Nathan Perry

Our culture has become enraptured with visual media. There are very few homes in the US where one won’t find easy access to a television set or computer. According to Nielsen, the average person aged 18-34 watches four hours of television daily (“Insights”). This figure doesn’t take into account online streaming services like Netflix and Hulu or video storage sites like YouTube and Newgrounds. Considering all this media consumption, it begs the question, “what kind of effect does this media saturation have on our culture?”

Surprisingly, media has a relatively insignificant effect on the behavior of young adults. In fact, studies show that culture and worldview has the greatest impact, and media merely supports the ideas produced by these. This can be seen by looking at psychological behavioral models that explain how behavior is acquired and through comparison between American and international studies, highlighting how the difference in culture affects this age group.

In 1971, Albert Bandura published his “Social Learning Theory,” in which he proposed three major ideas about behavior formation. The first is that behavior is learned most effectively through modeling. By observing the examples of others, people can more quickly reproduce their behaviors. His second was the idea that there are four requirements for learning to take place: attention to the action, retention of how it is produced, reproduction of the action, and motivation to remember it. The third and final point he posed was that behavior is affected by the environment and vice versa (Bandura). According to this theory, models are the how of behavior and environment determines the what.

Expanding upon Bandura’s model, Craig Anderson published a theory on human aggression which stated that “the three main foci [of the model] concern (a) person and situation inputs; (b) cognitive, affective, and arousal routes through which these input variables have their impact; and (c) outcomes of the underlying appraisal and decision processes” (34). Behavior response is stimulated by the environment or person, filtered by their mental faculties, emotional state, and worldview, then evaluated by the mind before behavior is initiated. The single most important indicator of how any one person will behave is their “filter,” which affects how they will respond to a given stimuli.

While mental acuity and emotion play a role in determining this filter, it is the worldview that has the greatest impact on the way people behave. A worldview is the overarching attitude and perspective that one has towards the people, events, and world around them. Worldviews are affected by many things, but culture and society contribute a great deal.

This is not to say that media plays no role in the behavior formation process. Rather, media acts as a reinforcement of what is taught by the culture and accepted by the worldview. In his book, The Behavior of Organisms, B.F. Skinner defines reinforcement as “a certain operation performed [on] the [individual]... [to display behaviors] which are conditional [learned]” (61). This can be anything from a reward for obedience or punishment for disobedience towards a behavior. Media acts similarly to this, promoting certain ideas while shunning others, most effectively when the culture and worldview of the individual already align with the media content.

Media and culture do not always coincide, however. In a Chinese study, psychologists Fei Wang, Shengdong Lin, and Xue Ke found that watching shows based in intrigue had little effect on their audience. In discussing possible reasons why, they stated that  “education level… [the] age of the viewers… whose moral development level could have helped them easily distinguish right from wrong… [and the] personality of the viewers” were the likely cause of their results (Wang, 5). This would suggest that a worldview or cultural filter affected their decision to refrain from reproducing the qualities displayed in the show, despite extended exposure to it.

Similarly, a Scottish study of young adults states, “[a]ssociations have been found between film… exposure and smoking initiation in… adolescents in the United States. [However,] in Scotland, no similar association was seen, suggesting that there may be [a] cultural limitation on the effects of film… on smoking” (Hunt, 22). In a media-saturated nation like the US, where smoking is portrayed as part of a glamorous lifestyle, it is understandable that media exposure would increase the use of smoking. Public smoking was banned in Scotland during March of 2006 (Hunt, 30), meaning that the media promotion of smoking would be less effective due to the cultural attitude towards it.

Does this mean that visual media, particularly film and television, has no impact on the younger generation? According to an American study by Soledad Escobar-Chaves and Craig Anderson the answer is “no.” In their article, Media and Risky Behaviors, they write, “media ha[s] a very powerful influnce on health[y] behavior [in American youth]… [the] link is very strong [between] media consumption and... aggressive and violent behavior… [casual] smoking and alcohol use… [and] obesity and on early sexual initiation,” (Escobar-Chaves, 170).  Media has a definite affect on adolescents, yet as seen between this study and Hunt’s the major factor involved is a difference in culture and, consequently, worldview. American society is much more tolerant and promotive of violence, substance abuse, and fornication than most other nations. This, tied to the fact that a large portion of American film and television glamorizes these behaviors, helps to reinforce these behaviors in young adults, and perhaps even earlier into childhood.

Despite this, visual media does not have much of an impact on adolescents unless paired with the correct cultural standards or individual worldview. The behavioral models of Bandura and Skinner prove that behavior is developed through observation of the world and reinforced by film and television. While American studies seemed to show that media had large power over young adults, studies in Scotland and China concluded that media had relatively little effect if it countered cultural or personal standards. These combined pieces of data demonstrate that media is most effective if it promotes an idea already in place. Where that idea comes from - be it culture, self, or natural observation - may not be certain, but if a film or television show promotes that idea then the likelihood of it being reproduced is dramatically increased. So it is of utmost importance that young adults monitor and are careful of what media they consume, as they may find themselves involved in behavior that they did not expect to be a part of.