Consensus on Media Violence Effects: Comment on Bushman, Gollwitzer, and Cruz (2015)

We summarize the main findings of Bushman, Gollwitzer, and Cruz (2015), highlight its empirical contributions, and note interesting patterns and implications for future research. The results demonstrate that consensus exists among experts on the reality of harmful media violence effects on children and adolescents. We note likely differences in the makeup of the different samples and how these might have affected the results. This comment also presents a new breakdown of the Bushman et al. findings, highlighting the high consensus for causal screen media violence effects on aggression, which fairly closely mirrors findings from that voluminous research literature, and compares this to the lack of consensus on the harmful effects of print media violence, which corresponds to a quite small research literature. We conclude with a call for research on how to overcome resistance to unpopular scientific findings.