Abstract
The aim of this study was to thoroughly investigate the link between violent media consumption and aggressive behavior. Using a large longitudinal student sample, the role of empathy as a possible mediator of this relationship was of special interest. Data were drawn from wave three to five of the Berlin Longitudinal Study Media, a four-year longitudinal control group study with 1207 school children. Participants completed measures of media usage (violent content of TV and computer games), aggressive behavior perpetration, and empathy. The average age of participants was 10.4 years at Time 1 and 12.4 years at Time 3. Half of the study sample was male (50%). Trivariate structural equation modeling using three measurement times were conducted for assessing the role of empathy as a mediator of the longitudinal relationship between the usage of violent media content and aggressive behavior. For male students empathic skills were shown to unfold a key mediating role between problematic media usage and aggressive behavior.
Highlights
It is well known that television programs as well as video games often contain violent content [1,2,3]
We focus on the longitudinal effects of media violence on self-reported real-life aggressive behavior
For the recorded variables of aggressive behavior, slightly higher prevalence rates compared to a representative nationwide school survey [67] using a similar questionnaire for assessing aggressive behavior could be observed for the Berlin Longitudinal
Summary
It is well known that television programs as well as video games often contain violent content [1,2,3].With the increasing spread of the Internet and digital media in the past decade, a shift from televisionSocieties 2014, 4 to the use of interactive media, as in video-sharing websites and video games could be observed [4].Research further indicates that violent content, in most countries only suitable for adult audiences, is used by minors to a large extent [4,5,6]. It is well known that television programs as well as video games often contain violent content [1,2,3]. Several meta-analytic reviews could systematically show—for different age groups—that there is a positive association between the consumption of violent media content and various constructs of aggression, such as aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, aggressive affect, violent behavior, desensitization, lack of empathy and lack of pro-social behavior [7,8,9,10,11]. There are other meta-analytic reviews that question the reliability of these results due to publication bias and conclude that there is little support that media violence is associated with higher aggression [13,14,15,16]
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