Violent Eyes: How Exposure to Violence Can Have an Effect on Behavior

Violence is something that is bound to be exposed to all people, no matter the format. Be it in real life, a movie, a video game or a book, there will be at least one exposure to violence. The question that matters with this violence is how it will affect a person’s behavior and attitude once they witness it. There has been much debate and study that the violence makes a person more apathetic or more violent, while others say that it does no such thing and that these behaviors are either speculation or due to something else.

One example of violence having an influence on behavior is an article called “Emotionally anesthetized: Media violence induces neural changes during emotional face processing.” By Stockdale and colleagues. The main focus of the research is to see how violence in video games affects a person’s ability to recognize a facial expressions and the emotions that come with it. The experiment had people exposed to a violent clip and then asked to identify facial expressions as either fearful or happy, and to guess the gender of the face as well. The research found that participants were slower to assess the facial expression and fearful, and that it took longer for participants to identify the face as female. These results became especially apparent when the participant was exposed to the violent clip, and there were EEG recordings that showed that certain brain areas were active when observing violence and contributed to this time lag. This lends evidence to the statement that exposure to violent video games does affect behavior and empathetic levels since there was more difficulty when trying to determine an expression that should be considered easy and requires certain empathetic levels to recognize.

Another article that talks about media violence is “Effects of cartoon violence on aggressive thoughts and aggressive behaviors.” By Zhang and colleagues. This article focuses on how cartoon violence and exposure affects thoughts and behaviors of adolescence. The experiment consisted of showing children age 10 a cartoon that showed either violent behavior (but still appropriate for a children show) or no violence, but rather friendship and bonding. They then performed a variety of tasks that had comparisons between violent and nonviolent cues, such as a Stroop test with violent vs nonviolent words, a questionnaire, and more. The results show that children who watched the violent cartoon were more inclined to choose the violent or aggressive behaviors in a task compared to the children who watched the nonviolent cartoons. They also saw that these aggression levels were higher for males than for females. This is more evidence that violence exposure affects behavior since there was a notable difference between the attitudes of the children.

However, not all hope is lost when it comes to these behaviors. An article that shows the effects of violence and behavior, specifically amongst gender bias, is called “Architects of Their Own Brain….” By Racionero-Plaza and colleagues. This article focuses on the psychological aspect of social violence and how that affects teen gender violence. This experiment was conducted differently than the previous two, with the methods being engagement and dialogue with the teens included in the study paired with counseling and then seeing how their behaviors changed over a period of time. They found that active awareness and consideration of teens behaviors, especially in males, makes them reduce their violent behavior and improve their personal lives. This article does not lean towards any side of the debate, it does show that the effects of violence and behavior are not irreversible.

One final article that I will mention is “Long-time exposure to violent video games does not show desensitization on empathy for pain: An fMRI Study” by Gao and colleagues. Their research shows that exposure to violent video games does not have an effect on a person’s ability to empathize on painful situations and show that violence exposure does not affect apathetic levels in a person. Their experiment was conducted by taking fMRI images of brain activity in participants while they were seeing photos of either a person in a painful situation or in a nonpainful situation. These participants were also in two categories: gamers and non-gamers. The results were that there were no difference in empathy levels when comparing the two groups of participants, and that there were no areas of the brain that showed that there was a desensitization when it comes to violence exposure. This contradicts other studies saying that violence does have an effect, but there are also other studies that support that it does not affect it. 

Noting these four studies, it is apparent that there is no black and white to this subject of violence and behavior. It is a gray area that leaves much room for study and analysis. I believe though, that these studies are not necessarily able to be generalized to big populations just yet, since different people can have different reactions and behaviors no matter what the situation or violence exposure they have had. Hopefully with more research, this gray area can become more defined, and we can learn more about behavioral influences in general.

Reference List

Gao, X., Pan, W., Li, C., Weng, L., Yao, M., & Chen, A. (2017). Long-time exposure to violent video games does not show desensitization on empathy for pain: An fMRI Study. Frontiers in Psychology, 8(MAY), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00650

Racionero-Plaza, S., Ugalde, L., Merodio, G., & Gutiérrez-Fernández, N. (2020). “Architects of Their Own Brain.” Social Impact of an Intervention Study for the Prevention of Gender-Based Violence in Adolescence. Frontiers in Psychology, 10(February), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.03070

Stockdale, L. A., Morrison, R. G., Kmiecik, M. J., Garbarino, J., & Silton, R. L. (2015). Emotionally anesthetized: Media violence induces neural changes during emotional face processing. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 10(10), 1373–1382. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsv025

Zhang, Q., Cao, Y., Gao, J. Y., Yang, X., Rost, D. H., Cheng, G., Teng, Z. J., & Espelage, D. L. (2019). Effects of cartoon violence on aggressive thoughts and aggressive behaviors. Aggressive Behavior, 45(5), 489–497. https://doi.org/10.1002/ab.21836