テレビ暴力に関する実証的研究の概観

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In this review, the author defines television violence and presents the empirical studies pertaining to some processes hypothesized to account for the relation between viewing violence and subsequently behaving aggressively in order to 1) elicit a clearer understanding of the relation between viewing violence and behaving aggressively, and 2) give some suggestions for future studies. In reference to some scholars' definitions, a violent television program was defined as: " a single fictional story presented in dramatic form on TV such as a play produced for television, a feature film telecast, or a cartoon in which direct or indirect acts causing physiological or psychological damages toward living as well as nonliving things are portrayed." Based on the above definition of television violence, four major theories have been postulated to explain the process of how people are affected through viewing television violence: 1) catharsis, which posits that a vicarious participation in aggression reduces aggressive behavior 2) observational learning, by which aggressive behaviors depicted on television are learned and imitated by viewers 3) desensitization, through which people become used to violence, and are no longer upset or aroused by witnessing violence, and 4) encultulation, which assumes that a high exposure to television violence contributes to biased conceptions of social reality. Among these theories, catharsis and encultulation are not supported by empirical data. Although, a study by Feshbach and Singer (1971) indicated that students' aggressive actions were reduced after viewing violent programs, their study has not been perceived as reliable because of methodological defects. While certain types of program material may function to reduce aggressive behavior, there is no data to indicate that watching aggression depicted on television reduces viewers' aggressive behaviors. The same thing applies to encultulation. While Gerbner et al. (1976, 1977), asserted that television is the central cultural arm of a society, indicating that a high exposure to television violence contributes to biased conceptions of social reality, findings of latter studies (Wober, 1978; Doob et al., 1979) were contradictory to Gerbners' prediction. On the other hand, the observational learning and the desensitization theories have been supported by empirical studies, even though there are several problems awaiting solution. The observational learning theory faces the problem of clarifying specific situations in which people learn easier and activate what they learn; in a word, it is a problem of clarifying complicated mechanisms of human learning and behavior. Desensitization theorists need to clarify, 1) the relationship between psycho-physiological responses and overt behavior, and 2) the long-term effect of desensitization. Furthermore, they should 3) specify those violent programs which are likely to cause desensitization, and 4) state whether desensitization to a specific stimulus can be generalized to other stimuli of the same class. In general, an overview of studies on television violence brought out the fact that various kinds of violent stimuli were used in the studies such as comics, boxing matches, and westerns. This suggests the necessity of categorizing violent television programs. Certainly, one can assume that different types of programs would bear different effects. For example, Iwao et al. (1978) identified three different types of violent Japanese television programs: random violence, purposive violence, and suffering violence programs. It is worthwhile to verify the effects of these different types of programs. However, a basis for classification does not exist yet. Thus, an establishment of a standard for classification of violent programs based on thorough content analysis is urgent.
国際基督教大学の論文

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佐々木輝美
国際基督教大学

テレビ暴力に関する実証的研究の概観

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