Personal History of Violence and Response to Violence: A Quantitative and Free-Response Study Focusing on College-Age Students

This study examined the relationship between people’s history with violence and how they responded to a graphically violent real-life video. A review of the literature revealed there had been extensive research done about the effects of media and violence on individuals, yet there is a lack of evidence about the effect that violent home footage can have on college-aged students. This relational study utilized a questionnaire that included both a Likert scale and a free-response portion with 25 undergraduate students rating their relationship with violence in the past and their response to a violent video. Greater prior exposure to violence was associated with more extreme responses to violent videos. Suggestions are made for further research involving a larger study utilizing different types of violence recorded in real-life situations. RESPONSE TO VIOLENCE 3 Personal History of Violence and Response to Violence: A Quantitative and Free-Response Study Focusing on College-Age Students Violence, at some level, is unfortunately a part of human life. People experience violence as victims, as well as aggressors; they also witness violence between strangers, associates, and family. In the past 20 years, there has been an increase in exposure to violence due to the media. Currently, violence is seen in virtually all movies, TV shows, and video games. Most recently, computers, internet, and video-sharing community sites have allowed for the uploading of real-life home-made graphic violent videos that are being distributed throughout the nation at rapid speed. Websites that allow and encourage the distribution of these violent videos also have the capability to allow people to comment on the videos. Some of these video hosting websites view all the videos before posting, while others automatically post the videos online and put the responsibility for flagging inappropriate videos on the viewer. These graphic videos are being uploaded by the party who produced the video, which causes there to be much less censorship than what is found in other forms of media. People can become desensitized to violence due to their own personal experiences, which may include being the victim of or a witness to violence, whether real or vicariously via various media. Lonnie Athens has focused his professional career around understanding why some people become violent while others do not. Athens (Rhodes, 2001, n.p.) “Describes this process as one of violentization, in which people are first brutalized into learning that they will not be protected by the system responsible for them, that they must brutalize others or be brutalized themselves, and finally, through the performance of such brutalization they become violent perpetrators themselves. ” This RESPONSE TO VIOLENCE 4 response to violence study looked at how people’s history of violence, or level of violentization, will affect their response to a violent video that was uploaded to a popular gossip-style website. In addition, the researcher will attempt to discover if people’s responses to the videos are directly correlated to the level of violence they may have experienced in earlier life. The study used a Likert scale to scale people’s history with violence as well as a free-response and another Likert scale to rate their response to a violent video. Finally, this study looked at some of the potential social implications associated with video-sharing communities and the distribution of violent videos. Understanding people’s reactions to violent images and the relationship of these reactions to their history of violence could be a good tool for social workers. Although these violent videos on websites have numerous implications for those who have been victimized by violence, they also affect those who have not personally experienced violence. The social work profession should be aware of the long-term effects that witnessing violence can have on individuals. In addition, it is important for social workers to understand the probability that this type of violence is becoming more widespread. The violence that is being shown on the video-sharing websites is different from the scripted violence commonly see in TV and movies. Professionals need to understand the possibility that a wider variety of violence, such as child abuse, is becoming more acceptable due to the popularity and accessibility of video hosting