An Examination of Three Models of Television Viewing and Aggression

Abstract

Three general models of the relationship between television viewing and aggressiveness are described: the Facilitation Model, featuring learning or legitimization of aggression from television violence; the Catharsis Model, or the reduction of innate aggressive drives through vicarious participation in television violence; and the Arousal Model, which considers television programming as an agent of arousal, generating a drive toward activity, with the nature of the activity determined by situational factorb. The Arousal Model is further discriminated into an Emotional Arousal Model, in which the agent of arousal is emotional reaction to violent content, and the Form Arousal Model, in which arousal is a result of the cognitive effort involved in decoding programming. The Facilitation, Catharsis, and Form Arousal Models are contrasted on a sample of 597 adolescents. The results indicate independent Facilitation and Form Arousal processes occur. A rather startling result is the finding that levels of aggressiveness can be predicted as well by examining only the form of programming as they can by examining only the violent content. Age and sex differences are associated with different strengths of Facilitation and/or Form Arousal effects, indicating possible socialization or maturation processes affecting the response of adolescents to programming.

Effects of Media Use on Complexity and Extremity of Attitudes Toward the Death Penalty and Prisoners' Rehabilitation

“…with the complexity measure was not significant, r = .08. Much other research also shows that it is the media content (e.g., Neuman, Just, & Criegler, 1992;Newton, 1999;Norris, 1996) and the format of that content (e.g., Iyengar, 1994;Potter & Smith, 2000;Watt & Krull, 1977), rather than a medium per se (television vs. newspaper), that counts most for a wide variety of media effects.…”

“…The question raised in this study is whether the media, by the structure of their messages, may influence audiences' structures of thinking. The independent effects of the form of the television programming have been shown in individuals' level of aggressiveness (Watt & Krull, 1977). Tetlock (1985) suggested that some media may be more prone to simplify political controversies than others, and may promote more or less complex thinking about issues.…”

The Effect of Involvement, Arousal, and Pace on Claim and Non-claim Components of Attitude toward the Ad

“…Production pace has been defined by the presence or absence of cuts and edits (Reeves, Thorson, & Schleuder, 1986;Watt & Krull, 1977). Content arousal has been conceptualized as how calm or exciting the content of a message is perceived to be .…”

Aggressie op Televisie 3: 'n perspektief

“…Gerbner(10; 11; 12)sekultiveringsteorie en die fasiliteringsmodel van Watt en Krull (25) is egter hieraan verwant (2: 15; 10: 178; 25,9). Die kern van die teorie kom daarop neer dat kykers televisie as 'n model vir aggressiewe gedrag kan ervaar en dit kan naboots.…”