Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 alpha 4/15/85; site ubvax.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!epsilon!zeta!sabre!petrus!bellcore!decvax!mcnc!philabs!prls!amdimage!amdcad!cae780!ubvax!tonyw
From: tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Violence and Studies of Violence
Message-ID: <311@ubvax.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 27-Aug-85 16:55:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: ubvax.311
Posted: Tue Aug 27 16:55:17 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 1-Sep-85 04:46:47 EDT
References: <7@decwrl.UUCP>
Reply-To: tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch)
Organization: Ungermann-Bass, Inc., Santa Clara, Ca.
Lines: 31

In article <7@decwrl.UUCP> version B 2.10.3 alpha 4/15/85; site ubvax.UUCP version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site decwrl.UUCP ubvax!cae780!amdcad!decwrl!dyer@vaxuum.DEC (This did not happen to/Pablo Picasso) dyer@vaxuum.DEC (This did not happen to/Pablo Picasso) writes:
>> It's important to remember that it has never been shown that vicarious viol-
>> ence (movies, books, etc.) causes violent behavior[.]
>
>	100% Wrong.  Psychologists deal with a lot of uncertainties, but there
>is one thing that has been demonstrated again and again:  observing aggressive
>behavior results in increased aggressive behavior.
...
>	As for the issue at hand, aggressive behavior resulting from observation
>of same, I find the most people I've met think that psychological research is
>fuzzy in this area.  It is not.

No, it isn't.  But this kind of research doesn't ask questions of WHERE,
i.e. "observing aggressive behavior WHERE results in increased aggressive
behavior WHERE", because WHERE tends to be a laboratory (or classroom,
at best).

The fuzziness is not in the experiment; it's in the extension of
experimental results to social situations in the everyday world of a
given culture.  I'm still waiting for a psychologist with the moxie
to explain why, given these kind of experimental conclusions, average
Japanese men who like sadomasochistic women-hating comic books are so
much less violent then the average American man.

See Ian Buruma, *Behind the Mask*, for more on this side of Japan.

Japan is an extreme case, but it shows that there are societies where
even the worst fantasies almost never spill over into real violence.

Tony Wuersch
{amd,amdcad}!cae780!ubvax!tonyw