearly not real (e.g., cartoon characters) and
participants who know that the stimuli are ﬁctitious (e.g., college
students) still yield signiﬁcant media-violence effects.
RESEARCH ON MEDIA USE AND CONTENT
In the preceding sections, we have addressed how exposure
to violent media may affect children, youth, and young adults.
The ﬁndings raise questions about the content of media violence
and its accessibility to and consumption by youth. This
section provides an overview of current knowledge about family
access to and children’s use of media in general, violent
content in the media, and factors that affect children’s preferences
for (and potential for exposure to) violence in media. We
focus on media in the United States, but similar issues have
been raised in many other countries as well.
Children’s Access to Media in the Home
Three recent nationally representative surveys—two from
the Kaiser Family Foundation (hereafter referred to as Kaiser;
Rideout, Vandewater, & Wartella, 2003; Roberts, Foehr, Rideout,
& Vrodie, 1999)4
and one from the Annenberg Public Policy
Center5
(hereafter referred to as APPC; Woodard, 2000)—
illustrate just how prevalent media are in the home. All three
studies reported that virtually all families with children have at
least one television set, most have at least one VCR or DVD
player, and the majority (between 74 and 78%) now subscribe
to cable or satellite TV. In addition, these studies concurred
that 7 in 10 families with children have a video-game system, a
similar percentage of families own a computer, the majority of
American children have a bedroom TV (including 30% of children
ages 0 to 3), and the likelihood of having a bedroom TV
increases as children get older; less common but also palpably
present in 2- to 17-year-old children’s rooms are video-game
players (between 33 and 39%), VCRs (30%), and Internet
hookups (between 6 and 11%). In recent years, the percentage
of families with on-line connections has risen, from 15% in
1996 to 52% in 2000. Family income is positively related to all
media ownership except video games. And of course, the rapid
growth of video gaming means that even these fairly recent ﬁgures
underestimate the current level of access and use.
Children spend more time consuming entertainment media
than engaging in any other activity besides school and sleeping
(Roberts et al., 1999; Stanger & Gridina, 1999). They average
approximately 4 hr per day in front of a television or computer
screen (Roberts et al., 1999; Woodard, 2000), but the number
of hours is even higher for many children. For example, 25% of
sixth graders watch more than 40 hr of television per week
(Lyle & Hoffman, 1972)—more time than they spend in
school. At 10 a.m. on any Saturday morning, about 60% of the
6- to 11-year-olds in America are watching television (Comstock
& Paik, 1991). Indeed, children ages 0 to 6 spend more
time on entertainment media than on reading, being read to,
and playing outside combined (Rideout et al., 2003).
The 1999 Kaiser survey (Roberts et al., 1999) and Comstock
and Paik (1991) both reported that TV viewing peaks at
ages 8 through 13, although the APPC survey found no signiﬁcant
age differences in TV viewing. For all other media, all surveys
show that children’s time spent with media does vary
4. Data for the 1999 study are from a nationally representative sample of
1,090 children aged 2 through 7, for whom data were collected through faceto-face
interviews with parents and caregivers, and a nationally representative
sample of 2,065 students in grades 3 through 12 (8–18 years old), who ﬁlled
out in-class pencil-and-paper questionnaires with the assistance of trained researchers.
Data for the 2003 study are from a nationally representative, randomdigit-dial
telephone survey of 1,065 parents of children ages 6 months to
6 years old, conducted from April 11 to June 9, 2003.
5. Data for this study are from telephone interviews conducted in April and
May 2000 with 1,235 parents of children between the ages of 2 and 17 and 416
children between the ages of 8 and 16. The samples were drawn through random
digit dialing.
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VOL. 4, NO. 3, DECEMBER 2003 101
signiﬁcantly by age. For example, younger children spend more
time watching television (including videos and DVDs) than do
older children, whereas teenagers spend more time on computer-related
media and the telephone than do young children.
As one might expect, children from households with lower
incomes, on the average, spend signiﬁcantly more time watching
TV and videotapes and playing video games than children
from families with higher incomes (Comstock & Paik, 1991;
Roberts et al., 1999). In addition, children with lower IQs
spend more time watching TV than children with higher IQs do
(Comstock & Paik, 1991). However, the variation within any
social class or IQ level is large; at all levels, some children
watch large amounts of TV and some children watch none.
The Violent Content of Media
Several content analyses over the past three decades have
systematically examined the amount of violence on television
(Gerbner, 1972; Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, & Signorielli, 1980;
Larsen, 1968; Potter et al., 1995; Signorielli, 1990). The largest
and most recent of these was the National Television Violence
Survey6
(NTVS; Wilson et al., 1997, 1998), which examined
the amount and content of violence7
on American television for
3 consecutive years.
The programs for NTVS were randomly sampled from 23
broadcast and cable channels over a 20-week period ranging
from October to June during the 1994 through 1997 viewing
seasons. The NTVS report revealed that 61% of programs on
television contain some violence. Only 4% of all violent programs
on television feature an antiviolence theme—or put in
another way, 96% of all violent television programs use
aggression as a narrative, cinematic device for simply entertaining
the audience. These prevalence ﬁndings were quite consistent
across 2 randomly sampled composite weeks of television
from 3 different years. Moreover, most aggression on television
is glamorized and trivialized: 44% of the violent interactions
involve perpetrators who have some attractive qualities
worthy of emulation; nearly 40% of the violent scenes involve
humor either directed at the violence or used by characters involved
with the violence; and nearly 75% of all violent scenes
feature no immediate punishment or condemnation for violence.
Almost 45% of all programs feature “bad” characters
who are never or rarely punished for their aggressive actions.
Much of the violence is also sanitized: 51% of violent behavioral
interactions on television feature no pain, 47% feature no
harm, and 34% depict harm unrealistically. The greatest prevalence
of unrealistic harm appears in children’s programming,
presumably in cartoons. Of all violent scenes on television,
86% feature no blood or gore, and only 16% of violent programs
depict the long-term, realistic consequences of violence.
NTVS is not without limitations, however; violence in news
was not assessed. Much of news programming is ﬁlled with
stories about crime and violence (R.N. Johnson, 1996; Lichter
& Amundson, 1994; Slattery & Hakanen, 1994). Approximately
15% of the programs on the broadcast networks and
10% of the programs on the independent stations are news programs,
not to mention the all-day news programming on two
CNN channels on basic cable. Given that news stories often
feature violence or its harmful aftermath, the prevalence of violence
on American television may be considerably higher than
the NTVS ﬁndings reveal.
There are no comparable comprehensive studies of violent
content in contemporary American movies or in video games.
However, several independent research groups have conducted
smaller-scale analyses of video-game content, using various
methods, and the results converge on the same conclusion—
that violence is widely present. A 1999 National Institute on
Media and the Family report (Walsh, 1999) noted that a panel
of parents rating 78 popular video games found that 25% of the
games showed “many, intense instances” of violence, and another
30% showed at least “some instances” of violence. Another
recent analysis found that about 89% of video games
contain some violent content (Children Now, 2001). Studies of
fourth- through eighth-grade children found that more than half
stated preferences for games in which the main action is predominantly
violent (Buchman & Funk, 1996; Funk, 1993). In
surveys of children and their parents, about two thirds of children
named violent games as their favorites; only about one
third of parents were able to correctly name their child’s favorite
game, and 70% of the time that parents were incorrect, children
described their favorite game as violent (Funk, Flores,
Buchman, & Germann, 1999). Similar results have been reported
in Japan. Shibuya and Sakamoto (2003) reported that
85% of the most popular video games of Japanese ﬁfth graders
contained violent content.
Factors Affecting Children’s Exposure to
Violent Content
By the time a typical child ﬁnishes elementary school, he or
she will have seen approximately 8,000 murders and more than
100,000 other acts of violence on TV (Huston et al., 1992). The
rate of violence per minute is much higher in video games than
in most violent TV programs or movies, but data on the number
of violent acts witnessed (or committed) in video games are
not available.
Conventional wisdom holds that children enjoy violence in
the media, and Nielsen data do show that the most frequently
6. This study randomly sampled programs from 6:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m.
7. Violence was deﬁned as overt depiction of a credible threat of physical
force, or the actual use of such force intended to physically harm an animate
being or group of beings. The study authors also noted that “violence also includes
certain depictions of physically harmful consequences against an animate
being or group that occur as a result of unseen violent means. Thus, there
are three primary types of violent depictions: credible threats, behavioral acts,
and harmful consequences” (Smith & Donnerstein, 1998, p. 170). Content
analyses of television programs generally treat the program itself as the unit of
analysis and exclude advertisements.
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102 VOL. 4, NO. 3, DECEMBER 2003
watched children’s programs are ﬁlled with conﬂict (Jordan,
1996). However, Cantor (1998) pointed out that this trend may
be the result of what is made available during times when children
are likely to be in the audience (e.g., Saturday morning);
children’s favorite programs are prime-time sitcoms depicting
family interactions.
There is little systematic research (outside of the industry)
that examines children’s tastes for different genres. That boys
are more likely than girls to be attracted to and enjoy violent
media is fairly well established in studies on television (Cantor
& Nathanson, 1997; Comstock, 1995; Huston & Wright, 1997;
Valkenburg & Janssen, 1999) and appears to be the case with
computer-video games (Barnett et al., 1997; Gentile & Anderson,
2003; Grifﬁths, 1997). However, males may be more
strongly attracted to violent entertainment media than are females
because media tend to cater to male audiences and use
males as lead characters (e.g., X-Men, Batman, Spiderman, Su-
perman).
Males and females also differ in their perceptions of and
preferences for different types of violence. For example, Funk
and Buchman (1996) found no gender difference in overall
preference for violent video games, but girls preferred fantasy
violence, whereas boys preferred human violence. Cantor
(1998) reported that males were more attracted to “justice restoring”
violent programming (such as that found in Batman)
than females, but males and females were equally attracted to
“comedic violence.”
A few studies have examined the impact of the family’s SES
on children’s attraction to violence; interpretation of the ﬁndings
of these studies is complicated by the fact that lower-SES
children tend to consume more media overall. Van der Voort
(1986) found that children from lower-SES homes engaged in
higher levels of viewing than children from more afﬂuent families,
but also showed more enjoyment and approval of the violence
and identiﬁed more strongly with the characters. Comstock
(1995; Comstock & Paik, 1991) and Huston and Wright (1997)
found a relationship between lower income levels and a greater
preference for violence, particularly among boys. Evidence on
ethnic differences in children’s preferences remains unconvincing,
because many studies have failed to appropriately control
for SES. For both boys and girls, a lower self-evaluation of behavior
(e.g., lower ratings of their own ability to get along well
with others) is linked to a higher preference for violent games
(Funk, Buchman, & Germann, 2000). Finally, perhaps because
lower-IQ children watch more television on the average than
higher-IQ children do, they also watch more violent television
on the average (Eron et al., 1972; Huesmann et al., 2003).
RESEARCH ON INTERVENTIONS
Recent efforts to reduce the harmful effects of media violence
on youth have taken various forms, including (a) attempting
to reduce the amount of media violence and its accessibility
to children (e.g., calls for media self-regulation and violence
ratings), (b) encouraging and facilitating parental monitoring
of children’s media access (e.g., V-chip legislation), (c) educating
parents and children about the potential dangers of media
violence (e.g., media and empathy educational programs), and
(d) changing children’s thinking to reduce the chance that they
will imitate the violence they see. Only a few of these approaches
have received scientiﬁc study. The lack of formal research
on interventions related to media violence is somewhat
surprising, considering that the knowledge base from which
experimental interventions could be developed is large. Historically,
much more attention has been paid to establishing the
existence of a relationship between media violence and behavior,
determining its theoretical basis, and discovering what
moderates the effect than has been paid to determining how to
prevent it.
Changing Attitudes
Interventions speciﬁcally designed to counter violent messages
presented in the media are rare (Eron, 1986; Singer &
Singer, 1986a, 1986b; Singer, Singer, & Rapaczynski, 1984);
however, two have shown some success. Huesmann, Eron,
Klein, Brice, and Fischer (1983) studied the effectiveness of
two intervention programs designed to reduce the likelihood
that 7- to 8-year-old children would imitate aggressive behaviors
they saw on TV. In the ﬁrst study, training sessions about
television and realism failed to change attitudes or aggressive
behavior. However, the same children participated in an additional—and
successful—intervention the following year. In the
second study, the children produced a videotape (ostensibly for
children who had been “fooled by television or harmed by television
violence”) of themselves presenting persuasive essays
explaining why it is bad to imitate TV violence and how television
is not like real life (Huesmann et al., 1983, p. 905). Four
months after the intervention, the children’s aggressive behavior
(as reported by peers) had increased, as would be expected
for this age, but it increased signiﬁcantly less than the aggressive
behavior of a randomly assigned comparison group of
children who received a placebo intervention. Children who received
the preventive intervention were also more inclined to
view television violence as harmful and “not reﬂecting true
life.” The effectiveness of this intervention ﬁts well with basic
research on the effect of creating or reading causal explanations
on beliefs, attitudes, and behavior (e.g., Anderson, Lepper,
& Ross, 1980; Anderson & Sechler, 1986; Slusher &
Anderson, 1996). That research showed that creating or considering
causal explanations relevant to an issue leads to corresponding
changes in beliefs, judgments, and behaviors.
Similar results for media-violence interventions have been
found with judgments involving sexual aggression. Linz, Fuson,
and Donnerstein (1990) showed college men an educational
documentary on the psychological impact of “slasher”
ﬁlms and two rape-prevention education ﬁlms. The men were
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VOL. 4, NO. 3, DECEMBER 2003 103
assigned to write essays about myths of sexual violence or essays
critically evaluating television for its inaccurate portrayal
of real life. After being videotaped reading these essays, they
watched a playback of themselves and other participants advocating
their antirape arguments or their media critiques. Men
who had participated in either of these educational interventions
were less likely to assign responsibility to a rape victim in
a videotaped mock trial than were men in the control groups,
who saw a neutral video or no video at all.
Encouraging Parental Monitoring and Guidance
As noted in the Research on Moderator Effects section, recent
research has found that the harmful effects of exposure to
media violence can be reduced if parents guide their children’s
media exposure and discuss their interpretation of media violence
with their children. For example, one study found that
when parents speak negatively about violent TV or restrict
viewing of violent television content, children place less importance
on violent programming and have less aggressive attitudes.
However, if parents watch TV with their children and
say nothing about the violent content, children report higher
than normal aggressive attitudes (Nathanson, 1999). Other
studies have shown that when children watch a violent program
with someone else present, they are less likely to express aggressive
attitudes (Corder-Bolz, 1980) or to behave aggressively
(Hicks, 1968) immediately after viewing the program if
the other person makes negative comments about the violence
than if that person is silent. They also are quicker to notify an
adult that other children are ﬁghting (Horton & Santogrossi,
1978) if they heard negative commentary while watching the
violent program.
Providing Media Education
The preceding examples suggest that educating parents and
teachers about speciﬁc techniques to reduce the effects of media
violence might be a viable general intervention strategy.
However, from an empirical and theoretical standpoint, there is
little reason to believe that improving consumers’ ability to
critically analyze, interpret, and evaluate media messages (i.e.,
improving media literacy; Corder-Bolz, 1982) would have much
of an impact. To minimize observational learning, priming, automatization,
and desensitization, an intervention must either reduce
the child’s exposure to violence or reduce the likelihood
that the child will identify with the aggressive characters, perceive
their actions as realistic and justiﬁed, and perceive aggression
as acceptable. General media literacy programs do not
speciﬁcally attempt to accomplish either of these two types of reductions;
thus, it is not surprising that there is no valid research
demonstrating effectiveness of general media-literacy education.
On a more positive note, one recent study tested an intervention
that combined education about the effects of violence with
a counterattitudinal intervention and parental monitoring (Robinson,
Wilde, Navracruz, Haydel, & Varady, 2001). Two elementary
schools similar on many key factors were selected for
the study; one was randomly chosen to participate in the intervention,
and the other served as a control. The intervention
consisted of 18 classroom lessons over a 6-month period. The
lessons, which lasted 30 to 50 min each, included elements of
media education and attitude interventions. After the lessons
were completed, the children were encouraged to not watch TV
or movies or play video games for a “TV Turnoff” period of 10
days. Finally, the children were encouraged to create and follow
a video-entertainment budget of 7 hr per week. Newsletters
were used to enlist parents’ support in helping the children
achieve these goals. Note that the TV Turnoff targeted media
use in general, but did not address issues of aggressive behav-
ior.
The aggressive behavior of both the control children and the
children who received the intervention was assessed in several
ways. First, peers were asked to report on the participants’ aggressive
behavior before the intervention (September) and
again 7 months later (April). In addition, 60% of the children
were observed for physical and verbal aggression on the playground.
Finally, parents were interviewed about their child’s
aggressive and delinquent behavior. All four of the aggression
measures showed that levels of aggression in April (adjusted
for scores before the intervention) were lower for the intervention
participants than for the control participants. Both peer ratings
(p Ͻ .03) and observed verbal aggression (p Ͻ .01)
showed signiﬁcant effects of the intervention, whereas observed
physical aggression and parent-reported aggression did
not yield statistically signiﬁcant effects. The authors also reported
that the effect of the intervention did not differ signiﬁcantly
for boys versus girls or for children of different ages.
DISCUSSION
Major Research Findings
We began our review by listing ﬁve questions that were our
focus:
What does research say about the relation—both short-term
and long-term—between media violence and violent behav-
ior?
How does media violence produce its effects on violent be-
havior?
What characteristics of media violence are most inﬂuential,
and who is most susceptible to such inﬂuences?
How widespread and accessible is violence in the media
(TV, music videos, video games, Internet)?
How can individuals and society counteract the inﬂuence of
media violence?
We summarize the broad answers to these questions in this sec-
tion.
•
•
•
•
•
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Media Violence
104 VOL. 4, NO. 3, DECEMBER 2003
Media violence, aggression, and violent behavior
In brief, ﬁve general observations follow from this review of
relevant research. First, media violence has a modest direct effect
(r ϭ .13 to .32) on serious forms of violent behavior. Second,
a more extensive body of research documents a larger
impact of media violence on aggression (including violence;
r ϭ .18 to .38). Third, the research base for these ﬁrst two conclusions
is large; diverse in methods, samples, and media
genres; and consistent in overall ﬁndings. Fourth, for many individuals,
the negative effects of habitual childhood exposure
to media violence extend well into adulthood even if media violence
is no longer being consumed. Fifth, even individuals
who typically are not highly aggressive are negatively affected
by exposure to violent media both in short-term situations and
over long periods of time.
More speciﬁcally, research provides strong evidence that in
the short term, exposure to media violence causes increases in
children’s, adolescents’, and young adults’ physically and verbally
aggressive behavior, as well as in aggression-related variables
(such as aggressive thoughts and emotions) that are
theoretically linked to aggressive and violent behavior. This
body of research has grown considerably over the decades
since the 1972 Surgeon General’s report. The relatively few
large-scale longitudinal studies reported in recent years provide
converging evidence linking repeated exposure to violent media
in childhood with aggression later in life, and in particular
with increased likelihood of serious physically aggressive behavior
including physical assaults, spouse abuse, and other
types of crimes. Because extremely violent criminal behaviors
(e.g., forcible rape, aggravated assault, homicide) are relatively
rare, additional longitudinal studies with very large samples are
needed to estimate accurately how habitual childhood exposure
to media violence compares in magnitude with other risk factors
for the most serious criminally violent behavior.
Theory
There is a growing body of well-supported theory explaining
why and when exposure to media violence causes increases
in aggression and violence. Although the scope of this overview
did not include positive media inﬂuences, the same principles
used to explain and understand how media violence
increases aggression could also help to clarify how media examples
of prosocial behavior might cause increases in prosocial
behavior. Media violence produces short-term increases in
aggression by activating (priming) aggressive thoughts, increasing
physiological arousal, and triggering an automatic
tendency to imitate observed behaviors (especially among children).
Media violence produces long-term increases in aggression
and violence by creating long-lasting (and automatically
accessible) aggressive scripts and interpretational schemas, and
aggression-supporting beliefs and attitudes about appropriate
social behavior. Additionally, repeated exposure to violence desensitizes
individuals’ normal negative emotional responses to
violence, thereby making it easier to think about engaging in
violence and decreasing sympathetic and helping reactions to
victims of violence.
Moderators
Although more research is needed to specify the conditions
that exacerbate or mitigate the negative effects of exposure to
violent media, knowledge about some of the critical links in the
causal chain between viewing violence and behaving aggressively
or violently is growing. Moderators in this chain include
certain characteristics of viewers (e.g., age, aggressiveness,
perceptions of media realism, identiﬁcation with aggressive
characters) and their social environment (e.g., parental and
family inﬂuences), as well as aspects of media content (e.g.,
perpetrator characteristics, degree of realism, justiﬁcation of
violence, depiction of the consequences of violence). The relative
inﬂuence of these factors is not yet clear, but their importance
is clear. Research on moderators not only enhances
understanding of media violence and aggression, but also provides
clues to potential avenues for preventive intervention. For
example, the research points to the vital role of parents in supervising
and inﬂuencing what their children see and do, and in
helping them to interpret media violence in a healthy (or less
harmful) way.
Finally, the existing empirical research on moderators suggests
that no one is exempt from the deleterious effects of media
violence; neither gender, nor nonaggressive personality, nor
superior upbringing, nor higher social class, nor greater intelligence
provides complete protection. Many youths who consume
media violence will not be obviously inﬂuenced by it
(e.g., will not rush out to commit violent crimes), but the psychological
processes that can produce the effect operate in everyone,
thereby putting all at some risk.
Media use and content
Recent surveys depict the abundant presence of electronic
media in American homes, as well as the extensive presence of
violence within the media landscape. They also document the
expansion of opportunities for children’s exposure to media violence
at home through the proliferation of new media, including
video games, music videos, and the Internet. Current
psychological theory suggests that the interactive nature of
many of these new media may lead to more powerful effects on
children’s behavior than are found with more passive media
such as TV. However, research to test this hypothesis is not yet
well developed. Although it is apparent from existing data that
most youths are exposed to many hours of violent media each
week, the patterns of usage for the newest media (e.g., video
games, Internet) are likely changing so rapidly that estimates of
violence exposure may be out of date by the time they are published.
New and more extensive data on exposure are needed.
PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST
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VOL. 4, NO. 3, DECEMBER 2003 105
Interventions
Many efforts (e.g., media education, promotion of V-chips)
to lessen the effects of media violence are under way, but almost
none have been systematically studied. From a scientiﬁc
public-health perspective, this preventive domain is largely uncharted
territory. As noted in the Report on Youth Violence
(U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2001), a
powerful body of scientiﬁcally based knowledge about effective
ways to prevent violence in youth is emerging. Although
many of the preventive programs that have been implemented
address a complex array of factors in the life of young people,
few have addressed the role of media. The gap between these
areas of research needs to be ﬁlled. What is clear is that reducing
exposure to media violence will reduce aggression and violence
in both the short term and the long term. What is less
clear is what sorts of interventions will lead to a reduction in
exposure, though current evidence suggests that counterattitudinal
interventions and parental interventions are likely to reduce
exposure, and general media-literacy interventions by
themselves are unlikely to do so.
Implications
Unlike earlier federal research reports on media violence
and youth (NIMH, 1982; U.S. Surgeon General’s Scientiﬁc
Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior,
1972), this overview was initiated within a broader examination
of the causes and prevention of youth violence. This context
is vital, and we urge readers to take a close look at that
report (despite our misgivings about its treatment of media violence).
It permits media violence to be seen as one part of the
complex inﬂuences on the behavior of children and youth. And
it suggests that multilayered solutions—including but not limited
to solutions that address exposure to media violence—are
needed to address the problem of aggressive and violent behavior
in modern society. Media-violence exposure is only one
risk factor underlying aggression and violence. It may be the
least expensive risk factor to modify—it costs little to choose
nonviolent forms of entertainment for oneself or one’s children.
However, the troubling truth is that violent media are entering
the home and inviting active participation of even very
young children—often with little parental supervision.
The cup of research knowledge about violence in the media
is relatively full but not overﬂowing. It certainly supports sustained
concern about media violence and sustained efforts to
curb its adverse effects. It suggests that simply reducing children’s
exposure to violent media would be a positive step that
would yield positive beneﬁts. How best to approach the goal of
reducing exposure to violent media is a question that will require
additional research into intervention programs, as well as
public policy debates.
Although at present, violence rates in the age group most
prone to such behavior (i.e., early teens to mid 20s) appear to
be leveling off somewhat, this recent trend should not be misinterpreted
as a sign that concern with media violence is misplaced.
As we have noted throughout this report, violence is a
complex interpersonal phenomenon that occurs when a host of
contributing factors converge at the right (or wrong) time and
place. The large number of contributing factors points to the
complexities of understanding social and psychological causation
in a context of human development. The extant research
literature clearly reveals that exposure to violent media plays
an important causal role in violence in modern society.
Similarly, the fact that estimates of the size of the effect of
media violence are typically in the small to moderate range
should not mislead people into thinking that the overall impact
of media violence on aggressive and violent behavior is small
to moderate. Because of the large numbers of youth exposed to
many hours of media violence, even a small effect can have extremely
large consequences (Abelson, 1985; Rosenthal, 1986).
Although a correlation of .20 between viewing media violence
and aggressive behavior indicates that media violence may statistically
account for only 4% of the variation in aggressive behavior,
few other factors account for much more. A correlation
of .20 can be said to represent a change in the odds of aggressive
behavior from 50/50 to 60/40, which is not a trivial change
(Rosenthal, 1986). Furthermore, the size of the media-violence
effect is equal to or larger than the size of many medical effects
that our society deems large, such as the effect of condom use
on sexually transmitted HIV, the effect of passive smoking on
lung cancer at work, and the effect of calcium intake on bone
mass (see Bushman & Huesmann, 2001).
Despite limitations in current research knowledge, it is possible
to develop a coherent public-health approach to violence
prevention that builds upon what is known, even as attempts to
learn more are under way. Clearly, even without all the pieces
of the research puzzle in place, a troubling picture is emerging:
A variety of violent media are entering the home and inviting
the active participation of young children—often with little parental
supervision. Although additional research to address unresolved
questions is needed, it is clear that media violence is a
causal risk factor that should be addressed in thoughtful ways.
Regardless of the attempts made to limit the amount of violence
reaching American families, those families themselves
are clearly critical in guiding what reaches their children.
Whether by adopting V-chip technology for home TV programming,
subscribing to voluntary violence screening by Internet
providers, or simply monitoring closely children’s use of
TVs, computers, and video games, parents can reduce and
shape their children’s consumption of violent media. Communities—including
schools, religious organizations, and parentteacher
organizations—can teach parents and children how to
be better, healthier consumers of the media. Federal agencies
can be more proactive in encouraging needed research, in sharing
with the public the relevant ﬁndings of current research, in
encouraging violence-prevention researchers to interact more
with media researchers, and in creating networks for sharing
solutions to social and public-health problems. Furthermore, as
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Media Violence
106 VOL. 4, NO. 3, DECEMBER 2003
the media-violence landscape continues to change, parents will
need better tools (e.g., more thorough and more simple computer
and Internet screening tools) to aid them in the increasingly
difﬁcult task of monitoring and modifying their children’s
media habits.
Media use is often described in nutritional terms: People
talk about “media consumption” and “a steady diet of violence.”
Implicitly, perhaps, they recognize that nourishing children’s
minds through the media is like nourishing their bodies.
In both cases, from a public-health perspective, today’s consumption
patterns are far from optimal. And for many youths,
they are clearly harmful. The challenge is to discover how to
provide more nourishing fare.
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