J. Senft" <[log in to unmask]>wrote: >>When it comes to "numbing" from screen violence, I can only add that media >>violence only works de-sensitizing when it comes to... screen violence. No >>research whatsoever has proved an effect of media violence (neither ficti= tous >>nor non- fictitiuos) on the perceptions of real-life violence. >Ulf > > >There *is* research that shows that watching violence leads to violent >behaviour. See Bandura's experiments with bobo dolls, where the children >who were shown violent material on t.v. then behaved violently toward the >dolls, while the other children did not. I believe following experiments >supported these findings as well. I realize this isn't precisely what you >were talking about, but it is related enough to cause concern, yes? > I'd rather put it this way: there *is* research (and quite a lot of it too)= that=20 *claims* to show that watching violence leads to violent behaviour. The Ban= dura=20 study has - in my view quite deservingly - been severely critizied on both= =20 theoretical and methodological grounds. I will not go further into the crit= ique=20 here, I think it is sufficent to say that the fact that you can provoke a=20 certain behavior in a laboratory situation doesn't have much to do with=20 real-life behaviour in real-life situations. And, naturally, you can questi= on=20 whether striking an inanimate object equals violence. And, no, I do not think Banduras hypothesis (the social learning hypothesis= ) is=20 closely related to the desensitization hypothesis, the former claims that w= e=20 learn certain behaviour from the media, the latter that the media disinhibi= ts us=20 from certain behaviour that is labelled as undesirable for society in gener= al.=20 For those interested in an overview of the shortcomings of media effects=20 research, I strongly recommend David Gauntlett's "Moving Experiences" (John= =20 Libbey, London 1995) . Ulf ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]