Hockenbury Discovering Psychology 5th txtbk

Observational Learning225©1995 Watterson/Dist. by Universal PressSyndicate. Used by permission.pattern emerged with women. In another study, Paul Boxer andhis colleagues (2009) compared the childhood and currentmedia preferences of teenagers in juvenile justice facilities witha matched group of adolescents. The teenagers with a history ofantisocial behavior were much more likely to have preferred violentmedia throughout their childhood and adolescence than thematched controls. According to the researchers, violent mediamay “enhance” violent tendencies in susceptible youth.But Does Media Violence Cause Aggressive or ViolentBehavior?It’s important to note that violent behavior is a complex phenomenonthat is unlikely to have a single cause. Can exposureto violent media contribute to aggressive behavior? In somepeople, the answer is apparently “yes.” But not everyone isaffected in the same way. For example, in a longitudinal studyof the effects of television viewing on elementary school children,Seymour Feshbach and June Tangney (2008) came upwith a very unexpected finding. Hours spent viewing violenttelevision programming was associated with lower cognitiveperformance and negative social behavior in white males,African-American females, and white females—but not inAfrican-American males.Consequently, some psychologists are cautious in their conclusionsabout the effects of media violence, pointing out that thevast majority of studies are correlational (Ferguson & Kilbourn,2009; Savage & Yancey, 2008). As you learned in Chapter 1, correlationdoes not necessarily imply causation. Even if two factorsare strongly correlated, some other variable could be responsiblefor the association between the two factors. Experimental studies,on the other hand, are designed to demonstrate causality.However, most experimental studies involve artificial measures ofaggressive behavior, which may not accurately measure the likelihoodthat a participant will act aggressively in real life.Psychologists generally agree that some viewers are highly susceptibleto the negative effects of media violence (see Grimes &others, 2008). Some researchers think that the time has come togo beyond the question of whether media violence causes aggressivebehavior and focus instead on investigating the factors thatare most likely to be associated with its harmful effects (Feshbach& Tangney, 2008).CRITICAL THINKING QUESTIONS• Given the evidence summarized here, what conclusions canyou draw about the effect of violent media images on aggressivebehavior?• Why is it so difficult to design an experimental study thatwould conclusively demonstrate that violent media causesaggressive behavior?• Given the general conclusion that some, but not all, viewersare likely to become more aggressive after viewing violentmedia, what should be done about media violence?vational learning underscored that classical and operant conditioning principlescould not account for all learning.Another prominent theme has been the adaptive nature of learning. Facedwith an ever-changing environment, an organism’s capacity to learn is critical toadaptation and survival. Clearly, there are survival advantages in being able tolearn that a neutral stimulus can signal an important upcoming event, as in classicalconditioning. An organism also enhances its odds of survival by beingresponsive to the consequences of its actions, as in operant conditioning. And,by observing the actions and consequences experienced by others, behaviors canbe acquired through imitation. Thus, it is probably because these abilities are souseful in so many environments that the basic principles of learning are demonstratedwith such consistency across so many species.In the final analysis, it’s probably safe to say that the most important consequenceof learning is that it promotes the adaptation of many species, includinghumans, to their unique environments. Were it not for the adaptive nature oflearning, Erv would probably have gotten trapped in the attic again!