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Weekly UpdatesThe popularity attained by professional wrestling makes its presence impossible to ignore and concerns about its potential influence difficult to avoid. Nielsen research for Fall 2002 through Summer 2003 shows that, on average, 627,000 children between the ages of 9 and 14 watch Raw every week, and 847,000 watch its companion show, Smackdown. More recent Nielsen data indicates that as of February 2008, Raw and Smackdown were each attracting total audiences of nearly five million per week (Nielsen Media Research, 2008). WWE's net revenues for the 2006 fiscal year amounted to almost exactly $400 million, with over $81 million drawn from television rights fees alone (United States Securities and Exchange Commission, 2006).
Yet despite its apparent widespread appeal, few familiar with Raw and Smackdown are surprised at the type of attention it has received in public discussion. The troubled voices of parents, social critics, and scholars alike decry that harm to vulnerable viewers will come from the sexuality, profanity, and extreme violence that occurs inside and outside the ring. This concern has been further magnified by the fact that WWE programming is wildly popular with males ages 12 through 17 (Bickford, 2006), a target market that may be especially impressionable. The Parents' Television Council (2001) has consistently labeled WWE content too violent for family hour programming, while academics have criticized a lack of dignity in its content (Raney, 2003) and for fostering physical aggression among young viewers ("The Evidence Against Media Violence," April 28, 2001). More alarming is research positing that children are more likely than adults to perceive wrestling as realistic (British Broadcasting Standards Commission, 2001). Since perceived realism increases the likelihood that viewers will imitate observed aggression, (Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1963), the fact that wrestling appeals to younger viewers has resulted in considerable worry.
Early studies on exposure to live wrestling matches have suggested that wrestling is more likely than other sporting events to invoke negative mood states (Arms, Russell & Sandilands, 1979). Lemish (1998) found that among adolescents, wrestling appeals almost exclusively to males; a second study revealed that elementary school boys may be prone to engaging in violent behavior and schoolyard fights that are imitative of the behaviors seen in professional wrestling (Lemish, 1997). Perhaps the most damning evidence of a relationship between watching wrestling and aggressive behavior comes from the research of DuRant, Champion, and Wolfson (2006). In their sample of over 2000 North Carolina high school students, the researchers provide evidence of a significant association between the time males spent watching wrestling and their self-reports of carrying weapons to school, fighting in and out of school, and physically fighting with a date or girlfriend.
The current study addresses questions related to this topic by examining the justification for violence found in televised professional wrestling. It starts by explicating content features of justified violence expected to moderate the influence of exposure to media violence on aggressive behavior, and presents the results of a study assessing the presence of features thought to facilitate aggression. Specifically, the frequency of contextual features representing sanctioned motives for violence and dispositions toward perpetrators and victims were identified and coded. Further, the level of equity found in violent reprisal was examined in order to investigate sequential patterns in the prevalence of violence that would be considered excessive given its provocation. The current study attempts to identify how often different combinations of these theoretically relevant features are coupled with violence in professional wrestling.
Justified Violence in Media
Previous research on television content has identified a number of contextual features associated with the representation of violence that contribute to its influence on viewer aggression (Wilson et al., 1997). Research in this area has suggested that when acts of violence are presented as justified, they may reduce inhibitions that prevent aggressive behavior, whereas unjustified acts of violence do not appear to have the same effect on viewer aggression, and might even inhibit aggressive responses (Berkowitz, 1962; Geen, 1981). Provoked research participants who had seen justified violence were more likely to demonstrate heightened aggression both in their attitudes toward others (Berkowitz & Rawlings, 1963) and in actual behaviors such as the administration of shocks to a confederate (Berkowitz & Geen, 1967; Hoyt, 1970). Although this research has gone generally unchallenged, Lachlan (2003) notes that it is based on a narrow conceptualization that defines violent reprisals as justified only when committed by liked protagonists with normatively sanctioned motives.
Motivational and Dispositional Factors. Defining justification based on motive is apparent in research by Felson and Ribner (1981), who commented that justified violence is an intentional act that requires some sort of normative reason. Motive has played a clear defining role in studies that establish justified violence operationally as acts committed in response to a previous attack from an aggressor (Geen & Stonner, 1973; Hoyt, 1970), or a credible threat by the perpetrator (Hoyt). Motive has also played a defining role in studies that have identified unjust acts as those lacking clear reason for violence (e.g., Hoyt, 1970; Geen & Stonner, 1973), offering normatively inadequate reasons such as greed (Berkowitz & Rawlings, 1963; Geen & Stonner, 1974), or the pure enjoyment of watching someone suffer (Berkowitz & Powers, 1979). Similarly, definitions of justice based on disposition are apparent in research by Berkowitz and Rawlings, who maintained that acts of violence are inherently just if the victim is a disliked antagonist. Procedurally, several studies have classified violence as just when it is perpetrated against immoral targets that are disliked and therefore deserving of physical punishment (Berkowitz & Geen, 1967; Geen, 1981).
A cursory look at this body of research might leave the impression that justified violence has been carefully explicated; however, by and large, this work has failed to detail the role of moral appraisal identified in other literature. Although only limited empirical research has addressed the factors that govern moral appraisal of violent media, research on disposition theory has suggested that audiences mostly enjoy seeing punishment as long as it is fair and recipients deserve it (Zillmann & Bryant, 1975; Zillmann & Cantor, 1977). Yet, detail on what acts are insufficient or excessive remains vague. In this regard, notions of equitable reciprocity seem crucial in the appraisal of violence as just or unjust. Without perceived accordance between transgression and reprisal, appraisals of justification for violence cannot occur. Yet research on justified media violence has largely overlooked this critical consideration.
Equitable Retribution. At the most fundamental level of moral appraisal, Kohlberg (1958) asserted that notions of justice are determined by considering whether or not the inherent qualities of a reprisal constitute literal reciprocity, or are strictly equal to the provoking act. An act of violent reprisal is just if its inherent qualities are equivalent to the violence that preceded it, and unjust if violence in the reprisal falls below or exceeds the initiating violent act. Notably, Kohlberg observed that this appraisal is moderated by our disposition toward the actors involved and perception of their motives.
Prior content analytic research on media violence has defined justification purely in terms of motive (Tamborini et al., 2005; Wilson et al., 1997), coinciding with behavioral research by labeling aggressive acts prompted by socially sanctioned motives as justified and those based on selfish or unsanctioned motives as unjustified. However, Kohlberg's (1958), and Colby and Kohlberg's (1987) assertions suggest that definitions based only on perpetrator motive might be inadequate. Instead, definitions that consider both the motive and the relative level of reciprocity in a given violent act might better represent the complex nature of the concept. This approach for the definition of justification is adopted in the present study. For a violent act to be considered just, it must not only be motivated by a socially sanctioned cause, it must also meet a standard indicating that the level of violence contained is roughly equal to the events that instigated the interaction, or falling within what one would consider to be a narrow range of responses considered appropriate under the circumstances (see Raney & Bryant, 2002; Zillmann & Cantor, 1977).
Implicit in this definition is the notion that an observer's judgment about what constitutes a justified form of equitable reciprocity often becomes moderated by the observer's disposition toward the actors involved and perception of their motives. The result is a set of acts or range of behaviors that viewers might deem inherently equal to a provocation given the existing dispositional and motivational context.
Problems with Conceptual Ambiguity
The limitations imposed by the narrow definition used in research on justification become evident when it is recognized that it appears inconsistent with the presentation of violence in parts of mainstream television. The National Television Violence Study (NTVS) (Wilson et al., 1997) contended that much of the violence on mainstream television is justified because it is motivated by self-defense, retaliation for previous acts, or other related reasons. At the same time, NTVS also revealed that most violent acts on American television are committed by disliked characters. If likable television characters frequently perpetrate violence for unsanctioned reasons, the experimental evidence used to differentiate the influence of justified and unjustified violence potentially lacks ecological validity to the characteristics of justified violence found in many media representations. By confounding justification with portrayals of the perpetrator as a liked protagonist, research in this area may both have failed to accurately represent justified violence as it appears in media, and done so in a way that alters our expectations about the way justified violence influences viewer behavior.
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