“Does Movie Violence Decrease Violent Crime?” was some freaky talk of the town last week. This is the most Punk idea I’ve seen yet. A study that inspired an article in the NY Times that says, and don’t laugh, “Economists Say Movie Violence Might Temper the Real Thing” and was conducted by two economists; it isn’t a psychiatric or medical study. Not too juicy in the end. But it is pretty funny! And it goes to show that any major corporation (moviemakers in this case) can lobby any real science into helping them prove a bizarre, albeit farfetched and stretched-to-the-limit, point.
Bottom line – some geniuses are using the new freakonomics (a word now…) to prove that yes, if you are a bad person who watches killings and rapes and muggings and the like, you will calm yourself from doing them – at least for a while. Really now.
“Economists Say Movie Violence Might Temper the Real Thing” (Pieces Of The Article)
The study’s authors acknowledge that their research does not refute and in fact lends credence to the findings of laboratory studies. Neither does it address the long-term effects of exposure to violent media, an influence they view as pernicious.
Rather, the research uses a decade of national crime reports, cinema ratings and movie audience data to examine what has happened to rates of violent crime during and immediately after violent films are shown.
Though such films may indeed stimulate a greater tendency toward aggression in audiences, the bigtime economist offers a rejoinder much favored by economists: Compared to what?
Young men are the most likely to commit violent crimes. In opting to see a movie — even one featuring, say, gang rape or chain-saw amputation — they forgo activities that have a greater tendency to encourage mayhem, like drinking and drug use.
“Economics is about choice,” he said. “What would these people have done if they had not chosen to go and see a movie? Whatever they would have done would have had a greater tendency to involve alcohol. If you can incapacitate a large group of potentially violent people, that’s a good thing.”
“It’s not as if these people watching violent movies would otherwise be home reading a book.”
Their entire study is super long, but I cut out a few choice snippets:
In this paper, we provide causal evidence on the short-run effect of media violence on violent crime. We exploit the natural experiment induced by time-series variation in the violence of movies shown in the theater. As in the psychology experiments, we estimate the short-run effect of exposure to violence, but unlike in the experiments, the outcome variable is violent crime rather than aggressiveness. Importantly, the laboratory and field setups also differ due to self-selection and to the context of violent media exposure. Using a violence rating system from kids-in-mind.com and daily revenue data, we generate a daily measure of box office audience for strongly violent (e.g., “Hannibal”), mildly violent (e.g., “Spider-Man”), and non-violent movies (e.g., “Runaway Bride”). Since blockbuster movies differ significantly in violence rating, and movie sales are concentrated in the initial weekends after release, there is substantial variation in exposure to movie violence over time.
The audience for strongly violent and mildly violent movies, respectively, is as high as 12 million and 25 million people on some weekends, and is close to zero on others (see Figures 1a-1b). We use crime data from the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) and measure violent crime on a given day as the sum of reported assaults (simple or aggravated) and intimidation. We find no evidence that exposure to media violence increases violent behavior in the short-run.
After controlling flexibly for seasonality, we find that, on days with a high audience for violent movies, violent crime is lower. To rule out unobserved factors that contemporaneously increase movie attendance and decrease violence, such as rainy weather, we use two strategies.
First, we add controls for weather and days with high TV viewership. Second, and most importantly, we instrument for movie audience using the predicted movie audience based on the following weekend’s audience. This instrumental variable strategy exploits the predictability of the weekly decrease in attendance. Adding in controls and instrumenting, the correlation between movie violence and violent crime becomes more negative and remains statistically significant.
The estimated effect of exposure to violent movies is small in the morning or afternoon hours (6AM-6PM), when movie attendance is minimal. In the evening hours (6PM-12AM), instead, we detect a significant negative effect on crime. For each million people watching a strongly or mildly violent movie, respectively, violent crimes decrease by 1.3 and 1.1 percent. The effect is smaller and statistically insignificant for non-violent movies. In the nighttime hours following the movie showing (12AM-6AM), the delayed effect of exposure to movie violence is even more negative. For each million people watching a strongly or mildly violent movie, respectively, violent crime decreases by 1.9 and 2.1 percent. Non-violent movies have no statistically significant impact. Unlike in the psychology experiments, therefore, media violence appears to decrease violent behavior in the immediate aftermath of exposure, with large aggregate effects. The total net effect of violent movies is to decrease assaults by roughly 1,000 occurrences per weekend, for an annual total of about 52,000 weekend assaults prevented.
We also examine the delayed impact of exposure to movie violence on violent crime. While our research design (like the laboratory designs) cannot test for a long-run impact, we can examine the medium-run impact in the days and weeks following exposure. We find no impact on violent crime on Monday and Tuesday following weekend movie exposure. We also find no impact one, two, and three weeks after initial exposure, controlling for current exposure. This implies that the same-day decrease in crime is unlikely to be due to intertemporal substitution of crime from the following days.
While reading about the studies, I learned there’s actually a DVD player that automatically deletes all the juicy bits of movies. It’s a Mormon device.
It was invented four years ago, I read online yesterday–a trend I had no idea about: “What the world really needs now is more uptight little companies from Utah that will help us all block out the random messy naked blood n’ guts of the world. Companies that will, without anyone asking them to, protect us from media evildoers and exposed flesh and scary exploding things and that part in ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ wherein the universe is blessed, for the briefest of moments, with … Kate Winslet’s nipples.
…Utah-based ClearPlay, a shrill little corporation that has taken it upon itself to sit around the cube farm all day and watch countless Hollywood flicks and zap out any and all icky violent suggestive material in, say, “Lost In Translation.” For your protection. How kind.”
What is ClearPlay?
Great question! ClearPlay is a fancy DVD Player that can play regular DVD movies — but without profanity, violence and nudity.
Wow! How does that work?
It’s really quite ingenious. We create filtering information on a movie by movie basis, and then put those “filters” into the DVD player. This way, the DVD player knows when to skip or mute while the movie is playing.
But isn’t it choppy?
Nope. That’s the great thing about the ClearPlay service. We love movies just as much as you do, so we take great care to maintain the presentation quality of the movie– the only thing gone is “that one scene” you wish the kids never saw.
What about new movies?
Another great question! If you sign up for a ClearPlay Membership then we provide constant updates for your DVD player. This way ClearPlay works with new movies as they come out. It is really just that simple (and cool!).
Me again. The above was from their site. I’m wondering if parents do anything for their kids anymore. Besides cut their meat, of course.
Have you heard nuff? Go out and watch some gorey movies, kids, and I’ll see you on the street.
