REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

THIS BOOK IS BASED ON an earlier work, my doctoral thesis entitled The Treatment of Media Violence in Canada Since Publication of the LaMarsh Commission Report in 1977, for which an extensive literature review was inevitably required. In fact, research findings were an integral part of the data analyzed which led to the conclusions discussed in this book. Because interest in the topic, both before and since the thesis has been completed, has invariably leaned toward an interest in the research itself I decided to provide the following overview.

Historical Underpinnings
The impact of mass media became the subject of systematic research in the 1920s, with early studies sponsored at Columbia University soon after in the 1930s. These were prompted by three main factors: concern with the adverse effects on children from the growing movie industry; the use and perceived influence of propaganda during World War II; and the development of advertising on radio as a marketing strategy for consumer products.

Denis Howitt has defined three models as those most frequently used in communications research--the Effects Model (sometimes known as the hypodermic approach or the stimulus-response approach), the Uses and Gratifications Model, and the Cultural Ratification Model. Other models have very little bearing on the "psychology" of mass communication, and these three still tend to coexist with occasional critical scrutiny from each other and proponents of other methods.

Observation of the way in which mass media work over a period of twenty years convinced Paul Lazarsfeld, one of the original pioneers in the field, that effects depend upon a complex network of specialized personal and social influences. In both presidential elections and detailed case studies, he observed that people appeared to be influenced in their decisions more through face-to-face interaction with other people with whom they came into contact in daily life, than through media themselves. Opinion leaders, on the other hand, spanning all educational and socioeconomic levels were most likely to be influenced by the media largely because of their tendency toward greater interest in a topic or subject matter.

Because of the growing volumes of information offered by formal media through conferences, journals, meetings and so forth, Lazarsfeld observed a need among physicians, for example, to rely on colleagues for advice on new drugs. Consequently, personal influence from media depended upon the nature of the social groups to which the message recipients belonged and the relevance of the media involved. In this case, it was doctors influencing other doctors.

An important operative dynamic appeared to be peer pressure and the personal influence of charismatic individuals as leaders. For the followers, interpretation of their own selected media messages tended to be secondary to those selected by their leaders. Another finding of Lazarsfeld's was that, children tended to pick up from adventure programs ideas for games to play with their friends, whereas isolated children found in them material for daydreams.

By 1955, both Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld became known for their "limited effects" theories, which stress the processes of individual selectivity, perception, and recall partly based on the mediation of personal influence. These have since been amplified by other researchers and scholars. American researchers Angus, Jhally, Gerbner, Gross, Herman, Chomsky and Schiller are among them. In Canada Innis, McLuhan and Nelson have all examined the political and economic impact of mass media on social and cultural trends and the importance of personal and collective mediating factors in the meanings which are derived.

Public objection to the graphic, visual depiction of media violence as entertainment predated television by concerns about comic books. The outcome was the institution of a self-regulating code in 1954 which forbade the use of the words "horror" or "terror" on the cover and placed restrictions on the use of the word "crime." New York psychiatrist, Frederic Wertham, was instrumental in leading the opposition to violence in comic books and was one of the earliest critics of television violence, emphasizing that from mass media children learn that violence is a constructive, socially approved form of settling difficulties.

An annotated bibliography by Wilbur Schramm in 1968 provided an overview of research results on the effects of television on children and adolescents. The first studies on television began to appear in the late 1940s and followed two decades of research on the effects of film which had already been done. He pointed out that almost every important question raised by television research addiction, effect on leisure time, contribution to knowledge, effect on violence, relation to crime and delinquency, effect on mental adjustment, and so forth had already previously been raised in connection with the movies. Thus television research began with a number of its chief questions restated, tentative hypotheses ready for testing, and some useful experience with methodology.

Included in Schramm's bibliography was a summary of findings from an empirical study on the effects of television on the young done in Great Britain by Himmelweit, Oppenheim, and Vince in 1958. Their findings on the habits, interests, responses, fears, appeal of violence, distorted perceptions, impact on schoolwork and levels of general knowledge from television viewing have since been duplicated by many others.

A detailed study which followed, for example, by Schramm, Lyle, and Parker in 1961 provided some tentative answers to key questions on the subject; questions such as: Does it prematurely "age" children? What frightens them on television? Is it too exciting for children? Does television violence teach children violence? Does television cause juvenile delinquency? On the whole, their findings, when compared to more recent studies, were cautious and somewhat ambiguous.

Nevertheless, in his 1968 review of the literature Schramm still concluded that, where violence was concerned, the weight of evidence was behind Leonard Berkowitz's conclusions reached in 1965 and Eleanor Maccoby's in 1955. These were that although heavy dosages of violence in the mass media were not in themselves major determinants of crime or delinquency, its prevalence heightened the probability that some viewers would behave aggressively in some situations later. In relation to other causal effects, and what parents, broadcasters, and researchers can do about them, Schramm and his colleagues emphasized, as many others have since, the importance of a warm, secure home and of satisfactory peer-group relationships as an antidote to any potential harm that might come from television.

Schramm also focused on a significant complication in "effects" research that still remains with us today. Despite the growth and sophistication in methodologies employed and the transformative nature of our social environment, effects are more difficult to study in humans than in other things or beings such as rats because we are reluctant to experiment with humans in the same way as we do with rats. Many approaches are ethically out of bounds, particularly as these relate to young people. We would not, for example, determine whether or not television produces delinquency by the familiar experimental method of trying to reproduce delinquency by means of television.

As Otto Larsen pointed out in 1968, criticisms were beginning to surface over shortcomings in empirical studies conducted, such as laboratory experiments. They were considered good because they could go beyond mere description of associations to sequences of causation and considered faulty because of the artificiality of the setting. At best, it was argued, they could only give useful hints. Moreover, often college students were the ones tested and they are not always a representative enough sample. In defense of his own laboratory experiments Berkowitz explained in 1968 that subjects who were paid for participating in the research, got their rewards and then were involved in very intensive open-ended interviews to determine to what extent they were concerned about giving his team what they wanted. This, he said, was standard practice. Subjects were debriefed with the experiment itself explained to them later. The researchers themselves, said Berkowitz, approached the experiments in good faith and were quite convinced that their participants were honest as well.

Also in 1968, Albert Bandura, another major researcher in the field, conducted a series of experiments at the Stanford psychological laboratories which were designed to test the extent to which children will copy aggressive patterns of behavior when these patterns are shown by adult models in three different situations: in real life, on film, and as cartoon characters on film. He concluded that televised models are important sources of social behavior which could no longer be ignored as influences on personal development and that as technology improved, the impact would be even greater.

Bandura stressed that these effects are not confined to children but are similar for adults. Furthermore, laboratory findings did not present a pretty picture, unless our society was interested in increasing the aggressive tendencies of a growing generation. At the same time, he called for more research on the cumulative impact of television and the way in which the medium combines with other beneficial or adverse influences in shaping how people think and act. Since then, in 1987 at the University of Winnipeg, Wendy Josephson investigated the effects of television violence on boys' aggression, and largely replicated the findings of Bandura, Berkowitz, and Huesmann.

Multifarious Evidence
One of the distinguishing features about this field of inquiry is the vast number of studies it includes in a variety of disciplines. Although different models for inquiry can and do coexist with only occasional critical scrutiny of each other, there is, nevertheless, evidence of initiatives to integrate different approaches. Much of the literature is quite recent, with a sizable portion appearing in the last decade and a half. George Comstock, a leading American researcher in the field who published his own review in 1991, said in his preface:

"The near-exhaustive bibliography, Television and Youth (Murray, 1980), contains 2886 citations, with 60% appearing in the five years preceding publication. By comparison, a bibliography produced 10 years earlier (Atkin, Murray, & Nayman, 1971) contained only about 550 citations, and another appearing in mid-decade (Comstock & Fisher, 1975) contained about 1,100. This growth in social and behavioral science research on television and children has had three significant consequences:

*There is a substantial body of evidence on which to draw.
*Questions once addressed by single study or by a few studies now often are addressed by a much larger set of inquiries.
*Many topics previously unaddressed now have received attention, thereby expanding the scope of inquiry.

Despite, however, the dramatic increase in the volume of evidence, which has in turn increased the likelihood of meaningful interpretations, Comstock stressed that the overall result is a continuing need for collation and synthesis of the evidence.

Over the years there have been many more laboratory studies such as those conducted by Bandura, Huston, Ross, Berkowitz, Rawlings, Feshbach, Schramm, Lyle and Parker. More recently, the work has included field studies with strategies for remedial learning from media impairment, such as those developed by Eron, Huesmann, Lagerspetz aand Malamuth in the 1980s.

Since 1980, both in Canada and the United States, contributions have been made by Burgess, Check, LaCrosse, Malamuth, Cole, Lederer, Rich, Donnerstein, Linz, Penrod, Marshall and Barrett along with many others to the literature on sexuality and pornography, and their impact on society. In addition, we have the textual analysis approach spawned by the postmodernists, particularly since the early 1980s. They include: Barthes, Bogdan, Crook, Pakulski, Waters, DeKerchhove, Duncan, Fiske, Hartley, O'Sullivan, Solomon and Twitchell.

Other important contributions have been made by feminist scholars involving both simple and complex manifestations of gender bias in modern society. They include Baker Miller, Eisler, O'Connor, Miedzian, Razack, Toronto Women in Film and Television, and Wolf. These scholars argue that once we begin to focus on the deepest levels of meaning in ways that relate to truth and rationality, whether these are produced by language or media images, we come upon the rules that operate to suppress certain aspects of experience and highlight others. What we know tends to be produced through these rules with knowledge on one side of the coin while power is on the other. That discourse is the twin operative of power and knowledge and when we deconstruct scientific discourse we see that certain rules influence how we order our knowledge and experience of the world.

In her examination of "our culture of violence," in 1991 Miriam Miedzian discussed cultural anthropology courses which focus on how different societies weave different patterns of culture, with different threads: religion, music, sports, children's games, drama, work, relations between the sexes, communal values, and so on. The ways in which these make up the cultural web of a society are usually intricately related. In other words, if a tribe's songs and dramas are centered on violence and warfare, if its young boys play war games and violently competitive sports from the earliest age, if its paintings, sculptures, and potteries depict fights and scenes of battle, it is a pretty sure bet that this is not a peaceful, gentle tribe.

In her doctoral dissertation on The Pervasiveness of Military Themes in the Early Male Culture, completed in Canada in 1985, Diane O'Connor also defended the value and relevance of new approaches to human socialization. Both O'Connor and Miedzian have argued that the very stories we criticize are some of the most important socializing rituals that our culture has developed. Conversely, James Twitchell argued in 1989, that extreme violence in films, television and videos, watched predominantly by male adolescents, are just an extension of the historic rites of passage into adulthood.

Debate over Findings
Otto Larsen was one of the first researchers on the subject of violence and the mass media to comment on evidence concerning differences of opinion regarding the issue of "cause and effect." In 1968 he pointed out that, for the previous two decades, a collective search had already been underway for control mechanisms to manage the changes introduced into personal and social life by the technology of mass communication. Within a decade, however, the demands and preferences of free market forces appeared to have taken precedence and this, of course, is the situation that is still with us today.

Larsen saw the arguments framed in the form of a dialogue between the media psychiatrist, the media sociologist and the media economist. In terms of media audience critics, he doubted that widespread criticism was possible because the media cater to a mass audience and attempt to satisfy the largest number of persons possible.

For this reason, criticism was likely, he concluded, to be the reaction of a select, articulate minority. A collision of values would further cloud the debate because of the traditional aversion to censorship and a deep cultural commitment to violence as a fact of life. This would be balanced only marginally by a concern for the welfare of children. In any attempts at remedial action, rather than debate censorship in the abstract, he said, an examination of how it actually works might serve to make the concept better understood; an observation that surfaces time and again in the literature that has accumulated since 1968.

Two key developments were by then clear to Larsen. First, mass media content was heavily saturated with violence. Second, more people were spending more time in exposure to such content. Discussion on the effects of media violence appeared to involve not only the conduct of particular studies, but a continuing dialogue among researchers on the shortcomings of studies, the feasibility of alternative strategies, and the necessity for the fresh pursuit of new leads. Most of the concern over media effects related to the potential of media for inducing aggressive, deviant behavior, although it was already becoming apparent that effects may be direct or indirect, immediate or long range, and that, conceivably, exposure could have a cathartic effect in reducing aggression.

It was also noted that there is a difference between effects on individuals and effects on society. Also, that these effects influence people differently depending upon levels of education, personal and social adjustment, gender and the nature of their needs and expectations. Similarly, the nature of the circumstances of exposure was a factor. These observations were later confirmed in other studies, including the LaMarsh Report published in Canada in 1977.

The nature of societal response to the issue of violence in popular culture was observed by Larsen on the basis of twelve phases beginning with a feedback chain forged as critics speak out. The next phase involves the amplification of these opinions through the media. This is followed by local groups picking up the argument; volunteer associations mounting crusades; cleanup campaigns organized; distributors of media content being challenged; petitions circulated; politicians alerted; hearings held; testimony from authorities; resolutions passed; and government intervention threatened.

The feature that usually compelled the media to react in some visible way, Larsen observed, was the threat of restrictive laws. Self-regulation was promised as the particular communications industry undertook to "police" itself. Usually the major intent was "to be seen" responding to public opinion, which in turn tended to cool with evidence of action.

Similar manifestations of this cycle have occurred in the United States both before and since the U.S. Surgeon General's Report in 1972. In 1999 it has, once again, begun to gather momentum in the aftermath of the Columbine highschool shootings in Littleton, Colorado.

As far back as 1969 a report was made to the National United States Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence which was extremely critical of the media. According to David Lange and his colleagues the entire media, including their educational and professional organizations, showed an appalling lack of concern about the effects of particular media practices and little interest in research to determine how, by any reasonable standard, they might do better. Since then, the situation has only gotten worst.

They pointed out how the industry had promised to do research in 1954, at the time of the wave of concern over comic book violence while contending that there was no proof of television as a causal factor in deviant behavior. By 1967 the amount of research sponsored by industry was insignificant. The reason most frequently given was that the problem was not researchable; yet within weeks of the Commission hearings in 1969, for example, the National Broadcasting Corporation had authorized 500,000 dollars for the purpose of inquiry into the harmful effects of television violence over the subsequent five years. Parallels were beginning to surface on the issue of television violence with the debate over whether or not research findings could actually demonstrate that smoking cigarettes causes cancer.

In an attempt to offset the lack of coherence on how the subject was being addressed, Lange and his colleagues proposed the establishment of a media center for national, ongoing inquiry in a number of areas. They thought that such a center, located in Washington, D.C., should be a discreet alternative to government surveillance with input from the scientific community, although without continuing responsibility to report to Congress. The provision of financing, they said, should be independent of the political process with clearly delineated powers of program monitoring, evaluation and publication of results and should be free from the fear of sanctions.

It was envisioned that the center would be governed by three boards: one would be a governing board with overall supervisory responsibility and policy-making powers; another would be a research board to devise and execute continuing research and analysis of media practices and effects; and the third would be a media advisory board. Initial three year appointments would be made by the President of the United States. Basic functions would included collecting, studying, storing and disseminating information about performances, practices and values of mass media in the United States. This proposal, however, was not new. The model developed was actually based on similar recommendations that had been made over the previous 25 years. It has yet to be taken seriously.

Persistence in Research Despite Industry Opposition
The U.S. Surgeon General's Report released in 1972 attempted to move beyond what, until that time, had become a traditional focus on violence and children. One of the reasons for this decision was that a project involving a general review of the literature on the assessment of television violence was already underway by George Comstock and his colleagues with funding from the Rand Corporation. Nevertheless, with its own funding of well over one million dollars, the Surgeon General's Committee still managed to spawn more than 60 reports on short term effects from violence. Again, as Comstock and others continue to point out, the overwhelming weight of evidence pointed toward harmful effects from television violence.

Attempts to sustain the momentum of concern over the need for change were evident in the fact that in 1975 the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) commissioned George Gerbner and his associates to do further studies on media effects. Three years later, the study indicated that the level of televised violence had not diminished. At this time, the NIMH officially endorsed the methodology and data developed by Gerbner for "program violence monitoring"; a precursor to the cultural indicators model that has become so popular since.

As Withey & Abeles said in 1980, many drew upon the conclusions of the Surgeon General's report that without advances in methodology, little more could be added to the causal issue. Also, it was becoming apparent that most people use media for entertainment and not information purposes, and that very little research had been conducted on the meaning of entertainment in everyday life.

To meet this need, Withey and Abeles suggested three approaches: an ecological view; less emphasis on effects and more on attitudes, and; an examination of how attitudes are organized. Emerging orientation, they stressed, was on an "ecological systems approach" that involved "intertwined" research with technological developments, institutions, production and the "market" all taken into consideration. Roles, community, individual behavior and so on become aspects of the dynamic processes involved with no one factor viewable as an individual or dependant variable.

In part, this shift appeared to occur as much to sustain morale within the research community as for any other reason. Following the U.S. Surgeon General's Report in 1972, social scientists were initially disappointed in the lack of social action. No remedial legislation was passed. However, for the first few years there was in fact a slight shift away from violent programs. Organizations like the American Medical Association (AMA) and the National Parent Teachers Association (NPTA) drew sustenance from the Report. The jury was in on the debate. Analysis of the literature undertaken by the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1992 indicated that levels of violence in television programming had remained fairly constant, at about five violent acts per hour for the previous two decades, except for children's programming in which there were about "20 to 25 violent acts per hour."

One of the outgrowths from the U.S. Surgeon General's Report was that in 1980 NCTV was founded in Champaign, Illinois to follow through with television program monitoring initiated by the AMA and the U.S. based Parent-Teachers Association. Three years later, NCTV was instrumental in founding C-CAVE and soon after, the International Coalition on Violence in Entertainment (ICAVE).

In 1990, Sullivan provided a brief description of NCTV's approach to the monitoring process. It included a set of systematic guidelines used to define and clarify those acts counted in the monitoring process. NCTV focused on interpersonal physical violence, defined as "the deliberate and hostile use of overt force by one individual against another." It was necessary to see the perpetrator, his/her act of committing bodily harm (with the intent to do so), and the victim in order for that act to be counted as an act of violence. Verbal threats, physical injury due to acts of nature of accidents, vandalism, verbal abuse, or gestures without violent consequences were not counted. Besides identifying acts, NCTV's violence definition also contained guidelines on which to weigh the seriousness of the consequences of violence. Murder, for example, was weighted higher than a punch, and a punch was weighted higher than a slap.

By 1990, the NCTV data bank included over 1,000 scientific studies and reports on the issue of violent entertainment and its impact on stimulating human aggression. These studies covered over 120,000 people of all ages. The studies came from the United States and 19 other nations including Canada, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, England, Scotland, France, Belgium, Germany, Finland, Poland, Sweden, Ireland, Denmark, Italy, Holland, and South Africa. Preliminary reports of studies underway were also gathered from many other countries including Russia, Spain, Malaysia, New Zealand, Venezuela, Egypt, and Hong Kong. The overwhelming consensus in this research was that violent entertainment plays an important and major role in teaching a culture of violence and distrust for viewers of all age levels (3-70 years old), social classes, ethnic backgrounds and intelligence levels.

In their annotated bibliography on war toys and guns compiled in 1987, NCTV reported harmful effects from 13 of 15 studies conducted with over 380 normal children on the effects of playing with violent toys when compared to the effects of playing with nonviolent toys. These studies on war toys and guns were done at the Universities of Pennsylvania, Miami, Utah, Kansas, Montana, and Wisconsin.

Another annotated bibliography on Video Game Violence Research, compiled in 1988, indicated that 9 out of 12 studies reported harmful effects with all but 1, done in the United States, published in refereed scientific journals. It was pointed out that general war toy research is also applicable to the issue of video game violence, with similar effects ranging from increases in playground fighting to attitudes favorable to war.

As a child psychiatrist in private practice, as well as founder and research director of NCTV, Radecki has pointed out that the problem with violent toys, just as with other forms of violent entertainment, is not new. In his experience, the more a parent has played with violent toys as a child, the less sensitive he is likely to be to the issue and the more he tends to resist accepting the evidence. Violence, he stresses, is primarily a learned behavior. It can be learned from violent parents, playmates, TV programs, games, or events.

In order to reinforce the original panel's findings, the U.S. Surgeon General released a second report in 1982 on the subject of media violence. Another expert panel of seven leading aggression and television aggression researchers were even more definitive on the subject of media violence than they had been a decade earlier. Both the Surgeon General's Committees, however, ran into the usual and by now familiar problems with their Reports.

According to Bogart, almost from the outset, the broadcasting executives disassociated themselves from the consensus position of the Surgeon General's Committee. The contention that the evidence to date was incomplete and inconclusive, he said, was facilitated by the widespread misreporting of the Committee's findings in the press, a good deal of it the handiwork of headline writers.

By 1977, in an attempt to fend off the demand for a change in programming content that followed the first U.S. Surgeon General's Report, the warning sounded that pressure groups would emasculate television, making it less free, diverse, creative and democratic. Bogart countered with the argument that "freedom of viewing choice can only be exercised within limits set by those who provide the choices." The industry waved the specter of censorship and used the McCarthy period black lists as an example. The AMA was accused of violence because it had dared to challenge the right of the media to unfettered freedom in the dissemination of their ideas.

Because of the complex as well as controversial nature of the problem, still poorly understood by the majority of the populace, many politicians found it best to shift their responsibility and conveniently did nothing. Also, as reported on CBC Radio Prime Time with Geoff Pevere in 1993, as the Kennedy years of administration faded, the issue of media violence became less of a priority. Instead, politicians went along with the industry in concluding that it was up to parents to exercise wisdom in what their children watched. It was about this time that the Reagan era began ushering in a wave of enthusiasm for "deregulation" as a stimulant for the economy in general. The communications industry, along with other industries, received a boost to their basic premise that they should be allowed to do business in what ever way they saw fit.

The Catharsis Theory
Apart from the issues of "free speech" and "inconclusive evidence" another frequent justification for industry inaction on the subject of media violence has been "the catharsis theory." It is based on the Aristotelian principle that emotions can be purged or purified through vicarious experience, particularly in the form of drama. Mental catharsis has been frequently regarded as an important psychotherapeutic component. According to Moreno, originator of psychodrama as a group therapeutic modality, a "catharsis of integration" can result when an individual identifies closely with certain characters of the imagination or real life through a process of reorganization leading to a new and more extensive experience of reality in general. This process would, of course, be facilitated by a trained professional, not a common practice around the average North American television set, film theatre, or computer game.

Seymour Feshbach, an American psychologist and a major proponent of the catharsis theory in the middle part of the century, argued that the classical psychoanalytic view of hostile fantasies is that they are wish-fulfilling substitutes for action or unavailable goals and produce substitute gratification and a partial lowering of drive states. He tended to dismiss Frederic Wertham's claim, based on his experiences as a practicing psychiatrist, that television had become a school for violence, and called it a byproduct of clinical work. Clients, in Feshbach's view, did not enter a therapeutic relationship to be cured of reading comics or of viewing television.

What appeared to be overlooked by him was that cathartic releases for pent-up emotions are inappropriate as therapeutic strategies when harmful effects such as anxiety, insecurity, a mean world outlook, hyperactivity, or lack of concentration have brought people into a psychiatrist's office, whether or not they are aware of these symptoms being precipitated by or exacerbated by comics or viewing television. In addition, there are indications that rather than catharsis, excessive feelings of victimization, anger, rage and a sense of personal injustice can occur from consumption of media violence.

Two of Feshbach's studies, one in 1955 and the other in 1971, reported that television violence leads to a decrease in aggression. These have since been replicated by other researchers who have reported the opposite results. According to an annotated bibliography compiled by NCTV in 1989, involving research on boxing and sports fighting, a study done by Feshbach in 1961 was the only 1 of 44 to claim to find a positive effect from the viewing of boxing. All the others found that, for children particularly, the responses are much more likely to be consistent with behavior modification principles in the form of conditioning and copying acts. In other words, the value-laden nature of messages from media violence, such as violence filled approaches to conflict resolution as desirable, are much more influential and, in turn, problematic.

Another proponent of the catharsis theory has been psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim, who believed that creative war play helps boys gain control over their impulses. As Bettelheim saw it, war play permits a cathartic "discharge of aggression," which is necessary if the superego is to gain control of the irrational forces of the id and enable the ego to function again. According to this line of reasoning, forbidding war toys would be like suppressing sexual feelings in children and creating guilt feelings in them.

Miriam Miedzian, a social worker and teacher of philosophy by profession as well as a mother, has challenged this rationale and argued that teaching our sons to relinquish dysfunctional aggression will lead to more positive masculine characteristics of initiative, independence and courage. Violent toys, television shows, sports, music and historical attitudes, she stressed, have become an accepted part of the maturation process but with detrimental results. Toys of violence do not aid in the expression of feelings of anger, rage and jealousy in children and do nothing to enable them to eventually gain control over these emotions. Instead, violent toys are normalized in ways that are harmful both on a personal and social level.

Miedzian also argued that, where violence is concerned, there is a difference between feeling and acting. Most of us at one time or another have had the impulse to kill or hurt someone who has enraged us but very few of us act on it. Rather than providing a release mechanism for pent up emotions, action toys socialize violence as an inherent and necessary part of conflict resolution. They reinforce what she and others have described as "the John Wayne syndrome"; Values of the masculine mystique prepare boys, from a very early age, to some-day willingly risk their lives in battle. Boys find out when they are very young that war is respectable through endless role models of great conquerors, heroic warriors, and brave soldiers. It is not only patriotism that leads so many parents to acquiesce in the sacrifice of their sons in unnecessary wars but also pride in their sons' manhood. The problem is compounded because many young women raised with the image of men as tough and dominant find men in uniform sexy, thus further reinforcing the values of the masculine mystique.

Other researchers who have refuted the catharsis theory include Berkowitz, Halloran and Maccoby. According to Berkowitz, it is inhibition rather than catharsis that explains why media portrayals appear to reduce or diffuse aggressive or antisocial behavior. The hostility will still persist later. If the "bad guy" is punished in the end, if anything, the restraints of audience members may be weakened; "a sort of permission or warrant is given" to release aggressive behavior so that good can appropriately triumph over evil.

In its own review of the literature the LaMarsh Commission Report published in Canada in 1977 made a number of observations on the subject of catharsis. First, the preoccupation with aggression versus catharsis interfered with recognition of the range of effects that media violence could be having; second, too much emphasis on aggression nourished a preoccupation with the existence or nonexistence of conclusive proof, according to a standard that may be irrelevant; third, it became convenient for some in the media industries to loudly proclaim that the matter was not conclusively proven and that therefore there was no reason for concern; fourth, this rhetorical artifice exploited the methodological constraints of social science research in a complex area.

On the subject of hormonal influences on male and female behavior, there are some recent case studies and anthropological data showing significant culture-dependent human variability with respect to gender behavior. In relation to these, Miedzian has discussed the arguments of Anke Ehrhardt that behavior and environment can have a strong and direct influence on hormone levels, and that testosterone levels may well be affected by environmental factors.