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The
primary goal of this pilot investigation is to examine the relative and
potentially interacting effects of exposure to media violence and home/community
violence on hostile cognitions and affect, permissive attitudes towards
violence and engagement in other harmful health behaviors, and physiological
arousal during violence exposure. A secondary goal is to examine
whether reported exposure to home/community violence and media violence
are associated with reported engagement in harmful health behaviors, and
whether indices of hostility, permissiveness towards rule violations, and
physiological arousal mediate this association. Eighty male students
aged 18-20 attending the University of Pittsburgh will be recruited from
a larger pool of students completing a survey of violence exposure and
engagement in harmful health behaviors as part of a research requirement.
Forty males reporting low previous exposure to home and community violence
will be selected to participate in the laboratory experimental from the
bottom third of the survey distribution of home/community violence exposure,
while forty males reporting high previous exposure will be selected from
the top third of the distribution. Participants will be randomly
assigned to play a violent or non-violent video game before measurements
of hostile cognitions and affect and permissiveness towards violence and
other rule violations are made. Measurements of physiological arousal
will be made prior to, during, and after game play. Greater exposure
to violence is expected to be associated with greater levels of each outcome
measure (e.g., hostility, permissiveness towards rule violations, physiological
arousal during violence exposure). It is hypothesized that media
violence will have the greatest influence among those youth exposure to
greater amounts of violence within the home and/or community, because representations
of violence may appear more realistic and appropriate as models of behavior.
Main effects of exposure to each type of violence are also predicted, although
home/community violence is expected to have a stronger influence than is
media violence. (PDF
VERSION)(MS
WORD VERSION) |
