The Effects of Media Violence on Anxiety in Late Adolescence

Exposure to media violence is related to anxiety in youth, but the causality of the effect has not been established. This experimental study examined the effects of media violence on anxiety, blood pressure, and heart rate in late adolescents. We also examined whether these responses varied by previous exposure to media and real-life violence. College students (N = 209; M age = 18.74; 75 % female; 50 % Caucasian, 34 % African American, 9 % Asian, 3 % Hispanic, and 3 % other racial minorities) were randomized to view either violent or nonviolent high-action movie clips. Participants reported on their anxiety before and after watching the clips, as well as their previous exposure to violence. Measures of blood pressure and heart rate were taken at baseline and during movie viewing. Participants watching violent movie clips showed a greater anxiety increase than those watching nonviolent clips. Both groups experienced increased blood pressure and reduced heart rate during movie watching compared to baseline. Prior exposure to media violence was associated with diminished heart rate response. Additionally, students previously exposed to high levels of real-life violence showed lower blood pressure increases when watching violent clips compared to nonviolent clips. Thus, relatively brief exposure to violent movie clips increased anxiety among late adolescents. Prior exposure to media and real-life violence were associated with lower physiological reactivity to high-action and violent movies, respectively, possibly indicating desensitization. Future studies should investigate long-term anxiety and physiological consequences of regular exposure to media violence in adolescence.

[1]  V. Rideout,et al.  Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds , 2010 .

[2]  P. O'Malley,et al.  Taking hold of some kind of life: How developmental tasks relate to trajectories of well-being during the transition to adulthood , 2004, Development and Psychopathology.

[3]  C. Spielberger.  Manual for the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) (Form Y , 1983 .

[4]  L. D. Kirby,et al.  Cardiovascular Correlates of Challenge and Threat Appraisals: A Critical Examination of the Biopsychosocial Analysis , 2003, Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

[5]  Catherine Hamilton-Giachritsis,et al.  The influence of violent media on children and adolescents: a public-health approach , 2005, The Lancet.

[6]  Christopher R. Engelhardt,et al.  This is your brain on violent video games: Neural desensitization to violence predicts increased aggression following violent video game exposure , 2011 .

[7]  Matt J. Gray,et al.  Coping style use predicts posttraumatic stress and complicated grief symptom severity among college students reporting a traumatic loss , 2007 .

[8]  Kristen Harrison,et al.  Tales from the Screen: Enduring Fright Reactions to Scary Media , 1999 .

[9]  Sylvia D. Kreibig,et al.  Cardiovascular, electrodermal, and respiratory response patterns to fear- and sadness-inducing films. , 2007, Psychophysiology.

[10]  M. Paradiso,et al.  Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain , 1996 .

[11]  Daniel Eisenberg,et al.  Prevalence and correlates of depression, anxiety, and suicidality among university students. , 2007, The American journal of orthopsychiatry.

[12]  Eric Vanman,et al.  Desensitization to media violence over a short period of time. , 2009, Aggressive behavior.

[13]  Christopher J. Ferguson,et al.  Comfortably numb or just yet another movie? Media violence exposure does not reduce viewer empathy for victims of real violence among primarily Hispanic viewers. , 2013 .

[14]  Karin Proper,et al.  Evaluation of the results of a randomized controlled trial: how to define changes between baseline and follow-up. , 2004, Journal of clinical epidemiology.

[15]  M. Windle,et al.  Violence exposure across multiple contexts: individual and joint effects on adjustment. , 2008, The American journal of orthopsychiatry.

[16]  S. Brady.  Lifetime community violence exposure and health risk behavior among young adults in college. , 2006, The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine.

[17]  J. Schofield,et al.  Sense of Belonging as a Predictor of Intentions to Persist Among African American and White First-Year College Students , 2007 .

[18]  Shelley E. Taylor,et al.  Mechanisms linking early life stress to adult health outcomes , 2010, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[19]  D. Ng-Mak,et al.  Pathologic adaptation to community violence among inner-city youth. , 2004, The American journal of orthopsychiatry.

[20]  Peter Jönsson,et al.  Respiratory sinus arrhythmia in response to fear-relevant and fear-irrelevant stimuli. , 2008, Scandinavian journal of psychology.

[21]  Sandra L. Calvert,et al.  The handbook of children, media, and development , 2008 .

[22]  D. Schwartz,et al.  Community Violence Exposure and Children's Academic Functioning , 2003 .

[23]  C. Spielberger,et al.  Manual for the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory , 1970 .

[24]  K. Slovak,et al.  Viewing preferences, symptoms of psychological trauma, and violent behaviors among children who watch television. , 1998, Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

[25]  B. K. Rakhra,et al.  Exposure of US Adolescents to Extremely Violent Movies , 2008, Pediatrics.

[26]  M. Morgan,et al.  The State of Cultivation , 2010 .

[27]  R. Boyd,et al.  Emotional and Behavioral Impact of Exposure to Community Violence in Inner-City Adolescents , 2001, Journal of clinical child psychology.

[28]  P. Valkenburg,et al.  Fear responses to media entertainment , 2008 .

[29]  T. Seeman,et al.  Protective and Damaging Effects of Mediators of Stress: Elaborating and Testing the Concepts of Allostasis and Allostatic Load , 1999, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

[30]  B. Bushman,et al.  Children's direct fright and worry reactions to violence in fiction and news television programs. , 2008, The Journal of pediatrics.

[31]  E. Donnerstein,et al.  Physiological Desensitization and Judgments About Female Victims of Violence , 1989 .

[32]  L J Proctor,et al.  Community violence exposure and children's social adjustment in the school peer group: the mediating roles of emotion regulation and social cognition. , 2000, Journal of consulting and clinical psychology.

[33]  L. R. Starr,et al.  Responding to Anxiety with Rumination and Hopelessness: Mechanism of Anxiety-Depression Symptom Co-Occurrence? , 2012, Cognitive Therapy and Research.

[34]  M. Schwab-Stone,et al.  The association of community violence exposure with middle-school achievement: A prospective study , 2004 .

[35]  Sonya S. Brady,et al.  Young adults' media use and attitudes toward interpersonal and institutional forms of aggression. , 2007, Aggressive behavior.

[36]  C. Grillon.  Models and mechanisms of anxiety: evidence from startle studies , 2008, Psychopharmacology.

[37]  Amy I. Nathanson,et al.  Prime-time television: Assessing violence during the most popular viewing hours , 2002 .

[38]  L. R. Huesmann,et al.  The role of media violence in violent behavior. , 2006, Annual review of public health.

[39]  S. Dornbusch,et al.  Direct and Indirect Pathways between Parental Constructive Behavior and Adolescent Affiliation with Achievement-Oriented Peers , 2007 .

[40]  J. Arnett,et al.  Adolescents' uses of media for self-socialization , 1995 .

[41]  Tracie Pasold,et al.  Violence exposure in real-life, video games, television, movies, and the internet: is there desensitization? , 2004, Journal of adolescence.

[42]  G. Gerbner.  Cultivation Analysis: An Overview , 1998 .

[43]  W. Kliewer.  Violence exposure and cortisol responses in urban youth , 2006, International journal of behavioral medicine.

[44]  J. Sinacore.  Multiple regression: Testing and interpreting interactions , 1993 .

[45]  N. Schneiderman,et al.  Stress and health: psychological, behavioral, and biological determinants. , 2005, Annual review of clinical psychology.

[46]  S. West,et al.  Multiple Regression: Testing and Interpreting Interactions. , 1994 .

[47]  Karyn Riddle,et al.  Personality Traits, Television Viewing, and the Cultivation Effect , 2008 .

[48]  Sharon C. Lyter,et al.  Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: Making it Work for Social Work , 2012 .

[49]  B. Bushman,et al.  Chronic violent video game exposure and desensitization to violence: Behavioral and event-related brain potential data. , 2006 .

[50]  Maurizio Codispoti,et al.  Aggressive and non-violent videogames: Short-term psychological and cardiovascular effects on habitual players. , 2004 .

[51]  James D. Johnson,et al.  The Influence of Media Violence on Youth , 2003, Psychological science in the public interest : a journal of the American Psychological Society.

[52]  A. Aldao,et al.  Adolescent Self-Reports of Social Anxiety: Can They Disagree with Objective Psychophysiological Measures and Still Be Valid? , 2012 .

[53]  Y. Hirooka,et al.  Vascular responses to fear-induced stress in humans , 2009, Physiology & Behavior.

[54]  M. Paradiso,et al.  Neuroscience: Exploring the brain, 3rd ed. , 2007 .

[55]  J. Grafman,et al.  Fronto-parietal regulation of media violence exposure in adolescents: a multi-method study. , 2011, Social cognitive and affective neuroscience.

[56]  C. Anderson,et al.  The effect of video game violence on physiological desensitization to real-life violence. , 2007 .

[57]  R. Loeber,et al.  Anxiety as a Predictor of Age at First Use of Substances and Progression to Substance Use Problems Among Boys , 2010, Journal of abnormal child psychology.

[58]  D. Fergusson,et al.  Life course outcomes of young people with anxiety disorders in adolescence. , 2001, Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

[59]  Janet B W Williams,et al.  Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders , 2013 .

[60]  Christopher C. Stewart,et al.  Performance, cardiovascular, and health behavior effects of an inhibitory strength training intervention , 2009 .

[61]  N. Fox,et al.  Temperament and the environment in the etiology of childhood anxiety. , 2010, Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines.

[62]  J. Hayano,et al.  Effect of relaxation training on cardiac parasympathetic tone. , 1994, Psychophysiology.