Violent Movies Reduce Violence

Violent Movies Reduce Violence
Says New Study by Economists
January 08, 2008

A new study presented to the American Economic Association and summarized in the Business Section of Monday's New York Times argues somewhat counter-intuitively that violent movies actually reduce violent crime.  By comparing nationwide statistics for crimes of violence over the past ten years with attendance figures for movies rated for violent content by the kids-in-mind.com Website Gordon Dahl, an economist at the University of San Diego and Stefano Della Vigna, a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley found that when young men, the group responsible for most violent crime, attended a violent movie on Saturday night, it reduced violent crime, an effect that lasted past the weekend carrying over through Monday and Tuesday.

 

Dahl and Dell Vigna's Freakonomics-like study found that from 6 pm until midnight on weekends, violent crimes decreased 1.3% for every million people watching a violent movie with crime dropping 1.1% for each million people who are watching a mildly violent film.  In the hours from midnight to 6am, violent crime dropped 1.9% for every million attending a very violent film and 2.1% for each million watching a mildly violent film.  The same effect was still apparent when theaters showed non-violent movies that appealed to the same teenage (and 20 something) male demographic, but to a lesser degree.

 

Professors Dahl and Dell Vigna's study, which has implications for all types of media that contain violence including comic books, anime, RPGs and videogames, has placed the large community of psychologists who have conducted "laboratory" experiments purporting to show that violence in media leads to violence in real life in a state of near apoplexy.  Whether the effect is the result of catharsis, being "scared straight" by Hannibal Lector, or merely the consequence of sequestering a large portion of the population most likely to commit crimes during hours when a high percentage of crimes are committed, the economics professors maintain "on days with a high audience for violent movies, violent crime is lower," and that over the period that they studied (the last decade) the showing of violent movies in the U.S. has reduced the number of assaults "by an average of 1,000 per week or 52,000 per year."