ABSTRACT
This chapter is an update of Wood, Wong, and Chachere's (1991) meta-analytic synthesis of research on media violence and aggressive behavior in unconstrained social contexts. Our primary goal in writing this chapter is to determine whether research published since Wood et al. completed their literature review in 1987 reaffirms the causal effect they documented of exposure to media violence on naturally-occurring aggression. At the time of the original article, the relationship between media violence and aggression was still closely debated in both social policy and academic circles. In an especially pessimistic review, McGuire (1986) claimed that media effects in general "range from statistically trivial to practically insubstantial" (p. 213). Freedman (1988) similarly concluded that the available empirical "evidence does not support the idea that viewing television violence causes aggression" (p. 158).
