Much of the current rhetoric surrounding climate change focuses on the physical changes to the environment and the resulting material damage to infrastructure and resources. Although there has been some dialogue about secondary effects (namely mass migration), little effort has been given to understanding how rapid climate change is affecting people on group and individual levels. In this Element, we examine the psychological impacts of climate change, especially focused on how it will lead to increases in aggressive behaviors and violent conflict, and how it will influence other aspects of human behavior. We also look at previously established psychological effects and use them to help explain changes in human behavior resulting from rapid climate change, as well as to propose actions that can be taken to reduce climate change itself and mitigate harmful effects on humans.
Numerous studies from various countries and cultural backgrounds have found a link between media violence consumption and aggressive behaviors and cognition. However, some failures to replicate these findings potentially suggest that some Latinx cultures may be relatively invulnerable to such harmful effects. To investigate this, media violence exposure and aggression data were collected from samples of predominantly Latinx communities in Brazil, Mexico, and Southwest Texas U.S., as well as from a Canadian sample for contrast. Replication and extension tests of hypotheses derived from the general aggression model and the 7 Nations Media Violence Project (Anderson et al., 2017) were conducted. This cross-sectional study (N = 862) revealed violent media exposure-to-aggression effect sizes with Latinx samples that are comparable to those from other ethnicities and countries in previous studies. This relation remained significant in statistical "destructive tests" that included other major risk factors for aggression in the model. The effect generalized across samples, sex, and type of aggression (physical, verbal, and relational).
Public Policy Relevance StatementBy further demonstrating the generality of media violence effects on aggression, this research has implications for public policies that strengthen safeguards for consumers. For instance, warnings of harmful effects could appear in public service announcements, in digital literacy programs, and on the products themselves. In some countries, legal restrictions on children's and adolescent's access to such materials could be imposed.
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