Institutional incentives, not human nature, drive televised violence.

Evidence

Finally, the widely shared misbelief throughout the broadcast industry that violence keeps programs on the air fosters its gratuitous use. Violence allegedly garners high ratings. Even though this idea is unfounded, if broadcasters believe it and their success rests precariously on ratings erroneously attributed to violence, they have a strong incentive to include beatings and killing in their programs. In sum, the answer to the abundance of televised violence lies more in production costs, program time constraints, a limited talent pool, and a mistaken belief about people’s craving for violence than in viewers’ supposedly base human nature. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 954

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: debunking the myth that ‘violence sells’ — media producers’ false belief about audiences creates a self-fulfilling content strategy.