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video games—see chapters 4 and 7). This was taken by many to be
“evidence” that media violence does not cause aggressive behavior.
Yet many causes have long-term effects. Consider smoking and
lung cancer. Or consider water, salt, and your car. Over many years, cars
that are repeatedly exposed to salt rust at a higher rate than those that are
not exposed. But if you pour saltwater on your car, will you see it rust?
No, it is a long-term effect. Some researchers have presented evidence
that the effects of media violence may be long term. For example,
Centerwall (1989) has documented that the murder rate appears to
double about 15 years after the initial introduction of television to
communities or countries. It has been hypothesized that about 15 years
must elapse before the full effect is revealed, as that is the time it takes
for a generation to grow up with the violent media and to reach a prime
crime-committing age. If this hypothesis is correct, then we shouldn’t
expect to see immediate effects. To the extent that we expect causation
to appear as immediate or short-term effects, we may miss a number of
important long-term effects.
Myth 7. Effects must be “big” to be important.
Many people have agreed that the accumulated research shows that
there is a systematic effect of violent media on aggressive behavior, yet
they also insist that it is not a large enough effect to be important. These
discussions often include a statistical approach. For example, Ferguson
(2002) notes that the amount of variance in violent behavior explained
by media violence in meta-analyses is somewhere between 1 and 10
percent. This means that if we drew a circle representing all the reasons
why someone might act violently, media violence would account for
between 1 and 10 percent of the pie. (It should be noted that some meta-
analyses have reported larger numbers, and that there are a number of
methodological reasons why these numbers may be underestimates; see
Paik & Comstock, 1994, for a detailed explanation.) Ferguson (2002, p.
447) states that these effect sizes are “small and lack practical
significance.” Ferguson is not alone in making this type of value
judgment (e.g., Freedman, 2002), but it is unclear on what basis it is
made. In epidemiological terms, if only 1 percent of the people watching
a violent TV show become more aggressive, and one million people
watch the program, then 10,000 people were made more aggressive.
That does not seem to us to “lack practical significance.” Indeed, many
(if not most) medical studies on the effects of drugs or diet are
concerned with such small effects. Supplementing one’s diet with