Bandura’s Bobo doll experiment and violence in the media.

Abstract

Violence in the media has been the subject of heated debate for more than half a century. Social scientists still cannot determine whether media violence causes children to be more aggressive or not. The term "Media violence", as used in this paper, refers to the depiction of aggression and violence in the media. This article shows an overview of two kinds of studies, one suggesting that media violence does lead to more violent behavior and others showing that this may not be the case. Some of them even seem to show that media violence (e.g. violent games) might have a positive effect. Lastly the implications for policy and legislation are considered and suggestions for further research are given.