Psychological Effects of War and Violence on Children.Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ, pp. 281–301

Snyder H N, Sickmund M Ju�enile Offender and Victims: ANational Report. Office of Juvenile Justice and DelinquencyPrevention, Washington, DC

Perry B D, Pollard R A, Blakley T L, Baker W L, Vigilante D1995 Childhood trauma, the neurobiology of adaptation, and‘‘use-dependent’’ development of the brain: How ‘‘states’’become ‘‘traits’’. Infant Mental Health Journal 16(4): 271–91

Richters J E, Martinez P 1993 The NIMH Community ViolenceProject: I. Children as victims of and witnesses to violence.Psychiatry: Interpersonal and Biological Processes 56(1): 7–21

Sameroff A, Seifer R, Barocas R, Zax M 1987 IntelligenceQuotient scores of 4-year-old children: Social environmentrisk factors. Pediatrics 79: 343–50

Shepherd R 1997 Ju�enile Justice Update. Office of JuvenileJustice and Delinquency Prevention, Washington, DC

Snyder H N, Sickmund M 1999 Ju�enile Offenders and Victims:1999 National Report. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delin-quency Prevention, Washington, DC

Taylor L, Zuckerman B, Harik V, Groves B M 1994 Witnessingviolence by young children and their mothers. Journal ofDe�elopmental and Beha�ioral Pediatrics 15(2): 120–23

Tolan P H 1996 How resilient is the concept of resilience?Community Psychologist 29(4): 12–15

J. Garbarino

Violence and Media

Public and academic concern about media’s con-tribution to real world violence are about as old as themass media and the social sciences themselves(Wartella and Reeves 1985). Despite frequent framingof the matter as ‘controversial,’ extensive research—anestimated 3,000 (Donnerstein et al. 1994) to 3,500(Wartella et al. 1998) studies in the United Statesalone—have examined the impact of media violence,and a number of recent major reviews (Huston et al.1992, Murray 1994, see also Potter 1999, Paik andComstock 1994, Comstock and Paik 1991), haveconcluded that media violence plays a measurable rolein real-world violence. A variety of US agencies,including the Centers for Disease Control of the USPublic Health Service (1991), and medical and publicinterest organizations, including the American Medi-cal Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics,and the National Conference of Parent-Teacher As-sociations, have identified media violence as a publichealth problem. The review below focuses mostheavily on US research and US media, most notablyAmerican television, primarily because a large ma-jority of the published social science research on mediaand violence is US research on American audiovisualmedia. Potter (1999, pp. 44–5), for example, reports 42published content analyses of US television since 1954,and just 19 from the rest of the world. Moreover,American media are among the world’s mostviolent—and most exported—and real-world violence

is a recurring public policy issue. Further, much of thisliterature concerns impacts of media violence onchildren and adolescents, for the inter-related reasonsthat young audiences are considered the most im-pressionable andmost vulnerable.Adults are generallyviewed to be more resistant to the deleterious in-fluences of violence, and, as some would argue (cf.Huesmann 1997), violent behaviors in adulthood maybe traced to media use during childhood.

1. Theories of Effect

Three models have been proposed to describe theprocess by which such learning and imitation of mediaviolence occurs: social learning theory, priming effectstheory, and a social developmental model of learning(Wartella et al. 1998).

First proposed by Albert Bandura in the 1960s,social learning theory is the best known theoreticalaccount of violence effects. Bandura asserts thatthrough observing television models, viewers come tolearn behaviors which are appropriate, that is, whichbehaviors will be rewarded and which punished. Inthis way, viewers seek to attain rewards and thereforeimitate these media models. When both children andadults are shown an aggressive model who is eitherrewarded or punished for their aggressive behavior,models who are positively reinforced influence imi-tation among the viewers. Even research in the fieldhas demonstrated that aggression is learned at a youngage and becomes more impervious to change as thechild grows older. In a longitudinal study to examinethe long-term effects of television violence on ag-gression and criminal behavior, Huesmann et al.(1984) studied a group of youth across 22 years, at ages8, 18, and 30. For boys (and to a lesser, though stillsignificant extent for girls), early television violenceviewing correlated with self-reported aggression at age30 and added significantly to the prediction of seriouscriminal arrests accumulated by age 30. These re-searchers find a longitudinal relationship betweenhabitual childhood exposure to television violence andadult crime and suggest that approximately 10 percentof the variability in later criminal behavior can beattributed to television violence.

Priming effects theory serves to augment the moretraditional social learning theory account of televisionviolence effects. In the work of Leonard Berkowitzand his colleagues, this theoretical account asserts thatmany media effects are immediate, transitory, andshort-term (Berkowitz 1984). Berkowitz suggests thatwhen people watch television violence, it activates or‘primes’ other semantically related thoughts whichmay influence how the person responds to the violenceon television. Viewers who identify with the actors ontelevision may imagine themselves like that charactercarrying out the aggressive actions of the character ontelevision, and research evidence suggests that ex-posure to media aggression does indeed ‘prime’ other

16187

Violence and Media

aggressive thoughts, evaluations, and even behaviorssuch that violence viewers report a greater willingnessto use violence in interpersonal situations.

Only Rowell Huesmann’s (1986; see also Huesmann1997) theoretical formulation of the social develop-mental model of violence effects offers a true reciprocaltheoretical account of how viewers’ interest in mediaviolence, attention to such violence, and individualviewer characteristics may interact in a theory ofmedia violence effects. Using ideas from social cog-nition theory he develops an elaborate cognitivemapping or script model. He argues that socialbehavior is controlled by ‘programs’ for behaviorwhich are established during childhood. These ‘pro-grams’ or ‘scripts’ are stored in memory and are usedas guides to social behavior and problem solving.Huesmann and Miller (1994, p. 161) submit that ‘ascript suggests what events are to happen in theenvironment, how the person should behave in re-sponse to these events, and what the likely outcome tothose behaviors would be.’ Violence from television is‘encoded’ in the cognitive map of viewers, and sub-sequent viewing of television violence helps to main-tain these aggressive thoughts, ideas, and behaviors.Over time such continuing attention to televisionviolence can thus influence people’s attitudes towardviolence and their maintenance and elaboration ofaggressive scripts.

This theory suggests that while viewing violencemay not cause aggressive behavior, it certainly has animpact on the formation of cognitive scripts formapping how to behave in response to a violent eventand what the outcome is most likely to be. Televisionportrayals, then, are among the media and personalsources that provide the text for the script which ismaintained and expanded upon by continued ex-posure to scripts of violence.

Huesmann has demonstrated that there are keyfactors which are particularly important in main-taining the television viewing–aggression relationshipfor children: the child’s intellectual achievement level,social popularity, identification with television charac-ters, belief in the realism of the TV violence, and theamount of fantasizing about aggression. According toHuesmann, a heavy diet of television violence sets intomotion a sequence of processes, based on thesepersonal and interpersonal factors, that results inmany viewers becoming not only more aggressive butalso developing increased interest in seeing moretelevision violence.

It must be emphasized that all serious scholars ofthe impacts of media on violence are careful to notethat media are not the only, nor perhaps among themost important, contributors to real-world violence.Violent behavior is a complex, multivariable problem,formed of many influences. Racism, poverty, drugabuse, child abuse, alcoholism, illiteracy, gangs, guns,mental illness, a decline in family cohesion, a lack ofdeterrents, the failure of positive role models, among

others, all interact to affect antisocial behavior. AsHuesmann has argued, aggression is a syndrome, anenduring pattern of behavior that can persist throughchildhood into adulthood. The impact of mediaviolence appears strongest as a predictor of real-worldantisocial behavior as one facet of a ‘culture ofviolence.’

2. Types of Effects

As Potter (1999, Chap. 9) notes, media-violence effectsfall into five categories—physiological, emotional,cognitive, attitudinal, and behavioral—and both im-mediate or short- and long-term effects have beenstudied. While some attention has focused on direct,short-term imitative or modeling effects (cf. Phillips1980, 1982, but see Hessler and Stipp 1985), moreattention and public policy concern has focused on thelong-term impact of repeated exposure to violence.More generally, three overarching categories of effectreceive most attention: learning of aggression, desensi-tization to real-world violence, and the cultivation offear in repeated exposure to media violence (Wilson etal. 1997).

Clearly, not all violent depictions should be treatedequally, nor all viewers. The (US) National TelevisionViolence Study (Wilson et al. 1997) identified severalcontextual factors within a representation that mayinfluence audience reactions to media violence whichinclude the following.

2.1 The Nature of the Perpetrator

Where individuals perceive perpetrators of violence asattractive, as heroes, and�or as similar to themselves,the likelihood of stimulating attention (Bandura 1986)and aggression (Paik and Comstock 1994) increases.

2.2 The Nature of the Victim

While the commission of violence on an attractivecharacter with which an audience member identifiesmight serve to inhibit aggressive behavior, its principalimpact would seem to be in arousing fear among theaudience members.

2.3 The Reason for the Violence

Wilson et al. (1997, p. 24) note that violence viewed asjustified likely heightens aggression, while violenceviewed as unjustified arouses fear. The impact ofjustification has been documented with fictional aswell as realistic programming (Meyer 1972), and withadult as well as child viewers (Liss et al. 1983). In fact,a recent meta-analysis of 217 media studies documents

16188

Violence and Media

that a justified portrayal of violence can enhanceaggressive behavior among viewers (Paik andComstock 1994).

2.4 The Presence of Weapons

A number of studies, including a meta-analysis of 56published experiments (Carlson et al. 1990) havedemonstrated that the presence of weapons, eitherpictorally or in the natural environment, can enhanceaggression among subjects. While, for ethical reasons,the large majority of such research involves adultsubjects, in at least one study (Frodi 1975) the presenceof weapons enhanced aggression among adolescents.‘Conventional’ weapons such as guns and knives aremore likely than unconventional means for primingthe effect, social learning theory would suggest, be-cause their use as a means of aggression are stored inmemory (Berkowitz 1990, Leyens and Parke 1975).

2.5 The Extent and Graphicness of the Violence

A review (Wilson et al. 1997) for the NationalTelevision Violence Study suggested that more re-search is needed, but several tentative conclusionsabout extent and graphicness could be reached: (a)extensiveness of violence within media presentationsshould be associated with increased desensitization toviolence, at least in the short- to medium-term; (b)graphicness of violence should be associated withincreased cultivation of fear; (c) longitudinal studiesclearly suggest that extensiveness of �iewingviolentmedia presentations heightens the likelihood of en-gaging in aggressive behavior.

2.6 The Degree of Realism of the Violence

In brief, realistic violence has been found to induceaggressive behavior, and to induce fear, more thanviolence believed to be less realistic or more fantastic.An extremely important qualification deals withyounger children, who may be unable to distinguishrealistic from fantastic characters, behaviors, andsituations. In one study, however, where percei�edrealism was manipulated for older children (9 to 11 inFeshbach 1972; 10 to 13 in Atkin 1983), those subjectswho were led to believe that footage was realistic newswere more likely subsequently to behave aggressivelythan those led to believe it was taken from anentertainment program.

2.7 Whether Violence is Rewarded or Punished

Rewarded violence is more likely to be imitated thanviolence which is punished. Significantly, and par-ticularly for children (since, as we will show below,television programming most frequently presents vi-olent actions that are neither rewarded nor punished),the absence of punishment may enhance imitation,

even in the absence of explicit reward (Bandura 1965,Walters and Parke 1964). Paik and Comstock’s meta-analysis (1994) suggests that rewarded violence stimu-lates aggression amongboth child and adult audiences.One study suggests that punishment of criminalviolence decreases fear (Bryant et al. 1981).

2.8 Consequences of Violence

In general (and exceptions are noted in Wilson et al.1997, p. 30), mediated depictions of violence whichshow either pain cues or other short- or longer-termnegative effects or consequences of violence are likelyto depress the learning of aggression. There is littleresearch on the effects of pain cues or violenceconsequences on desensitization and the cultivation offear.

2.9 Presence of Humor

As the National TV Violence Study review also noted,further research is needed here as well, but the presentstate of knowledge suggests, other things being equal,that violence coupled with humor is more likely toheighten aggression, and to increase desensitization,than violence without the presence of humor:

Several mechanisms can be used to explain such a facilitativeeffect of humor on aggression.Humormight elevate a viewer’sarousal level over that attained by violence alone, andincreased arousal has been shown to facilitate aggression.… Humor could serve as a reinforcement or reward forviolence, especially if the perpetrator is funny or admired orhis or her wit. And humor may diminish the seriousness of theviolence and therefore undermine the inhibiting effects ofharm and pain cues in a scene. … However, we shouldunderscore that our conclusion about the facilitative effect ofhumor on aggression is tentative until more systematicresearch … is undertaken (Wilson et al. 1997, p. 32).

3. Young Viewers

As noted, research indicates that certain factors maybe processed differently by young viewers. First,children below about age 8 have more difficultydistinguishing reality from fantasy and often imitatesuperheros with magical powers such as the PowerRangers (Boyatzis et al. 1995). Second, young childrenmay have difficulty connecting scenes and drawinginferences from the plot. Timing of punishments andrewards becomes important in this instance. In manyprograms, the crime or violent behavior may gounpunished until the end of the program. Youngchildren may have difficulty connecting the endingpunishment with the initial violent act and may,therefore, believe that the violence went unpunished(Wilson et al. 1997). Thus, learning of aggressiveattitudes and behaviors from television varies by boththe nature of the portrayals and the nature of the

16189

Violence and Media

viewers. The presence of contextual factors in theportrayals which may inhibit young children’s sociallearning of aggression decreases the negative conse-quences of such portrayals and should be encouraged.Not all violent portrayals are the same and the contextof violence is clearly quite important. Similarly, youngchildren, those under the age of seven or eight, may beparticularly susceptible to learning from exposure totelevision violence because of differences in how theymake sense of television compared to adults.

4. The Media En�ironment

Television’s role as the central mass medium in muchof the world for the past half-century, and its ubiquityand ability to enter almost every home, often withoutparental supervision, has meant that more public andscholarly concern has focused on its contents than onany other medium’s, and this concern has accom-panied its diffusion into every corner of the earth.

Unfortunately, cumulative and comparative re-search on television’s violent content is hampered by alack of consistency in defining violence and especiallydefining the population and sampling frame in studiesof television.

The most extensive single content study of UStelevisionwas the 1994–7National TelevisionViolenceStudy (National Television Violence Study 1997,Center for Communication and Social Policy 1997,1998). Examined were the 6 a.m.–11 p.m. contents ofa multistage probability sample constructed sampleweek of programming on 23 network-station, indepen-dent-station, and basic-cable and premium-cablechannels; thus about 8,000 programs were analyzedover the 1994–5, 1995–6, and 1996–7 television‘seasons.’ Certain programs, including ‘hard news,’religious shows, sporting events, quiz shows, andeducational shows, were sampled but not analyzed.About three-fifths of the remaining programs con-tained some visual violence, a figure that like mostsummary statistics remained stable over the threeyears of the study. In descending order, premiumcable, basic cable, independent-station, broadcastnetwork station, and public broadcast stations’ pro-gramming were likely to contain violence. By contentgenre, in decreasing order, movies, dramas, children’sshows, music videos, and reality-based and comedyprograms were likely to contain violence. Violence wasfar more prevalent during prime-time than duringdaytime hours.

Of signal concern to the NTVS researchers was thecontext of televised violence; it was often glamorized(more than a quarter of all violence was perpetrated by‘good’ or attractive characters, and some 40 percent bycharacters with at least some good qualities); sanitized(about 7�8 of violent scenes show no blood and gore;almost half show no harm to victims of violence,although more than half of violent interactions showinfliction of harm that would be lethal in ‘real life,’ and

about half depict no pain cues in victims of violence);and unsanctioned (in a majority of scenes, violenceperpetrators were neither rewarded nor punished[‘punishment’ was considered any noticeable sanction,including a perpetrator’s oral expression of remorse],and among other scenes, rewards and punishmentswere about equally likely; in three-quarters of cases,characters perpetrating violence were either neverpunished, or were punished only at the program’sconclusion). Moreover, only three percent of pro-grams with violence had any antiviolence theme(Center for Communication and Social Policy 1998,Chaps. 3–4). Potter (1999) has an extensive discussionof definitions of media violence and the results ofcontent analyses from a variety of studies.

5. Media Violence and Public Policy

As noted, the consensus in the social scientific com-munity regarding media violence is that it serves as acontributor to aggression in the real world, andvirtually all public opinion surveys confirm that widerpublics believe this as well. Nonetheless, such findingsare ‘controversial’ in the media industries, and amonga minority of academics (see, e.g. Fowles 1999 andsources cited therein). In the United States in par-ticular, since the 1950s the media industries—tele-vision in particular, but also recorded music, motionpictures, pictorial comic books, and video games—have responded to public and governmental outcriesagainst violent content by promises to reform underself-regulation. Motion pictures, video-games, andrecorded music all list ‘ratings’ for their productswhich suggest age-groups for which the industry self-regulatory groups think the content for these productsis appropriate. The US Telecommunications Act of1996 mandated that the television networks create a‘voluntary’ ratings system or face creation of one bythe federal government. The system the broadcastindustry has created suggests appropriate age cate-gories and levels of sex, language, and violence toallow consumers and parents to make programchoices. The same act mandated a ‘v-chip’ in newlymanufactured television sets to allow parents to screenor filter out violent programs. There is to dateinsufficient research to indicate whether and whatsorts of parents and other viewers are using either theratings or the v-chip technology to screen violence.However, experimental research by Cantor and hercolleagues (Cantor and Nathanson 1998, Cantor et al.1997) suggests that young children may use aged-based ratings systems to shield themselves from violentcontent while for older children and adolescents, theremay be a boomerang or ‘forbidden fruit’ effectwhereby ratings attract them to more ‘adult’ violent orsexually explicit material. In the United States Con-gress, a moratorium on discussion of television vi-olence is in effect, pending further information on theeffects of ratings and the v-chip, but the legislature is

16190

Violence and Media

focusing its attention on violent video-games, thetarget of significant public criticism in the wake of anumber of firearms murders in public schools.

6. Conclusion

It is clear that where children and television violenceare concerned, the question that remains is notwhether media violence has an effect, but rather howimportant that effect is in comparison with otherfactors in bringing about the current level of crime inthe United States and other industrialized nations.Future research should also aim to establish whoprecisely is most susceptible to media violence, and,most importantly, what sorts of intervention mighthelp diminish its influence. At the same time, anyinterventions that help establish policies and practicesto reduce the socially inappropriate ways of portrayingviolence and increase the socially responsible ways(such as using violence to assert antiviolence messages)should be encouraged as well. Long-term solutions toproblems caused by violence in the real world, how-ever, will require attention to a much wider variety ofcausal agents.

See also: Media Effects; Media Effects on Children

Bibliography

American Psychological Association 1993 Violence and Youth:Psychology’s Response. Volume 1: Summary Report of theAmerican Psychological Association Commission on Violenceand Youth. American Psychological Association, Washington,DC

Atkin C 1983 Effects of realistic TV violence vs. fictional violenceon aggression. Journalism Quarterly 60: 615–21

Bandura A 1965 Influences of models’ reinforcement contin-gencies on acquisition of imitative responses. Journal ofPersonality and Social Psychology 1: 589–95

Bandura A 1986 Social Foundations of Thought and Action: ASocial Cogniti�e Theory. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Berkowitz L 1984 Some effects of thoughts on anti-socialand pro-social influences of media events: A cognitive-neoassociationistic analysis. Psychological Bulletin 95(3):410–27

Berkowitz L 1990 On the formation and regulation of anger andaggression:A cognitive-neoassociationistic analysis.AmericanPsychologist 45: 494–503

Berkowitz L, LePage A 1967 Weapons as aggression-elicitingstimuli. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 7: 202–7

Boyatzis C, Matillo G, Nesbitt K 1995 Effects of ‘The MightyMorphin Power Rangers’ on children’s aggression with peers.Child Study Journal 25(1): 45–55

Bryant J, Carveth R A, Brown D 1981 Television viewing andanxiety: An experimental examination. Journal of Communi-cation 31(1): 106–19

Cantor J, Harrison K, Nathanson A 1997 Ratings and advisoriesfor television programming, Part III. In: Center for Com-munication and Social Policy, University of California, Santa

Barbara (ed.) National Tele�ision Violence Study. Sage,Thousand Oaks, CA, Vol. 2, pp. 267–322

Cantor J, Nathanson A 1998 Ratings and advisories fortelevision programming, Part III. In: Center for Communi-cation and Social Policy, University of California, SantaBarbara (ed.) National Tele�ision Violence Study. Sage,Thousand Oaks, CA, Vol. 3, pp. 285–321

Carlson M, Marcus-Newhall A, Miller N 1990 Effects ofsituational aggression cues: A quantitative review. Journal ofPersonality and Social Psychology 58: 622–33

Center for Communication and Social Policy, University ofCalifornia, Santa Barbara 1997b National Tele�ision ViolenceStudy. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, Vol. 2

Center for Communication and Social Policy, University ofCalifornia, Santa Barbara 1998 National Tele�ision ViolenceStudy. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, Vol. 3

Centers for Disease Control 1991 Position Papers from the ThirdNational Injury Conference. US Department of Health andHuman Services, Atlanta, GA

Comstock G, Paik H 1991 Tele�ision and the American Child.Academic Press, San Diego, CA

Donnerstein E, Slaby R, Eron L 1994 The mass media and youthviolence. In: Murray J, Rubinstein E, Comstock G (eds.)Violence and Youth: Psychology’s Response. AmericanPsychological Association, Washington, DC, Vol. 2, pp.219–50

Feshbach S 1972 Reality and fantasy in filmed violence. In:Murray J P, Rubinstein E A, Comstock G (eds.) Tele�isionand Social Beha�ior: Tele�ision and Social Learning. USGovernment Printing Office, Washington, DC, Vol. 1,pp. 318–45

Fowles J 1999 The Case for Tele�ision Violence. Sage, ThousandOaks, CA

Frodi A 1975 The effects of exposure to weapons on behaviorfrom a cross-cultural perspective. International Journal ofPsychology 10(4): 283–92

Gerbner G, Gross L, Morgan M, Signorielli N 1980 Living withtelevision: the dynamics of the cultivation process. In: BryantJ, Zillmann D (eds.) Media Effects. Lawrence Erlbaum,Hillsdale, NJ, pp. 17–41

Hessler R C, Stipp H 1985 The impact of fictional televisionsuicide stories on United States fatalities: A replication.American Journal of Sociology 90: 151–67

Huesmann L R 1986 Psychological processes promoting therelation between exposure to media violence and aggressivebehavior by the viewer. Journal of Social Issues 42(3): 125–39

Huesmann L R 1997 Screen Violence and Real Violence: Under-standing the Link. Huesmann, Ann Arbor, MI

Huesmann L R, Lefkowitz M M, Walder L O 1984 The stabilityof aggression over time and generations. De�elopmentalPsychology 20(6): 1120–34

Huesmann L R, Miller L 1994 Long-term effects of repeatedexposure to media violence in childhood. In: Huesmann L R(ed.) Aggressi�e Beha�ior: Current Perspecti�es. Plenum, NewYork, pp. 153–83

Huston A C, Donnerstein E, Fairchild H, Feshbach N, Katz P,Murray J, Rubinstein E, Wilcox B, Zuckerman D 1992 BigWorld, Small Screen: The Role of Tele�ision in AmericanSociety. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE

Leyens J P, Parke R D 1975 Aggressive slides can induce aweapons effect. European Journal of Social Psychology 5:229–36

Liss M, Reichardt L, Fredriksen S 1983 TV heroes: The impactof rhretoric and deeds. Journal of Applied De�elopmentalPsychology 4: 175–87

16191

Violence and Media

Meyer T P 1972 Effects of viewing jusitified and unjustified realfilm violence on aggressive behavior. Journal of Personalityand Social Psychology 23: 21–9

Murray J P 1994 Impact of televised violence. Hofstra LawRe�iew 22: 809–25

National Television Violence Study 1997 National Tele�isionViolence Study. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, Vol. 1

Page D, O’Neal E 1977 ‘Weapons effect’ without demandcharacteristics. Psychological Reports 41: 29–30

Paik H, Comstock G 1994 The effects of television violence onantisocial behavior: A meta-analysis. Communication Re-search 21: 516–46

Phillips D P 1980 Airplane accidents, murder and the massmedia. Social Forces 58: 1001–24

Phillips D P 1982 The impact of fictional television stories onUnited States adult fatalities. American Journal of Sociology87: 1340–59

Potter W J 1999 On Media Violence. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CATurner C W, Layton J F, Simons L S 1975 Naturalistic studies of

aggressive behavior: Aggressive stimuli, victim visibility, andhorn honking. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology31: 1098–107

Walters R H, Parke R 1964 Influence of response consequencesto a social model on resistance to deviation. Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology 1: 269–80

Wartella E 1995 Media and problem behaviours in youngpeople. In: Rutter M, Smith D J (eds.) Psychosocial Disordersin Young People: Time Trends and Their Causes. J. Wiley,Chichester, UK, pp. 296–323

Wartella E, Olivarez A, Jennings N 1998 Children and televisionviolence in the United States. In: Carlson U, von Feilitzen C(eds.) Children and Media Violence: Yearbook from theUNESCO Clearinghouse on Children and Violence on theScreen. UNESCO International Clearinghouse on Childrenand Violence on the Screen, Go� teborg, Sweden, pp. 55–62

Wartella E, Reeves B 1985 Historical trends in research onchildren and the media: 1900–1960. Journal of Communication35(2): 118–33

Whitney C, Wartella E, Lasorsa D, Danielson W, Olivarez A,Lopez R, Klijn M 1996 Part II: Television violence in ‘reality’programming. In: University of Texas, Austin (ed.) NationalTele�ision Violence Study. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, Vol. 1,pp. 269–360

Wilson B, Kunkel D, Linz D, Potter W J, Donnerstein E, SmithS, Blumenthal E, Gray T 1997 Part I: Violence in televisionprogramming overall. In: Center for Communication andSocial Policy, University of California, Santa Barbara (ed.)National Tele�ision Violence Study. Sage, Thousand Oaks,

CA, Vol. 1, pp. 1–268

C. Whitney and E. Wartella

Violence as a Problem of Health

In the early 1990s, many policy makers and socialscientists related the problem of community violenceto neighborhoods trapped in struggles among gangscompeting to sell anddistribute illegal drugs, especiallycocaine and crack cocaine. From this perspective, thechallenge for communities was to locate and restrain

perpetrators and respond to victims. Gradually, it hasbeen recognized that community violence, however itbegan, affects many segments of the population.Seemingly clear distinctions between victim and per-petrator seem to have faded. Heightened exposure toviolence is assumed to increase acts of aggression inanticipation of violence from another. Effectively, thetiming rather than the nature of an act may differ-entiate victim fromvictimizer. In such an environment,the sense of unease may seem constant, the need forvigilance continuous, and suspicion of others required.That state may, in turn, disrupt sleep, upset vegetativefunctions, impair interpersonal relationships, anddisable effective concentration on work and studies.Together, these characteristics produce an environ-ment marked by ‘pervasive community violence’(PCV), an ecological situation with significant impacton emotional, behavioral, and psychological health.

PCV, therefore, negatively alters the essence ofcommunity life, broadly disrupts its functioning andpresumably thereby impairs residents’ general health.The potential for such broad impact must be ap-preciated and respected before one can enlist com-munities to join in investigating PCV’s nature andconsequences. Investigators who do not appreciatethat quality may be surprised by the reluctance ofcommunity leaders (e.g., school administrators,county health officer, and representatives of themayor’s office) to participate in its study. The leadersmay deny the problem’s extent or hesitate to makepublic the negative quality of their neighborhood orcommunity. For them genuine partnerships requiretime accumulated through historical involvement andfuture commitment. History enables disclosure andtrust. Intimate aspects of a community are rarelyshared with strangers. Assurance that the investigatorwill be there in the future (even after external funds aregone) is important, given community leaders’ appreci-ation of the intransigence of social problems and thefickleness of social scientists. Thus, from the outset itmust be appreciated that to study and alter the natureand consequence of PCV requires a genuine and long-term partnership between communities and socialscientists.

1. Definition of Terms

As one reviews the growing PCV literature, the needfor defining relevant terms becomes apparent. Violencerefers to both acts and consequences of the intentionaluse or threat of use of force to cause injury, harm, ordeath to another. The qualifier ‘intentional’ excludesunintended or accidental acts and consequences.Determining intent represents an as yet unresolvedmethodological challenge. For PCV, the consequencesof �iolent acts refer to the rippling health and mentalhealth effects experienced by: (a) individuals directlyvictimized by an act or threat of violence; (b) indivi-

16192

Violence and Media

Copyright � 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd.

All rights reserved.

International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences ISBN: 0-08-043076-7