Claims About Violence

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In the article Hollow Claims about Fantasy Violence, Richard Rhodes argues that violent entertainment is not responsible for causing violent behavior. Despite the absence of a direct link between media and violent behavior, politicians, physiological organizations and Federal Trade Commission continue to warn against the media presenting fake violence to children. Long term Historical data shows that there is a decline in public and domestic violence in the West since the Middle Ages. Studies from University of California, Berkley have stated that the rate of homicide in United States has declined sharply despite the rapid increase of exposure to the various media such as internet, videogame etc. Experiments that were conducted on different groups of children, by exposing them to different kinds of "mock" environment which varied from violence to comedy, only proved that watching television motivates physical activity and not violent behavior. In the article, Rhodes refers to Martin Baker's critique, saying that it was written to appeal to, and support, those who think that fake violence makes people insensitive to violence. Rhodes states that violent behavior makes people scared but not violent. Furthermore, studies from University of Michigan showed that television is responsible for 10% of influence in violent behavior in children, and concluded that this established strong correlational evidence that implicated media violence as a risk factor for violent behavior. According to Rhodes, this correlation was inaccurate because the behavior of the children was measured on the basis of evaluation by peers rather than direct observation of their behavior. Rhodes strongly believes that the real cause of violent behavior in the children is harsh treatment from parents and peers as well as “personal violence encounter”. In the article, he advocates

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