The extent to which viewers watch violence-containing programs

Abstract

Content analysts have focused upon measures of physical violence leading or partially leading to injury and death, and have used these to assess the violence levels in programs. Critical analysts have recognized that the more violent programs, on these criteria, constitute a category of action adventure series of serials, as well as characterizing many one-off films. The audience does not consume these (or other) types of programs homogeneously; thus young teenagers have a higher rate of consumption of action adventure. Overall, in Britain, amount of viewing of action adventure as well as of violent films does not exceed one-fifth or one-sixth of the overall viewing diet per week, though in exceptional cases people may see as much as half their total viewing from this category.

Apart from situational influences, evidence exists that personality attributes relate to amount of viewing of action adventure (not necessarily, and even probably not for their violent content). In fact it seems to be more timid people, lower on sensation seeking, higher on external locus of control, who view more action adventure; and these programs tend to be rated overall as of relatively low impact and attention value. Other studies indicate that higher violence content does not contribute toward larger audiences. Probably, therefore, violence-containing programs are viewed for their arousal-inducing and retribution-dealing attributes, by more timid rather than by more aggressive people.