tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch) (08/27/85)
In article <7@decwrl.UUCP> version B 2.10.3 alpha 4/15/85; site ubvax.UUCP version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site decwrl.UUCP ubvax!cae780!amdcad!decwrl!dyer@vaxuum.DEC (This did not happen to/Pablo Picasso) dyer@vaxuum.DEC (This did not happen to/Pablo Picasso) writes: >> It's important to remember that it has never been shown that vicarious viol- >> ence (movies, books, etc.) causes violent behavior[.] > > 100% Wrong. Psychologists deal with a lot of uncertainties, but there >is one thing that has been demonstrated again and again: observing aggressive >behavior results in increased aggressive behavior. ... > As for the issue at hand, aggressive behavior resulting from observation >of same, I find the most people I've met think that psychological research is >fuzzy in this area. It is not. No, it isn't. But this kind of research doesn't ask questions of WHERE, i.e. "observing aggressive behavior WHERE results in increased aggressive behavior WHERE", because WHERE tends to be a laboratory (or classroom, at best). The fuzziness is not in the experiment; it's in the extension of experimental results to social situations in the everyday world of a given culture. I'm still waiting for a psychologist with the moxie to explain why, given these kind of experimental conclusions, average Japanese men who like sadomasochistic women-hating comic books are so much less violent then the average American man. See Ian Buruma, *Behind the Mask*, for more on this side of Japan. Japan is an extreme case, but it shows that there are societies where even the worst fantasies almost never spill over into real violence. Tony Wuersch {amd,amdcad}!cae780!ubvax!tonyw
dyer@tau.DEC (09/05/85)
Re: Violence and Studies of Violence____________________________________________ > The fuzziness is not in the experiment; it's in the extension of experimental > results to social situations in the everyday world of a given culture. Yes, I said that. The laboratory controls a number of variables, and the effects of culture are minimized as much as possible. My point is that if you take a group of small children (the least constrained by socialization) and have them observe overt aggressive behavior, that group's net overt aggressive behavior will increase. This experiment has never yielded different results. The reason is that the children are learning via modeling. (For more on the specifics of modeling, study Bandura.) The overt aggressive behavior is, of course, noticable - it is overt and it elicits emotional response. These characteristics make it very attention-getting and attention-holding, thus (un- fortunately) making overt aggressive behavior extremely learnable. Adults are less likely to model the behavior because of cultural con- straints. As the example of Japan demonstrates, some cultures have stronger constraints than others. <_Jym_> :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: :: Jym Dyer :: {allegra|decvax|ihnp4}!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-vaxuum!dyer :: ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::