Media priming theory suggests that exposure to media content can temporarily influence individuals’ subsequent attitudes and behaviors. Exposure to violent media may activate aggressive thoughts or behavioral tendencies that influence how individuals interact with others shortly afterward.
This study examines whether fifth-grade students who played a violent educational computer game exhibited different levels of aggressive behavior during recess compared with students who played a nonviolent educational game or completed an art project.
Students who played the violent educational computer game will spend significantly more time engaging in aggressive behavior during recess than students who played the nonviolent game or completed the art project.
The study involved 135 fifth-grade students randomly assigned to three instructional groups of 45 students each.
The independent variable was the type of instructional activity completed before recess, consisting of three categories:
The dependent variable was the total number of minutes each student spent engaging in aggressive behavior during a 30-minute recess.
Aggressive behavior included verbal acts, such as taunting and threatening, and physical acts, such as pushing and grabbing.
A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to determine whether mean aggressive behavior differed significantly across the three instructional groups.
## Group Value
## 1 Art project 4.5
## 2 Nonviolent game 6.4
## 3 Violent game 10.0
## 4 Art project 4.8
## 5 Violent game 10.8
## 6 Violent game 11.4The following table summarizes the number of participants, mean minutes of aggressive behavior, standard deviation, and median for each instructional group.
| Group | N | Mean | SD | Median |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Art project | 45 | 4.96 | 1.04 | 5.0 |
| Nonviolent game | 45 | 5.86 | 1.06 | 5.9 |
| Violent game | 45 | 10.75 | 1.00 | 10.9 |
A one-way ANOVA was conducted to determine whether the average number of minutes spent engaging in aggressive behavior differed among the three instructional groups.
## Df Sum Sq Mean Sq F value Pr(>F)
## Group 2 872.6 436.3 409.7 <2e-16 ***
## Residuals 132 140.6 1.1
## ---
## Signif. codes: 0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1## The one-way ANOVA produced an F statistic of 409.73 with 2 and 132 degrees of freedom ( p < .001 ).## The results indicate a statistically significant difference in mean aggressive behavior among the instructional groups.Tukey’s Honestly Significant Difference (HSD) test was used to compare the instructional groups and identify which pairs differed significantly.
## Tukey multiple comparisons of means
## 95% family-wise confidence level
##
## Fit: aov(formula = Value ~ Group, data = Priming)
##
## $Group
## diff lwr upr p adj
## Nonviolent game-Art project 0.900000 0.3843098 1.415690 0.0001831
## Violent game-Art project 5.786667 5.2709765 6.302357 0.0000000
## Violent game-Nonviolent game 4.886667 4.3709765 5.402357 0.0000000The following interactive box plot illustrates the distribution of time spent engaging in aggressive behavior for each instructional group.
A one-way ANOVA assumes that observations are independent, residuals are approximately normally distributed within groups, and population variances are approximately equal.
Random assignment supports the experimental design, although independence of observations should also be considered because students interacted during recess.
The following tests provide additional information about the statistical assumptions.
##
## Shapiro-Wilk normality test
##
## data: residuals(ANOVA_Model)
## W = 0.99427, p-value = 0.8681##
## Fligner-Killeen test of homogeneity of variances
##
## data: Value by Group
## Fligner-Killeen:med chi-squared = 0.55438, df = 2, p-value = 0.7579The results of the one-way ANOVA revealed a statistically significant difference in aggressive behavior among the three instructional groups, F(2, 132) = 409.73, p < .001. These findings indicate that the type of instructional activity students completed before recess was associated with differences in the amount of time they spent engaging in aggressive behavior.
Students who played the violent educational game exhibited the highest average amount of aggressive behavior (M = 10.75, SD = 1.00), followed by students who played the nonviolent educational game (M = 5.86, SD = 1.06). Students who completed the art project demonstrated the lowest average amount of aggressive behavior (M = 4.96, SD = 1.04).
Tukey’s post-hoc comparisons revealed statistically significant differences between all three instructional groups. Students who played the violent game spent approximately 4.89 more minutes engaging in aggressive behavior than those who played the nonviolent game (p < .001) and approximately 5.79 more minutes than those who completed the art project (p < .001). Additionally, students who played the nonviolent game spent approximately 0.90 more minutes engaging in aggressive behavior than those who completed the art project (p = .00018).
These findings support the hypothesis that exposure to violent educational media would result in greater aggressive behavior shortly afterward. The results are consistent with media priming theory, which suggests that exposure to certain media content can temporarily activate related thoughts and behaviors.
Because students were randomly assigned to the instructional groups, the findings provide evidence that the assigned activity influenced subsequent aggressive behavior. However, the study only measured behavior during a single recess period, so it cannot determine whether these effects would persist over time.
The purpose of this study was to examine whether exposure to violent educational media influenced aggressive behavior among elementary school students. A one-way ANOVA revealed statistically significant differences in aggressive behavior among students who played a violent educational game, played a nonviolent educational game, or completed an art project.
Students who played the violent game spent significantly more time engaging in aggressive behavior than students in either of the other instructional groups. Additionally, students who played the nonviolent game demonstrated slightly more aggressive behavior than students who completed the art project.
Overall, the results support the study’s hypothesis and are consistent with media priming theory. The findings suggest that exposure to violent media content may influence children’s behavior shortly after exposure, even when the media is presented in an educational setting.
Although the experiment provides evidence of short-term behavioral differences, additional research would be necessary to determine whether these effects extend beyond the immediate period following media exposure.