Sara Prot

Coventry University | CU · School of Psychology and Behavioural Sciences

Exposure to media violence can increase the likelihood of aggressive and violent behavior, and also lead to other harmful effects on youth as well –including children's play with real guns, risk glorification, sexual violence, stereotyping of gender and minorities, and decline in prosocial behavior. The psychological processes underlying harmful me...

First person shooter or action video games represent one of the most popular genres within the gaming industry. Studies reveal that action gaming experience leads to enhancements of visuo-spatial processing. In contrast, some correlational evidence reveals that experience with action video games may be associated with reduced proactive cognitive co...

The American Psychiatric Association recently included Internet gaming disorder (IGD) as a potential diagnosis, recommending that further study be conducted to help illuminate it more clearly. This paper is a summary of the review undertaken by the IGD Working Group as part of the 2015 National Academy of Sciences Sackler Colloquium on Digital Medi...

Cultural generality versus specificity of media violence effects on aggression was examined in seven countries (Australia, China, Croatia, Germany, Japan, Romania, the United States). Participants reported aggressive behaviors, media use habits, and several other known risk and protective factors for aggression. Across nations, exposure to violent...

Violent content appears frequently in screen and audio media and takes many forms, including physical and relational aggression, gory images, violent stereotypes, and cyberbullying. Over six decades of research demonstrates that different types of media violence have significant detrimental effects, both immediately and in the long term. Exposure t...

Technological advancement has given rise to unprecedented access to television shows, movies, and video games. Naturally, scientists have dedicated much attention on how media, particularly violent media, influences viewers and players. The current article summarizes findings on the influence of such media on several outcomes including aggression,...

Objective: Two studies were conducted to (re)examine whether the strength differential hypothesis-that face-to-face bullies are likely to be physically stronger than victims-is valid in the cyberbullying domain. The novel contribution of our research includes testing the relations between the belief that strength is irrelevant for online bullying,...

The goal of this chapter is to provide a review of current theory and research findings concerning media violence effects on good (prosocial behavior) and evil (aggression, violence, stereotyping, and intergroup conflict). Several theoretical perspectives are discussed that can be used to understand media violence effects (the General Aggression Mo...

The positive role of secure attachment in reducing intergroup biases has been suggested in prior studies. We extend this work by testing the effects of secure attachment primes on negative emotions and aggressive behaviors toward outgroup members across four experiments. Results from Studies 1A and 1B reveal that secure attachment prime, relative t...

Clark and Giacomantonio (2015) raise several valuable research questions concerning the relationship between empathy and music genre preferences, and present interesting exploratory analyses concerning this issue. This response provides a review of findings from similar past studies in this area and draws out some of the themes that can help the fi...

Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) is a condition defined by dysfunction due to the amount of and ways in which individuals play video games. It is not simply about the amount of time played, as people suffering from IGD appear to be unable to cease playing despite their attempts to cut back, engage in dysfunctional behaviors (such as lying) and conseq...

Although the effects of media violence on children and adolescents have been studied for over 50 years, they remain controversial. Much of this controversy is driven by a misunderstanding of causality that seeks the cause of atrocities such as school shootings. Luckily, several recent developments in risk and resilience theories offer a way out of...

Importance: Although several longitudinal studies have demonstrated an effect of violent video game play on later aggressive behavior, little is known about the psychological mediators and moderators of the effect. Objective: To determine whether cognitive and/or emotional variables mediate the effect of violent video game play on aggression and...

Despite recent growth of research on the effects of prosocial media, processes underlying these effects are not well understood. Two studies explored theoretically relevant mediators and moderators of the effects of prosocial media on helping. Study 1 examined associations among prosocial- and violent-media use, empathy, and helping in samples from...

The Oxford Handbook of Media Psychology explores facets of human behavior, thoughts, and feelings experienced in the context of media use and creation. Divided into six sections, chapters in this volume trace the history of media psychology; address content areas for media research, including children's media use, media violence and desensitization...

Video games are a pervasive pastime among children and adolescents. The growing popularity of video games has instigated a debate among parents, researchers, video game producers, and policymakers concerning potential harmful and helpful effects of video games on children. This article provides an overview of research findings on the positive and n...

Today's children and adolescents consume a heavy dose of media violence. Youths spend an average of over seven and a half hours a day with entertainment media, many of which have violent content (Funk, Baldacci, Pasold, & Baumgardner, 2004; Rideout, Foehr, & Roberts, 2010). Thus, understanding media violence effects is an important goal for psychol...

Few studies have empirically examined how media stereotypes of Muslims influence Americans’ support for public policies exclusively harming Muslims. Across three studies, we tested the short-term and long-term effects of news portraying Muslims as terrorists on Americans’ support for public policies harming Muslims domestically and internationally....