The Impact Of Violent Media Contact Of College Students On Aggressive Behavior:the Role Of Empathy And Moral Disengagement

Purpose: the aims of this paper are to(1)examine the differences in demographic variables among violent media contact,empathy,moral disengagement and aggressive behavior of college students;(2)examine the impacts of violent media contact of college students,empathy,and moral disengagement on aggressive behavior;(3)examine the mediating effect of empathy and moral disengagement on violent media contact and aggressive behavior of college students.Methodology: Questionnaire of the degree of media violence,Buss-Perry aggressive questionnaire,the Chinese version of the interpersonal response pointer questionnaire and questionnaire of moral disengagement,a total of 550 questionnaires,were conducted by random sampling in college students of two full-time universities from Heilongjiang Province to investigate violent media contact,empathy,moral disengagement,and aggressive behavior of college students.And a structural equation model was established to explore the role of empathy and moral disengagement in violent media contact and aggressive behavior.Findings: The findings show that(1)there are gender differences in the amount of violent media contact of college students,and there is no difference in the only child and the source-place of students.(2)There are gender differences in aggressive behavior of college students,and there is no difference in the only child and the source-place of students.(3)There are gender differences in empathy of college students,and there is no difference in the only child and the source-place of students.(4)There are differences in genders and the only child in moral disengagement,and there is no difference in the source-place of students.(5)The amount of violent media contact and aggressive behavior have a significantly positive correlation with moral disengagement,and they have a significantly negative correlation with empathy.(6)Violent media contact and moral disengagement of college students positively predict aggressive behavior while empathy negatively predict aggressive behavior.(7)Violent media contact is not only able to directly predict aggressive behavior,but also via empathy and moral disengagement,the mediating effect,to impact aggressive behavior.(8)Empathy and moral disengagement serve as the significant mediating effect in violent media contact and aggressive behavior.The indirect effect is 0.027,the direct effect is 0.248,the total effect is 0.395,and the mediating effect accounts for 6.8% the total effect.