Parents desensitized by past media violence no longer protest rising on-screen lethality

Evidence

The lethality of media violence has increased over time but no longer results in public protests or congressional hearings. The parents of today were raised on a heavy diet of televised violence. Does the public quiescence of recent years reflect parental desensitization and habituation to human violence? — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 977

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• QUESTION: Bandura poses this as an open question — whether parental desensitization explains public quiescence; the causal mechanism is speculated, not proven.
• XREF: Connects to cultivation theory (Gerbner) about media violence normalizing violence, and to general desensitization research.

Related

• Audiences habituate to violence so that even its rising lethality goes unremarked (similarity 0.94)
• Media violence teaches aggression, weakens restraint, desensitizes, and distorts perceived reality (similarity 0.81)
• Violence producers may become as desensitized as viewers to onscreen violence (similarity 0.80)
• Childhood TV violence predicts adult aggressiveness decades later, net of controls (similarity 0.79)
• Producing violent media may desensitize the producers themselves to violence (similarity 0.79)
• Viewing televised violence increases rather than reduces aggressive behavior. (similarity 0.78)
• Media violence shapes aggression potential far more than it triggers immediate acts (similarity 0.78)
• The television industry holds parents responsible while withholding the information needed to act (similarity 0.78)