The Effect Of Auditory Versus Visual Violent Media Exposure On Aggressive Behaviour: The Role Of Song Lyrics, Video Clips And Musical Tone.

Visual media is more emotionally arousing in regards to threat detection as read by fMRI machines. Depending on the trigger, cognitions of violence and arousal will be brought to every response. The visual media leads to increases in aggression-related cognitions. As the viewer identifies with the character in a music video, when the character is portrayed as violent, those behaviors then become cues for the viewer.

This study compared the effects of exposure to violent visual or auditory media on the aggression of experimental groups. They used hot sauce as the rating system. The groups with exposure were significantly more aggressive. The lyrics themselves were to violent lyrics with or without the violent imagery. Another study (Anderson, Carnagey, et al. 2003) said violence in lyrics elicited violence in thought. In this experiment, after watching/ listening to the song, the participant would give an amount of hot sauce to a hypothetical target. It was hypothized that music-lyric combinations would arouse more aggression than music-alone or lyric-alone aggression. Lyric participants allocated more sauce than participants who did not listen to lyrics. There was no significant effect for violent video exposure. The combination of the two did produce the highest aggression but it was not significant. Not surprisingly, the participants exposed to nothing gave significantly less sauce than all the others. Also not surprisingly, males were markedly more aggressive but the change in aggression was across the board.  

Exposure to aggressive lyrics, regardless of musical stimuli elicited greater aggression. The videos themselves did not seem to change the aggression.