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This week we talked about multigroup experiments. Read the article by Bushman and Anderson on the Desensitizing Effects of Violent Media on Helping Others. Once you have read through the article, please answer the following questions:

1) The authors conducted two studies – one with video games and one with movies. When considering the study involving the video games, was this a two-group or a multigroup experiment? Why?

2) In the study at the movie theater, the “emergency” was staged before people went to watch their movie for some people and for others it was staged after they saw their violent or nonviolent movie. Do you think this study was a multigroup study? Was there a control group? Do you think that there are any issues in the way they set up their experiment?

3) Imagine that you want to examine Bushman and Anderson’s hypothesis that watching a violent movie (or playing a violent video game) will make you less likely to help someone in need. Pick a violent medium (movie or video game, not both) and describe how you would conduct a similar experiment that would be clearly multigroup. Make sure to identify your independent variable, your dependent variable, and your control.

See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23998209

Comfortably Numb: Desensitizing Effects of Violent Media on Helping Others

Article in Psychological Science · February 2009

DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02287.x · Source: PubMed

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Research Report

Comfortably Numb
Desensitizing Effects of Violent Media on Helping Others
Brad J. Bushman1,2 and Craig A. Anderson3

1
University of Michigan,

2
VU University Amsterdam, and

3
Iowa State University

ABSTRACT—Two studies tested the hypothesis that exposure

to violent media reduces aid offered to people in pain. In

Study 1, participants played a violent or nonviolent video

game for 20 min. After game play, while completing a

lengthy questionnaire, they heard a loud fight, in which

one person was injured, outside the lab. Participants who

played violent games took longer to help the injured victim,

rated the fight as less serious, and were less likely to

‘‘hear’’ the fight in comparison to participants who played

nonviolent games. In Study 2, violent- and nonviolent-

movie attendees witnessed a young woman with an injured

ankle struggle to pick up her crutches outside the theater

either before or after the movie. Participants who had just

watched a violent movie took longer to help than partici-

pants in the other three conditions. The findings from both

studies suggest that violent media make people numb to the

pain and suffering of others.

Film is a powerful medium, film is a drug, film is a potential hal-

lucinogen—it goes into your eye, it goes into your brain, it stim-

ulates and it’s a dangerous thing—it can be a very subversive

thing.

— Oliver Stone (quoted in Dworkin, 1996)

If film is a drug, then violent film content might make people

‘‘comfortably numb’’ (borrowing the words of Pink Floyd). Spe-

cifically, exposure to blood and gore in the media might make

people numb to the pain and suffering of others—a process

called desensitization. One negative consequence of such

physiological desensitization is that it may cause people to be

less helpful to those in need.

The link between desensitization and helping behavior is

provided by a recent model that integrates the pioneering

work on helping by Latané and Darley (1968) with our work

on physiological desensitization to aggression, illustrated in

Figure 1. Several factors must be in place before someone de-

cides to help a victim (Latané & Darley, 1970; see Fig. 2). Three

of these factors are particularly relevant here. First, the indi-

vidual must notice or attend to the violent incident. However,

decreased attention to violent events is likely to be one conse-

quence of desensitization. Second, the individual must recog-

nize the event as an emergency. However, desensitization can

reduce the perceived seriousness of injury and the perception

that an emergency exists. Third, the individual must feel a

personal responsibility to help. However, decreased sympathy

for the victim, increased belief that violence is normative, and

decreased negative attitudes toward violence all decrease

feelings of personal responsibility.

Although previous research has shown that violence in the

media can produce desensitization-related outcomes (e.g., Linz,

Donnerstein, & Adams, 1989; Molitor & Hirsch, 1994; Mullin &

Linz, 1995; Thomas, Horton, Lippincott, & Drabman, 1977),

this model illuminates two gaps in the desensitization literature.

First, there are no published studies testing the hypothesis that

violent media stimuli known to produce physiological desensi-

tization also reduce helping behavior. Second, there are no field

experiments testing the effect of violent-entertainment media on

helping an injured person. We recently found that playing a

violent video game for just 20 min decreased skin conductance

and heart rate while watching real scenes of violence (Carnagey,

Anderson, & Bushman, 2007). We conducted two studies to help

fill these gaps: a lab experiment using violent video games

(Study 1) and a field study using violent movies (Study 2).

STUDY 1

Participants played a violent or a nonviolent video game. Later,

they overheard a staged fight leading to injury. We predicted that

playing a violent video game, in comparison to playing a non-

violent game, would decrease the likelihood of help, delay

helping, decrease the likelihood of noticing an emergency (the

first step in the helping process), and decrease the judged se-

verity of the emergency (the second step in the helping process).

Address correspondence to Brad J. Bushman, Institute for Social
Research, University of Michigan, 426 Thomson St., Ann Arbor, MI
48106, e-mail: bbushman@umich.edu.

P S Y C H O L O G I C A L S C I E N C E

Volume ]]]—Number ]] 1Copyright r 2009 Association for Psychological Science

Method

Participants

Participants were 320 college students (160 men, 160 women)

who received extra course credit in exchange for voluntary

participation.

Procedure

Participants were tested individually. They were told that the

researchers were studying what types of people liked various

types of video games. After giving consent, participants played a

randomly assigned violent (Carmageddon, Duke Nukem, Mortal

Kombat, Future Cop) or nonviolent (Glider Pro, 3D Pinball,

Austin Powers, Tetra Madness) video game. We used the same

violent and nonviolent video games and the same participant

pool that Carnagey et al. (2007) used to demonstrate physio-

logical desensitization to violence.

The experimenter set a timer for 20 min, handed the partici-

pant a lengthy questionnaire, and said,

After the timer goes off, please complete this questionnaire. I need

to code some data for another study, but I promise to be back in

about 40 min. Please don’t leave the building until I get back. I

have to ask you some questions about the video game before you

leave. Okay?

The experimenter then departed.

After playing the video game for 20 min, participants rated on

a 10-point scale (1 5 not at all, 10 5 extremely) how action-

packed, enjoyable, fun, absorbing, arousing, boring, entertain-

ing, exciting, involving, stimulating, addicting, and violent the

video game was. The violence rating was used as a manipulation

check. The other ratings were used as possible covariates in the

analyses to control for differences in video games other than

violent content. After reverse-scoring boring ratings, principal

components factor analysis showed that the covariates loaded on

a single factor (eigenvalue 5 7.21), and were therefore com-

bined (Cronbach a 5 .94). Because the results were virtually
identical with and without the covariates, we only report the

simpler analyses that excluded the covariates.

Media Violence

Extinction of Fear/Anxiety Reactions
to Violence

Decreased
Attention to

Violent
Events

Decreased
Negative

Attitudes Toward
Violence

Decreased
Sympathy for

Violence
Victims

Increased
Belief That
Violence Is
Normative

Decreased
Perception

of Injury
Severity

Desensitization
Effect

Cognitive
& Affective
Outcomes

Desensitization
Procedures

Decreased Helping
Increased Aggression

Behavioral
Outcomes

Exposure to initially fearful stimuli in a
positive emotional context

(e.g., decreased heart rate reactivity)

Lower likelihood of intervening
Delay in intervening

Higher likelihood of initiating aggression
More severe level of aggression
More persistence in aggression

Fig. 1. Model of the effects of exposure to media violence. Such exposure serves as a desensitization procedure leading to increases in ag-
gression and decreases in helping. Adapted from Carnagey, Anderson, and Bushman (2007).

2 Volume ]]]—Number ]]

Numbing Effects of Media Violence

Next, participants indicated their favorite type of video game

(i.e., education, fantasy, fighting with hands or weapons, skill, or

sports). They also completed a lengthy bogus questionnaire

(over 200 items), ostensibly to determine what types of people

prefer various types of video games. The real purpose of the

questionnaire was to keep participants busy while a recording of

a staged fight was played outside the lab.

Three minutes after the participant finished playing the video

game, the experimenter, who was outside of the lab, played

an audio recording of a staged fight between two actors. The

6-min fight was professionally recorded using experienced

actors. Two parallel versions of the fight involved male actors

(used for male participants) or female actors (used for female

participants). In the recording, the two actors were presumably

waiting to do an experiment. They began by talking about how

one stole the other’s girlfriend (male version) or boyfriend

(female version). The discussion quickly deteriorated into a

shouting match (as indicated in the following script from the

male version):

First actor: You stole her from me. I’m right, and you know it, you

loser.

Second actor: Loser? If I’m a loser, why am I dating your ex-girl-

friend?

First actor: Okay, that’s it, I don’t have to put up with this shit any

longer.

When the recording reached this point, the experimenter

threw a chair onto the floor, making a loud crash, and kicked the

door to the participant’s room twice.

Second actor: [groans in pain]

First actor: Ohhhh, did I hurt you?

Second actor: It’s my ankle, you bastard. It’s twisted or something.

First actor: Isn’t that just too bad?

Second actor: I can’t even stand up!

First actor: Don’t look to me for pity.

Second actor: You could at least help me get off the floor.

First actor: You’ve gotta be kidding me. Help you? I’m outta here.

[slams the door and leaves]

At this point, the experimenter pressed the start button on the

stopwatch to time how long it would take for participants to help

the second actor—the violence victim. On the recording, the

victim groaned in pain for about 1.5 min. Because the first actor

had ‘‘left,’’ there was no perceived danger to the participant in

helping the second actor.

The experimenter waited 3 min after the groans of pain

stopped to give participants ample time to help. If the partici-

pant left the room to help the victim, the experimenter pressed

the stop button on the stopwatch and then debriefed the par-

ticipant.

If the participant did not help after 3 min, the experimenter

entered the room and said, ‘‘Hi, I’m back. Is everything going all

right in here? I just saw someone limping down the hallway. Did

something happen here?’’ The experimenter recorded whether

the participant mentioned hearing the fight outside the room.

Those who reported hearing the fight rated how serious it was on

a 10-point scale (1 5 not at all serious, 10 5 extremely serious).

As justification for rating the severity of the fight, the experi-

menter explained the rating was required for a formal report that

needed to be filed with the campus police. Finally, the partici-

pant was fully debriefed.

We conducted a pilot study involving 50 college students (25

men, 25 women) to test whether they

thought the fight was real.

Only 5 of the first 10 participants in the pilot study thought the

fight was real. We therefore increased the realism of the fight

(e.g., knocked over a chair and pounded on the door). After

making these changes, all of the remaining 40 participants

thought the fight was real.

Results

Preliminary Analyses

As expected, violence ratings were higher for the violent games

(M 5 7.89) than for the nonviolent games (M 5 1.51), F(1, 316)

5 823.13, p < .0001, prep > .99, d 5 3.22. We used four violent

Emergency!

Step 1: Notice that
something is happening.

Step 2: Interpret event as
an emergency.

Step 3: Take responsibility
for providing help.

Step 4: Decide how to
help.

Step 5: Provide help.

Fig. 2. Five steps to helping. Adapted from Latané and Darley (1970).

Volume ]]]—Number ]] 3

Brad J. Bushman and Craig A. Anderson

games and four nonviolent games to improve generalizability

(Wells & Windschitl, 1999). Within each type of video game, we

tested whether the four games produced different effects on any

of the dependent variables. No significant differences were

found among the four violent or the four nonviolent games. Thus,

data were collapsed across exemplars of video game types for

subsequent analyses.

Main Analyses

Helping. Although in the predicted direction, there was no

significant difference in helping rates between violent and

nonviolent video game players, 21% and 25%, respectively, z 5

0.88, p 5 .38, prep > .59, f 5 �.05. Participants who said their
favorite type of video game involved ‘‘fighting with hands or

weapons’’ were less likely to help than those who said their fa-

vorite video game was nonviolent, 11% and 26%, respectively,

z 5 2.46, p < .02, prep > .92, f 5 �.14.

Time to Help. When people who played a violent game did de-

cide to help, they took significantly longer (M 5 73.3 s) to help

the victim than those who played a nonviolent game (M 5 16.2

s), F(1, 70) 5 6.70, p < .02, prep > .92, d 5 0.61.

Heard Fight. The first step to helping is to notice the emergency.

As expected, people who played a violent game were less likely

to report that they heard the fight than those who played a

nonviolent game, 94% and 99%, respectively, z 5 2.00, p < .05,

prep > .87, f 5 �.11.

Severity of Fight. The second step to helping is to judge the

event as an emergency. As expected, people who played a vio-

lent game thought the fight was less serious (M 5 5.91) than did

those who played a nonviolent game (M 5 6.44), F(1, 239) 5

4.44, p < .04, prep > .89, d 5 0.27. Men also thought the fight

was less serious (M 5 5.92) than did women (M 5 6.49), F(1,

239) 5 5.43, p < .03, prep > .90, d 5 0.29.

Discussion

Violent video games known to produce physiological desensi-

tization in a previous study (Carnagey et al., 2006) influenced

helping behavior and related perceptual and cognitive variables

in theoretically expected ways in Study 1. Participants who

played a violent game took significantly longer to help, over

450% longer, than participants who played a nonviolent game.

Furthermore, compared to participants who played a nonviolent

game, those who played a violent game were less likely to notice

the fight and rated it as less serious, which are two obstacles to

helping.

STUDY 2

Participants in Study 2 were adult moviegoers. Our confederate,

a young woman with a wrapped ankle and crutches, ‘‘acciden-

tally’’ dropped her crutches outside a movie theater and strug-

gled to retrieve them. A researcher hidden from view timed how

long it took moviegoers to retrieve the crutches for the confed-

erate. We expected that participants who had just watched a

violent movie would take longer to help the confederate than

would participants who had just watched a nonviolent movie or

participants who had not yet seen a movie.

Method
Participants

Participants were 162 adult moviegoers.

Procedure

A minor emergency was staged just outside theaters that were

showing either a violent movie (e.g., The Ruins, 2008) or a

nonviolent movie (e.g., Nim’s Island, 2008). The violent movies

were rated ‘‘R’’; the nonviolent movies were rated ‘‘PG.’’ Par-

ticipants had the opportunity to help a young woman with a

wrapped ankle who dropped her crutches just outside the theater

and was struggling to retrieve them. The confederate was told to

pick up her crutches after 2 min if nobody offered help, but she

always received help in less than 11 s. After receiving help, she

thanked the helper and then hobbled away from the theater. A

researcher hidden from view timed with a stopwatch how long it

took participants to help the confederate. The researcher also

recorded the gender of the person offering help and the number

of potential helpers in the vicinity.

The researcher flipped a coin in advance to determine whether

the emergency was staged before or after the showing of a violent

or nonviolent movie. Staging the emergency before the movie

allowed us to test (and control) the helpfulness of people at-

tending violent versus nonviolent movies. Staging the emer-

gency after the movie allowed us to test the hypothesis that

viewing violence inhibits helping. The confederate dropped her

crutch 36 times, 9 times in each of the four experimental con-

ditions.

Results and Discussion

Although the helping delay increased as the number of by-

standers increased, and women helped less often than men,

these effects were not statistically significant and were not an-

alyzed further. The data were analyzed using a model testing

approach, in which a specific contrast representing our theo-

retical model and the residual between-groups variance are both

tested for significance. If the theoretical model adequately ac-

counts for differences among observed means, then the specific

contrast should be significant and the residual between-groups

variance should be nonsignificant. As predicted, participants

who had just viewed a violent movie took over 26% longer to

help (M 5 6.89 s) than participants in the other three conditions

(M 5 5.46 s), F(1, 32) 5 6.20, p < .01, prep > .95, d 5 0.88 (see

Fig. 3). Furthermore, the residual between-groups variance was

4 Volume ]]]—Number ]]

Numbing Effects of Media Violence

not significant, F < 1.0, indicating that the theoretical model

adequately accounted for the pattern of means. Indeed, the

model accounted for 98% of the between-groups variance. The

lack of a difference in helping before watching the movie rules

out the possibility that less-helpful people were more likely to

attend the violent movies.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

These two studies support the desensitization hypothesis linking

media violence to decreased helping behavior. In Study 1, vio-

lent video games known to desensitize people caused decreases

in helping-related behavior, perceptions, and cognitions. In

Study 2, violent movies delayed helping in a wholly naturalistic

setting. The person in need of help had an injured ankle in both

studies. In Study 1, the injury resulted from interpersonal vio-

lence, whereas in Study 2, the cause of injury was unknown. The

similar results across very different studies suggest that de-

sensitization caused by media violence generalizes beyond

failure to help victims of violence. Theoretically, we expect such

generalization; one factor influencing helping behavior is judged

severity of injury, and that judgment is influenced by one’s own

emotional and physiological reaction to the injury.

In sum, the present studies clearly demonstrate that violent

media exposure can reduce helping behavior in precisely the

way predicted by major models of helping and desensitization

theory. People exposed to media violence become ‘‘comfortably

numb’’ to the pain and suffering of others and are consequently

less helpful.

Acknowledgments—We thank Colleen Phillips for her help

with Study 1 and Elizabeth Henley and Brad Gamache for their

help with Study 2.

REFERENCES

Carnagey, N.L., Anderson, C.A., & Bushman, B.J. (2007). The effect of

video game violence on physiological desensitization to real-life

violence. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43, 489–
496.

Dworkin, A. (1996). Slicing the baby in half. Retrieved December 12,
2008, from the Times Higher Education Web site: http://www.

timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=162012&section

code=6

Latané, B., & Darley, J.M. (1968). Group inhibition of bystander in-

tervention in emergencies. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 10, 215–221.

Latané, B., & Darley, J.M. (1970). The unresponsive bystander: Why
doesn’t he help? New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Linz, D., Donnerstein, E., & Adams, S.M. (1989). Physiological de-

sensitization and judgments about female victims of violence.

Human Communication Research, 15, 509–522.
Molitor, F., & Hirsch, K.W. (1994). Children’s toleration of real-life

aggression after exposure to media violence: A replication of the

Drabman and Thomas studies. Child Study Journal, 24, 191–207.
Mullin, C.R., & Linz, D. (1995). Desensitization and resensitization to

violence against women: Effects of exposure to sexually violent

films on judgments of domestic violence victims. Journal of Per-
sonality and Social Psychology, 69, 449–459.

Thomas, M.H., Horton, R.W., Lippincott, E.C., & Drabman, R.S.

(1977). Desensitization to portrayals of real life aggression as a

function of television violence. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 35, 450–458.

Wells, G.L., & Windschitl, P.D. (1999). Stimulus sampling and social

psychological experimentation. Personality and Social Psychol-
ogy Bulletin, 25, 1115–1125.

(RECEIVED 7/1/08; REVISION ACCEPTED 8/24/08)

0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

H
el

pi
ng

D
el

ay
(

Before Movie
Staging of Emergency

Violent Movie

Nonviolent Movie

After Movie

Fig. 3. Mean time elapsed before adults helped a confederate pick up her
crutches as a function of whether they watched a violent or nonviolent
movie before or after the staged emergency.

Volume ]]]—Number ]] 5

Brad J. Bushman and Craig A. Anderson

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