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Evidence

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

• DEFINE: Illustrates the ‘differential susceptibility’ caveat used to dismiss causal evidence by cordoning it off to rare cases.