Abstract
Exposure to violent television and video games has been linked with increased aggression and decreased prosocial behaviour. However, little is known about whether these effects appear for violent literature. Conversely, reading fiction has been linked to increased social cognition, but it is unclear whether violent literature content would also show this benefit. This thesis aims to integrate these two fields by extending the framework of the General Aggression Model to include fictional transportation and its interaction with media content. Further, these studies investigate whether reading violent literature increases aggression and decreases pro-social behaviour in a sample of emerging adults, compared to watching violent television. Three experimental studies compared the effects of watching to reading violent content on aggression and prosocial behaviour. It was hypothesised that violent television and literature would increase aggression and decrease prosocial behaviour, but the effects for reading would be weaker than those for television. The first experiment yielded null results of media condition on all outcome measures but did have several limitations. The second experiment found that watching and reading violence decreased prosocial behaviour compared to a control. Reading violent fiction also increased social cognition scores compared to the other two conditions. The third experiment demonstrated that reading violent content increased aggression, but these effects were moderated by trait aggression and empathy, partially supporting the hypotheses. Two correlational studies then investigated the long-term links between watching and reading fiction and empathy and aggression. It was predicted that greater fiction-watching would show similar but weaker associations than fiction-reading in terms of higher empathy and lower aggression. However, only fiction-reading preferences were linked to increases in empathy and decreased aggression, partially supporting the hypotheses. A new Hybrid Model of Media Effects is presented to explain these findings.