What We Watch Affects Our Behavior

WHAT WE WATCH AFFECTS OUR BEHAVIOR

Studies are even showing how we are affected by what we watch on television, hear on our radios, or read in books and the paper.

A study recorded in American Psychologist reported that “Psychologists have studied the effect of violent media on aggression for several decades. Hundreds of studies have been conducted on this topic. Scientific evidence from a collection of studies, such as those on media-related aggression, can be integrated and summarized in a narrative (qualitative) review or in a meta-analytic (quantitative) review. Both types of reviews have been conducted on the research literature about media violence and aggression, and all have come to the same conclusion: that viewing violence increases aggression (e.g., Hearold, 1986; Hogben, 1998; Huston et al., 1992; National Institute of Mental Health, 1982; Paik & Comstock, 1994; Surgeon General’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior, 1972; Wood, Wong, & Chachere, 1991).

“On the basis of such findings, in July 2000, six major professional societies-the American Psychological Association (APA), the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and the American Psychiatric Association signed a joint statement on the hazards of exposing children to media violence, noting that ‘at this time, well over 1 ,000 studies point overwhelmingly to a causal connection between media violence and aggressive behavior in some children’” (Brad J. Bushman and Craig A. Anderson, Iowa State University, http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/faculty/caa/abstracts/2000-2004/01BA.ap.pdf).

(From a sermon by Eric Lenhart, Seeds on the Hard Path, 8/13/2010)