The Role of Perceived Peer Norms in the Relationship Between Media Violence Exposure and Adolescents' Aggression

Abstract

This study investigates the role of a social context variable, perceived peer norms, in the relationship between media violence exposure and adolescents' aggressive behavior. This was informed by a need to better understand whether, how, and for whom, media violence exposure may affect aggression. Three hypotheses were tested with peer norms as moderator, as mediator, and as both moderator and mediator in the relationship between media violence and aggression. A two-wave longitudinal survey measured media violence exposure, perceived descriptive and injunctive norms, and aggressive behavior among 943 adolescents (aged 10–14, 50.4% girls). Results provided support only for the moderated-mediation model. The indirect effect of media violence on aggression via perceived peer approval of aggression (i.e., injunctive norms) was moderated by perceived prevalence of peer aggression (i.e., descriptive norms). Specifically, media violence indirectly increased aggressive behavior for adolescents who perceived more peer aggression, but decreased aggression for adolescents who perceived less peer aggression. Implications for future research into media violence effects are discussed.

NOTES

Notes

1. Reported p-values refer to the unstandardized coefficients. For the standardized coefficients (b*), the p values were (nearly) identical and, therefore, not reported.

2. Standard error should be bootstrapped for indirect effects, but this is not possible due to clustering in data and model. An unclustered bootstrap of standard errors of the indirect effect yielded the same estimates and slightly higher p values. All other unstandardized coefficients in the Results section are based on analyses that treat media violence exposure as count variable (as discussed in the Analytic Approach section). Indirect effects, however, cannot be estimated in count models by Mplus. Therefore, for these indirect effects both the standardized and unstandardized coefficients are based on a model that treats media violence exposure as continuous variable.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a grant to P. M. Valkenburg from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement no [AdG09 249488-ENTCHILD].