The Appeal of Media Violence in a Full‐length Motion Picture: An Experimental Investigation

Abstract

This paper reports the results of an experiment that examined the appeal of violence in a full‐length motion picture. College students (N = 134) were randomly assigned to view one of two different versions of The Fugitive. One version was the original theatrical release and the other version was identical except for the fact that nearly all of the scenes of violence were deleted. Deleting the violence did not affect enjoyment or perceptions of the quality of the movie. The popular assumption that violence is an enjoyable film commodity is suspect based on these results.

Keywords:

• Media Violence
• Enjoyment
• Entertainment
• Experiment

Notes

[1] For the pilot study, we did not conduct formal statistical tests on the mean ratings due to the low numbers of participants in the two conditions. On average, the means in the two conditions only differed by about 0.3 ‐0.4 on a 7‐point rating scale. Combined with the fact that participants who watched the edited film failed to find evidence that it had been edited, we proceeded to the main study relatively assured that we had succeeded with the manipulation.

[2] The loss of these participants did not affect the statement about the power of the design earlier in the manuscript.

[3] It is interesting to note that while participants who viewed the edited version of the movie perceived less than half as many violent acts as those who viewed the uncut version, they still perceived an average of over 40 acts of violence when, in fact, there were less than 10 acts that objectively could have counted as violent according to the definition we provided. It may be that even a little media violence invokes a more general perception that the film is a ‘violent’ film and leads to subsequent judgments of violent content that are more consistent with the general perception than the specific one.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Graig Lubsen

The editing equipment used for the preparation of the experimental stimuli was provided by a grant from the Purdue University School of Liberal Arts Dean’s Incentive Grant Program. The authors are indebted to Scott Schroeder, Director of Purdue’s Telecommunication Center, for his assistance in editing the movie. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Broadcast Education Association, Las Vegas, 2003.