tly being shown acts of violence.Why? Simple: violence sells.People are drawn to violence in films, television dramas, books,professional wrestling and boxing, and reports of crime and warfare. Doesviolence do more than sell, however? Do media portrayals of violence begetviolence in the streets and in the home?It seems clear enough that there are connections between violence in themedia and real violence. In the 1990's, for example, audiences at films aboutviolent urban youth such as Colors, Boyz N the Hood, and Juice have gotten intofights, shot one another, and gone on rampages after the showings. The MTVcartoon characters, Beavis and Butt-head, who comment on rock videos and burnand destroy things, may have been connected with the death of a 2-year-old and aburned room in Ohio. The victims 5-year-old brother, who set the blaze thatkilled the 2-year-old, had begun playing with fire after he observed Beavis andButt-head to say that fire is fun. A few more examples are shown on the pictureto the left (Leland 47). Obviously, these are just a few isolated incidents.If everyone acted this way after watching violence then we would really have aproblem.Children are routinely exposed to murders, beatings, and sexual assaultsjust by turning on the television set. The public is wary of it, of course.Psychologists, educators, and parent groups have raised many questions about theeffects of media violence. For example, does media violence cause realviolence? If there are causal connections between media violence and realviolence, what can parents and educators do to prevent the fictional fromspilling over into the real world?Media violence affects children through observational learning,disinhibition, increasing arousal and priming aggressive thoughts, anddesensitization. The Mean World Syndrome, which suggests that children whowatch a lot of violence on television may begin to believe that the world is asmean and dangerous in real...
