Violence in the Media Promotes

Violence in the media promotes aggressive behavior.

How would you go about testing this hypothesis?

Testing the hypothesis that media violence promotes aggressive behavior would ideally take place in a closed clinical environment to isolate any other causal variables and to control what content participants viewed. I would need to define and quantify what constitutes violence in the media, and I would likewise need to define and quantify what characterizes aggressive behavior. The population sample would need to be controlled for age and possibly gender as well as by other factors such as hours spent watching television or prior displays of aggression.

How would you determine that individuals acted in an aggressive manner after exposure to media violence? In other words, what is your operational definition of aggressive behavior? What is your operational definition of media violence?

An operational definition of aggressive behavior should ideally include aggressive threats and verbal aggression as well as physical aggression. Physical aggression can be measured by any hitting or assault that took place in a non-sports or non-comedic context. Verbal aggression, bullying, and threats can be measured by having clinical psychologists observe behaviors and classify them according to their perception of what constitutes aggression. An operational definition of media violence might include tabulations of events such as assault, throwing objects, arson or property violence, and nonconsensual sex. A long list of possibly violent images can be tabulated, as well as their frequency and duration on the screen.

What other things would you need to consider in order to make sure that exposure to media violence was the cause of aggressive behavior and not some other factor? In other words, what variables would have to be controlled?