Comic Book Violence and Vengeance

This study investigated the effects of reading violent versus nonviolent comic books on vengeful responding to hypothetical scenarios. Results indicated that participants reading violent comic books were the most vengeful. Exposure to violent media may influence the likelihood of seeking revenge by activating or reinforcing an individual’s aggressive network. Comic Book Violence and Vengeance 3 COMIC BOOK VIOLENCE AND VENGEANCE Revenge involves retaliating against a perceived harmdoer and unlike other forms of aggression, revenge is often perpetrated to “right” a perceived wrong, restore lost self worth resulting from a perceived wrong, and deter future wrong doings from occurring (Stuckless & Goranson, 1992; Cota-McKinely, Woody, & Bell, 2001). Emotions accompanying revenge include hatred and righteous anger (Kim & Smith, 1993). In part due to revenge based school shootings, revenge as a motivational factor for extreme violence has received increasing scientific scrutiny. For instance, Dedman (2000) reports that school shooters frequently cite being bullied and tormented by classmates as the primary reason for their heinous acts. Similarly, workplace violence, theft, and sabotage are associated with individuals experiencing some form of interpersonal injustice (e.g., being insulted, misrepresented or falsely accused by another; Bradfield & Aquino, 1999). More recently, research has begun to look at psychological, social, and environmental factors that may influence the likelihood of seeking vengeance. Of note, these factors are unrelated to the specific act(s) associated with the perceived violation of interpersonal injustice. For instance, consistent with the finding that most school shootings are committed by boys, Cota-McKinley, Woody, and Bell (2001) found that males, more so than females, were accepting of vengeful attitudes. In addition, Cota-McKinley and colleagues found that individual’s espousing biblical literalness were more likely to have a positive attitude toward revenge than those without such beliefs. However, recent research has overlooked the role of media violence on vengeance. Given that perpetrators of revenge based violence (e.g., school shootings) often immerse themselves in violent media, such an assessment is warranted. Although the impact of media violence has been under-reported by news services (Bushman & Anderson, 2001), research has consistently found that exposure to violent media appears to increase aggressive behavior, thoughts and feelings in children, adolescents, and young adults (Anderson, 1997). The vast majority of this research has focused on portrayals of violence in television, movies, and, more recently, video games. However, an understudied source of violent content to which children and adolescents are exposed comes from comic books. Although the effects of violent comic books on children came under scrutiny in the 1950s, today, the deleterious effects of video games are receiving a great deal of interest from both researchers and politicians. However, scores of comic books currently being sold are also laden with extreme depictions of violence. For instance, comic books such as Homicide, Spawn, and Evil Ernie frequently depict brutal acts of aggression. These acts include graphic illustrations of bloody decapitations, vivid eviscerations, and sinewy amputations. The weapons used to commit these heinous acts range from machine guns to machetes and an array of body parts including fingernails, toenails, and teeth. Comic books, unlike video games, do not provide a continuous story in which all of the action relevant to the story line is exhibited. In comic books, the story line is told in partially connected frames. Thus, to create a continuous story line, the reader provides continuity between frames. For instance, if one frame depicts a muscular hero swinging an ax toward his crouching enemy, the next frame would show the victim's head severed from his body, spurting blood. Thus, it is up to the reader to visualize that actual decapitation. This type of disconnected presentation of information forces the reader to engage their imagination and become active participants in the violence-laden story line (McCloud, 1993). Furthermore, Steven J. Kirsh and Paul V. Olczak 4 another factor contributing to story line engagement is that comic books are read at a comfortable, self-guided pace (Potenza, Verhoeff, & Weiss, 1996). There are several advantages of using comic books to assess the impact of media violence. In contrast to playing a video game, reading a comic book is devoid of arousal associated with motor movements. Although much of the arousal associated with violent video games will come from the violent components of video game play, the arousal associated with motor movements becomes an unwarranted artifact that has the potential to confound data. In contrast, the physiological arousal experienced by a comic book reader will most likely be due to the images in the comic books alone or an interaction of the images with the individual's personality characteristics. Furthermore, comic books may be less likely than video games to cause the participants to feel frustrated. Assessments of video games typically require participants to play a video game for 10-20 minutes and then stop, regardless of where they are in the game. It is possible that participants feel frustrated from having to stop playing the game prematurely. In contrast, when using comic books as the medium of media violence, an individual typically gets to read an entire comic book. In addition, the outcome (e.g., winning or losing) the video game being played can cause frustration. For instance, Kirsh (1998) found that children that tied a basketball video game gave more hostile responses to ambiguous provocation questions than children either winning or losing a basketball video game. Furthermore, it is difficult to find a sample of participants who don't play video games regularly. Estimates suggest that 84% of adolescents play video games on a frequent basis (Funk, 1993; Walsh 1999). In contrast, because comic books aren't nearly as popular as video games, the impact of previous exposure to the experimental stimuli is mitigated. Thus, the outcomes associated with reading violent comic books may be less likely than video games to be influenced by confounds such as motor arousal, frustration and previous exposure to the stimuli. Given the convergent validity of the effects of different forms of violent media on aggression (Bushman & Anderson, 2001), the findings associated with comic book violence should be similar to those of other forms of violent media. Recent research suggests this is the case. For instance, studies involving comic books (Kirsh & Olczak, 2000) and video games (Lynch, Gentile, Olson, & van Brederode, 2001) have demonstrated links between media violence and inferring hostile intent to the actions of another, even though the intent of that individual is unclear (Dill, Anderson, Anderson, & Deuser, 1997; Dodge, 1980). Dodge (1986) contends that individuals act aggressively and perceive hostility (when none is present) due to biases in social information processing. According to Dodge’s social information processing model, when frustrated or hurt in social situations (e.g., being pushed into a puddle), a series of social cognitive steps are enacted. Dodge’s social information processing steps include encoding of social cues (e.g., look at smiling provocateur), interpretation of social cues (e.g., provocateur has a malicious smile; harm was done on purpose), problem solving strategies (e.g., aggressive retaliation usually works), and the enactment of behavior (e.g., hit the child). In support of this theory, research has shown that the social information processing of aggressive children is replete with aggression laden (i.e., aggressively biased) perceptions, interpretations, and decision making (Dodge & Crick, 1990). Despite the high level of aggression in comic books, little recent research has assessed the impact of violence in comics on aggressive behavior and thoughts. (Potenza, Verhoeff, & Weiss, 1996). The research that has been conducted, however, suggests that exposure to Comic Book Violence and Vengeance 5 violent themes in comic books may aggressively bias an individuals' social information processing. For instance, Kirsh and Olczak (2000) biased the social information processing of adult males towards aggression (e.g., increased levels of hostile attributions about intent), but not females, by having them read violent comic books. Although Kirsh and Olczak's (2000) initial research on overt aggression suggested that violent comic books may have a bigger negative impact on the social information processing of males than females, more recent research suggests that type of aggressive conflict assessed may also be important. Specifically, Kirsh and Olczak (2002) found that both males and females demonstrate increased aggressive responding when the dependent variable involves judgments of relational aggression (however, the level of biased responding did not differ between males and females). Relational aggression involves social exclusion (e.g., not inviting someone to a party) or social manipulation (e.g., spreading rumors, threatening not to be a friend) in order to control another's behavior (Crick, 1995). Kirsh and Olczak's findings are consistent with previous research suggesting that the presence or absence of aggression-related gender differences may be related to the type of aggressive conflict under study (e.g., relational or overt aggression; see Bartholow and Anderson, 2002). Why then, should we expect to see violent comic books influence the likelihood of seeking vengeance? According to Bushman (1998), exposure to media violence can prime an individual’s aggressive network. An aggressive network contains associations among aggressive thoughts, aggressive memories, provocational stimuli, potential responses to provocations, and concomitant emotions. In addition, an accessible network is believed to aid in the processing and interpretation of social information (Bushman, 1998). An aggressive network becomes accessible through frequent use or through a temporary increase (i.e., priming) due to exposure to aggressive stimuli (e.g., violent media). Importantly, the content of the aggressive stimuli (e.g., hitting, kicking) involved in priming the aggressive network does not have to be related to the observed aggressive behavior (e.g., threat, gossiping) or thoughts resulting from an accessible aggressive network (Bushman, 1998). For the present study, the violent comic books should prime participants’ aggressive networks, potentially influencing participants’ responses to the vengeance scenarios. Thus, it is hypothesized that individuals exposed to the extremely-violent comic book will respond with a higher level of vengeance than individual’s reading the nonviolent comic book. Since repeated activation of an aggressive network should make it chronically accessible (Bushman, 1998), individuals with high trait hostility are believed to process social information with an aggressive network. In support of this contention, Epps and Kendall (1995), found a significant relationship between trait hostility and hostile attributional bias. Similar findings have been found by Kirsh and Olczak (2000). Thus, based on previous research, we expect to find that individuals high in trait hostility will be more likely to respond vengefully than participants low in trait hostility. Steven J. Kirsh and Paul V. Olczak 6