ABSTRACT
Since the introduction of film and television, depictions of violence in fictional media have become a staple diet of viewers around the globe. In the 1970s, the introduction of video games added a powerful source not only for seeing but for actively engaging in violence in the virtual media reality. Violence has become entertaining, and the preoccupation with thrillers, horror movies, or first-person shooter games is reflected in the sales figures for these genres. It is estimated that by the time they reach adulthood, American children will have watched 16,000 simulated murders and 200,000 acts of violence (American Psychiatric Association, 2005). Beginning in the 1950s, researchers have asked whether the exposure to depictions of violence may have negative consequences in increasing users’ propensity to engage in aggressive behaviour in real life. More recently, the question has been extended to a possible reduction in the willingness to show helping behaviour as a result of exposure to violence in the media. The background for asking these questions is rooted in the more general issue of how the observation of others’ behaviour, be they real people or media characters, impacts social behaviour, which has been at the core of the influential theory of social learning through modelling proposed by Bandura (1962).
