Desensitisation, Disinhibition & Cognitive Priming in Aggression (AQA A Level Psychology)

Desensitisation

• Desensitisation is the process by which what was once a source of alarm/fear/aversion has transformed into something unremarkable or harmless

• Desensitisation translates as losing sensitivity towards a specific stimulus e.g. violent images or real-life behaviour so that an initially heightened response becomes ‘damped down’ i.e. violence and aggression in the game are viewed as ‘normal’

• Desensitisation is a physiological process: the sympathetic nervous system is triggered when someone is in the presence of violence or aggression (increased heart rate, adrenaline surge) leading to a fight-or-flight response (useful if you are being pursued by an actual predator, not so useful for a 21st century person!)

• If someone is exposed to a lot of violence they will, over time, become inured to the effects of this violence and they are likely to experience decreasing emotional responses to it

• Someone who is desensitised to violence is less likely to view violence and aggression as bad/harmful/toxic and they may feel little or no sympathy for the victims of violence

• Links have been made between the desensitising nature of some violent computer games and instances of real-life violence e.g. mass school shootings, particularly in the USA (Cantor, 2003)

Research which investigates desensitisation & aggression

• Brockmyer (2021) - A review article which concluded that exposure to violent computer games increases the risk of desensitisation to violence, which in turn may increase aggression and decrease prosocial behaviour

• Carnagey et al. (2007) - Participants who played a violent computer game for 20 minutes followed by a 10-minute video of  real-life violence had a lower heart-rate and galvanic skin response than participants who played a non-violent computer game, thus the violent game may have produced physiological desensitisation to violent content

Disinhibition

• Disinhibition occurs when someone lets go of the usual restraints and caution that hold them back from behaving the way they may (secretly) want to

• Disinhibition may involve the breaking of social norms in a spirit of ‘why not?’ and ‘what’s stopping me?’ that may well be learned from the behaviour exhibited by role models (e.g. celebrities, sportspeople, the government)

• Consumption of mass media in the form of TV, films, gaming, news channels, social media may have a disinhibiting effect on an individual, particularly if that consumption includes a lot of violent and aggressive content

• Examples of media-led disinhibition may include a teenage boy who thinks that violence is an acceptable way to deal with problems because this is how his favourite film character behaves or a woman who is openly hostile to asylum seekers because of derogatory comments she reads almost every day in her newspaper

• When someone is exposed to a lot of media-led aggression they begin to view the world using a modified set of social norms e.g. aggression is acceptable 

• These new social norms may replace  those which have been established for, possibly, centuries e.g. treat people how you would like to be treated; give people the benefit of the doubt; be polite to people regardless of their social status

• One of the major factors in the continuing existence of disinhibition is that media sources often portray aggression and violence as positive acts that are rewarded (see: operant conditioning) so the message is: ‘It’s fine to be violent because look at the benefits!’

Oh dear, this woman appears to be a ‘Karen’ (or is that just a lazy stereotype?)...

Research which investigates disinhibition & aggression

• Kurek et al. (2019) found that high school students with ‘dark’ personality traits (narcissism , psychopathy and sadism ) were more likely to engage in cyber aggression, particularly when their true identity was disguised

• Josephson (1987) - A naturalistic observation of grade 2 and 3 boys during a game of floor hockey found that naturally high-aggressive boys played hockey more aggressively after watching a violent TV programme compared to low-aggressive boys who had watched the same violent TV programme

Cognitive priming

• Cognitive priming refers to the ways in which environmental cues work to trigger aggression 

• Huesmann (1998) claims that cognitive priming is a sort of schema (specifically a script schema) in which an individual’s memory makes associations between objects, people and situations to provide cues as to how to act/behave

• Script schemas outline our expectations per situation (as long as we are familiar with the context) e.g. That young guy walking towards me wearing a hoodie looks like he might mug me; This Netflix drama is about Colombian drug dealers so I’m bracing myself for a lot of nasty violence

• People who consume a lot of violent media are likely to develop rigid schemas and are easily primed to anticipate or respond to aggressive stimuli than those who do not consume a lot of violent media (Berkowitz, 1984)

Research which investigates cognitive priming

• Leyens & Dunand (1991) - Male participants were told that they would watch a violent or a neutral film and were then told to give (fake) electric shocks to a confederate: the participants who were primed to watch a violent film gave higher levels of electric shocks than those in the neutral-film condition

• Bushman (1998) - Participants who watched a violent video had faster reaction times to aggressive words than those who had watched a non-violent video 

Evaluation of Desensitisation, Disinhibition & Cognitive Priming

Strengths

• All of these features of media influence on aggression are hugely important for policy-makers and those working in fields such as education, health and law enforcement to understand e.g. the fact that a weapon is a key priming stimulus which could be used to try to prevent the growing problem of knife crime

• An awareness of cognitive priming could be used to promote prosocial behaviours or attitudes in computer gaming e.g. introducing weaponless combat games, emphasising resolution rather than conflict

Weaknesses

• There is no concrete, 100%-watertight proof that media consumption causes - or even triggers - aggressive behaviour so the theories linked to media influence on aggression remain debatable

• All of these features of media influence on aggression are difficult to operationalise and measure e.g. at what point does an individual become disinhibited and how can this be observed in their behaviour?

Link to Approaches:

There is a strong Cognitive element to the topics covered on this page e.g. priming happens exclusively via thought-processes, memory and perception. Disinhibition can be understood using the Learning Theory approach, with its emphasis on observed behaviour and reinforcement.