Does violence on televison lead to violence in real life? Essay

The debate on tv system encumbrance has been on going for many years instantly and has professional personduced a wide and varied set of views and research results. Many well established psychologists have attempted, with various types of experiments and observations, to either support or negate a link between fierceness on tv set and the violent episodes in real life.These sets of data have thrown up some fire views and personal conclusions regarding the subject of television violence, and we will show the varying views and conclusions that some of these psychologists have reached and by use a respected and well known system we will try to show the views of a sensitive section of our community. Previous research into the link between violence and television Over the years numerous psychologists have claimd thousands of experiments and or research to support or negate the link between violence and television.In 1987 a psychologist named Cumberbatch produced data on the ac tual amounts of violence found to be in British television create mentallys. He concluded that 30% of the programmes contained some form of violence, with an overall frequency of 1. 14 violent acts per programme and 1. 68 violent acts per hour. Each act of violence lasted an average 25 seconds leading to violence occupying dependable over 1% of total television airtime. His research showed that in 26% of violent acts death occurred, exclusively in 61% no injuries were shown and the victim was portrayed as being in pain or stunned.In 83% of cases, no blood was shown as a result of a violent act, and respectable blood and gore occurred in only 0. 2% of cases. Cumberbatch also revealed that close perpetrators of violent acts were more presumable to be portrayed as baddies rather than goodies, and violence occurred twice as frequently in fairness breaking than in law-upholding contexts. His research, although neither for or against violence on television, gives us an idea of the amount of violence on television we are exposed to.Howitt and Cumberbatch in 1974 analysed 300 studies of television violence and its plow effect on childrens behaviour, they played down the link between television violence and the childrens behaviour. A further study into the relationships between the media and violence carried out by Eron 1987and Phillips 1986 found a several(predicate) conclusion. They concluded that a positive correlation between the amount of aggression viewed at 8 and subsequent aggression at 30 could be seen. George Gerbner (1989) researched television and its influences on human behaviour and said idiot box influences human behaviour because there are routes or mechanisms whereby the content of television potful have an effect on what we do, and how we act. Thus, part of televisions influence comes about because of how we learn (by observation and imitation), because of how we respond to certain kinds of story framework (arousal/desensitisation), and b ecause of the structure of our inhibitions and the way television provides the kind of stimulation necessary to release them (disinhibition).I called these behavioural mechanisms, because for the most part the influence was shown on some activity (p128 The Psychology of Television) Aletha Huston (university of Kansas 1989) studied the effects of television violence on childrens behaviour and stated Children who watch violent television programmes, even just quaint cartoons, were more likely to hit out at their playmates, argue, disobey class rules, leave tasks unfinished, and were less involuntary to wait for things than those who watched the non violent programmes. (p 142 The Psychology of Television)We can see from the varying studies, different results and opinions of these psychologists just how hard it can be to support or negate a link between violence on television and in real life. How the questionnaires were prepared in class In a classroom environment we produced a ques tionnaire on peoples opinions relating to the link between television violence and real life. The class split into small groups of ternion or four and discussed possible questions to add to the questionnaire, trying to have a balance of pro television and anti television questions.The individual group questions were discussed and eight questions picked to make up the actual questionnaire, these questions consisted of four pro television and four anti television, the questions were set out so an anti television was followed by a pro television question. The obvious reason for the split into pro and anti television is to try and produce a questionnaire that will give the people taking part a non-biased set of alternate answers.