NCT03220412

Viewing Movie Violence & Interest in Guns

Exposure to Gun Violence in Movies Increases Interest in Real Guns

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 104 (actual)
• Sponsor: Ohio State University · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 8 Years – 12 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

More American children die by accidental gun use than children in other developed countries. One factor that can influence children's interest in guns is exposure to media containing guns. The objective of this study is to test whether children who see a movie containing guns will handle a real gun longer and will pull the trigger more times than children who see the same movie without guns.

Detailed description

A recent analysis of top selling films found that the depiction of guns in violent scenes in PG-13 films that target youth has increased from the level of G and PG files in 1985 when the rating was introduced, to the level of R films by 2005, to exceed the level of R films since 2012. By definition, a PG-13 movie is supposed to have less violence than an R-rated movie. The Motion Picture Association of America says on its website that the violence in a PG-13 movie "does not reach the restricted R category." Our study shows that it does. By including guns in violent scenes, film producers may be inadvertently increasing aggression in youth via a weapons effect. This experiment directly tests this hypothesis.

Conditions

• Psychology, Social
• Adolescent Behavior

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Movies with Guns	Participants in this arm viewed movies (National Treasure, The Rocketeer) without guns. The movies, rated PG, were edited to remove guns from the scenes

Timeline

• Start date: 2015-07-15
• Primary completion: 2016-01-01
• Completion: 2016-01-01
• First posted: 2017-07-18
• Last updated: 2019-06-03
• Results posted: 2019-05-10