- Good afternoon. My
name is Abel Velasquez
and my project is over the effects
of violent literature on aggression.
I got to work with Dr. TJ Boynton
from the English
department on this project,
as well as I have to
give partial thank you's
to Dr. Robert Settle from
the psychological department
because he helped me compute a lot
of the data for this project.
To begin, I looked at a survey
conducted by Bushman,
Gollwitzer, and Cruz in 2015,
that asked media
researchers, pediatricians,
and parents if they
believed that violent media
increased aggression in children.
The broad consensus of that
was that they did agree
that violent media did increase
aggression in children.
Largely from that, they
said that violent films
and violent video games
were the highest agree
that they increased aggression.
However, they said that violent literature
and violent comic books
was the lowest risk
for increased of aggression.
Looking at past studies though,
there isn't a lot of research in that area
to say that is a safe assumption to have.
A study in 2013 by Hasan,
Begue, Scharkow, and Bushman
was a longitudinal study that looked at
the effects of violent video games.
For a couple of years, they looked at
participants who played video games
for longer periods of
time and they saw that
the more that they played, they had higher
increases of aggression
which supports that idea
that violent video game
increases aggression.
But in 2013, Anderson,
Carnagey, and Eubanks
conducted a study over
violent song lyrics.
They had participants
listen to a band Tool
and they had participants read either
a song that had violent
lyrics and one that didn't.
They saw that people who
heard those violent lyrics
actually did have an
increase of aggression
which supports that it
isn't just visual things
or visual violence that
can increase aggression,
it's also present in other types of media.
My purpose of my study was to see
if people who read violent literature
also had an increase of aggression.
For my study, I had
about a 93 item survey.
It had a bunch of demographic questions
but also participants had to read either
the Fight Club by Chuck Polahniuk
or Made From Scratch: How to Start and
Operate a Successful
Container Plant Business.
That was more of our
neutral general passage.
The Fight Club was more of our
violent experimental variable
and to see glorifying violence
in the chapter itself.
Afterwards, they were
having to answer either
the Anderson State Hostility Scale and
the Robert Williams'
Hostility Questionnaire.
The Anderson State Hostility Scale had
a varying degree of emotions so it has
'I feel angry' or 'I feel happy',
'I feel like banging on a table'.
It's on a five point Likert scale
so participants say
whether they strongly agree
with those or strongly
disagree with those.
In the Redford Williams' was more of
a situational questionnaire
so it has things like
'If you heard a group
of teenagers in a car
and they're blaring loud music,
would you say it makes your blood boil
or would you be more passive and say
that's why teenagers have bad hearing?'
There are 47 items on
that and breaks down into
anger, aggression, and cynicism.
From our participant
pool, I had participants
that were students in the spring of 2019
from Wichita State University.
They were recruited using
the SONA management system.
The survey itself was created Qualtrics
and that's where participants
got to take the study.
122 students participated in our study.
70% female and 29% male.
The study plan and
materials were all approved
by institutional review board
and they were on SONA
for about three weeks.
Our ethnic breakdown had
about 69% White or Caucasian,
11% Asian, 10% Hispanic, and
8.1% Black or African American.
The results section. Looking
at the hostility scores,
we saw that there was a small increase
for those that did read Fight Club.
However, it wasn't
statistically significant
which basically means that there's more
of a 5% chance that something else
impacted that result.
But we did see some
other interesting data.
One was looking at gender.
Comparing groups, we saw
that female participants
actually had higher hostility
score than male participants
and that stayed consistent
throughout all class standings
of freshman, sophomores,
juniors, and seniors.
Looking at class standings specifically,
we saw that freshman had
the highest hostility score
but that was quickly offset by sophomores,
that had the lowest.
It showed a huge contrast
in different grades.
Looking at the discussion,
there was a small difference
like I said about the
difference of hostility scores.
However, like I said, it wasn't
statistically significant.
I would say that there would
be no more research done
to see if it was just an error on my part
or if there is other things
that could be counted for.
Females from the data also is supported
by previous research from other studies
that females do typically
have a higher hostility score.
There isn't much to say why that is.
My assumption could be that there might be
something that makes
females more susceptible
to things of violence but
there's not much to say.
That's what I've gathered.
For class standings,
it didn't yield any difference of results
so I can't say that educational level
is a predictor of how you
are impacted by violence.
Then, for limitations, again
I have over 70% of females
so that's obviously not
generalized to the public
and that's also fair to
say that it could also have
impacted the data itself.
So that's one thing.
Another is obviously using
only Wichita State University.
That limits regions so you can't say
if this is generalized for
people on coastal places
or people outside of the country
or different places like that.
Also ethnicity, like I said,
69.6% White or Caucasian
so that's of information generalizable
for different ethnicities,
people from different countries
or cultures that have different
feelings about violence
and different ways in their type of media.
Using college students
obviously limits the age range.
There isn't a huge wide spread of people
so it isn't to say what happens
for people that are younger,
young adolescence, or
more older or elderly,
seeing if there's a difference in that.
For future research, I
think using other forms
of violence is also important.
We used Fight Club
because we deemed it more
of a physical violence but as we know
there are other forms of violence
like domestic violence,
sexual assault, or war
or different things like that.
Using different types of violence
could maybe also impact
a different result.
Adding more variance of age.
Like I said, seeing if it's the same
for children or older people.
to see if this is a
general trend across ages
is also very important.
Having more equal distribution
of male and females,
making sure it isn't a gender thing
or doing things like that.
Making sure we have a
fair balance for both
and seeing if there are
differences in culture.
Seeing if there is a difference
in different ethnic backgrounds
or different countries is also something
that could be definitely useful.
Also using different scales and methods.
My scale isn't perfect, I can't say that
the scales I used were the best way.
There are other ways that
people could do that.
So that's something that other people,
if they wanted to continue,
could also look at as well.
Thank you for listening to my message.
(clapping)
- Are there any questions?
- Tell me what you liked best
about doing this research
and did it excite you and
would you want to do it again?
- Absolutely, I think
what I liked the most
was really seeing the process
of researching a topic
and really seeing what the
overall research is in that area.
What people don't realize
is there's so much research
out there, there's dozens of studies,
meta-analysis, different things like that.
Even despite having all that research,
there's so much that we
still don't know in general.
There's still much things
that we have to investigate
and I think that's what
was exciting about it
is because there was literally
not a lot of research of literature
and it's effect on people
and especially adolescence.
I think that's definitely
something that could be
hopefully you feel that also gains
a little more prevalence
and I think absolutely I would love to do
another project again as well.
- I have a question about
the interesting results
about freshman versus sophomores.
Have you thought about
using some kind of measure
of people's general stress or anxiety
as a sort of background...
- Uh huh.
- To help control what
results you're getting?
- Right. I think that would be
something I could implement.
We were talking, at least
when I discussed with the
counsel and other students as well,
we talked about how in
different age points
and grade range that could impact
your different stress
levels and stuff like that.
For example freshman,
you come in a college
so it might be you're more stressed
or your emotions are
higher up than normal.
Then it dips down for sophomores
because you're into the flow,
you're not too stressed out.
Obviously it jumps to junior
because you're having a higher workload,
you're doing more things
preparing to graduate
and seniors, you're almost finished
and so a lot of people are more relaxed.
So it could be something
definitely pretest
type of thing to know what level.
Another thing is having a pretest
knowing the base level of hostility.
That's another thing I considered,
however, the problem with that is
when you measure that,
that might make people
feel afterwards that they might just reply
the same thing they already did.
But that is another thing that
could be looked at further.
- She pretty much was very similar
to what I was going to ask.
I know that in the cases of
music and things like that,
you chose your music based
on the mood you're in
at that moment and so when
you go into reading a book
are you depending on what mood you're in,
what book would you choose
to read in that time.
Does that effect the way
your readings would come out?
- I would say yes because
I think people that like
that type of material
obviously would be looking
for that type of literature.
I think for these studies, I think
that's why it's more
important to get a broad range
and you're getting more population
because then you're able
to helpfully generalize
and get more people that wouldn't normally
take this type of literature
and seeing if that is the
same for them as well.
Yeah, obviously, people
who like that type of stuff
are going to go read or
listen to that type of thing
so that's obviously impact as well.
- Thank you very much.
(clapping)
