Media defenders dismiss negative effects as limited to rare psychopaths

Evidence

A variant on the dispositional disclaimer of accountability is that only a few emotionally disturbed viewers may be adversely affected by televised violence. In testimony before the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, Joseph Klapper expressed contradictory views on the effects of televised violence. On the one hand, he contended, “I don’t know what effect the depictions of violence have.” On the other hand, he was highly certain that they had no adverse effects except on a rare psychopath: “It is my personal opinion that in reference to fictional portrayals of violence—portrayals of violence in fiction—the likelihood that witnessing depictions of violence would lead anybody other than an occasional psychopath into acts of violence is very, very unlikely” (Baker & Ball, 1969). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 920

Categorization

• XREF: This is the ‘a few bad apples’ dispositional exoneration tactic - parallels claims about how ordinary people are absolved of Islamophobic policy support by framing harm as coming only from disturbed extremists.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 920