Abstract
Movies that involve violence increasingly attract large audiences, leading to concern that such entertainment will encourage imitation by youth, especially when the violence is seen as justified. To assess differences between brain responses to justified and unjustified film violence, we computed intersubject correlation (ISC) of fMRI BOLD time courses in a sample of late adolescents while they watched pairs of movie segments featuring violent characters prior to and during violent action. Based on a virtue-ethics approach that emphasizes motives in moral evaluation, we hypothesized significant ISC in lateral orbital frontal cortex (lOFC) and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) in response to unjustified and justified scenes of movie violence, respectively. Our predictions were confirmed. In addition, unjustified violence elicited greater intersubject synchrony in insular cortex, consistent with an empathic response to the pain experienced by victims of this kind of violence. The results provide evidence supporting the notion that lOFC and vmPFC play unique roles in moral evaluation of violence, with lOFC becoming more synchronous in response to unacceptable violence and vmPFC becoming more synchronous in response to virtuous forms of self-defense, thereby expanding the purview of current models that only focus on vmPFC. The results suggest that justified violence in popular movies is acceptable to youth who are accustomed to viewing such entertainment.
Highlights
Movies are a popular form of entertainment that hold people’s attention and provide models of behavior (Bandura, 2001; Bushman and Huesmann, 2006)
Only one movie that featured James Bond was remembered by all participants and more than 80% couldn’t remember if they had seen any of the other clips even with more description from the research coordinators
We investigated the intersubject correlation (ISC) observed while participants watched the character and action segments of justified and unjustified movie violence (Figure 3)
Summary
Movies are a popular form of entertainment that hold people’s attention and provide models of behavior (Bandura, 2001; Bushman and Huesmann, 2006). Years of research have found reliable evidence of the socializing effects of repeated exposure to violence in entertainment media and aggressive tendencies in youth (Anderson et al, 2017). Some portrayals are more likely to be emulated than others. Violence that is seen as justified, in which characters kill others in self-defense or to protect friends and family are more likely to register approval than violence that has no socially redeeming value (Samson and Potter, 2016; Romer et al, 2018). Laboratory studies have found that exposure to justified film violence reduces inhibitions to act aggressively to a greater degree than exposure to unjustified violence (Berkowitz, 1984).
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