TV & violence & studies

Miles Jackson cqmv at pdx.edu
Tue Apr 2 08:47:56 PST 2002


On Tue, 2 Apr 2002, Greg Schofield wrote:


> Miles, one of the fundemental problems with psychological studies of
> this kind is its inherent reductionism. What if there is no causual
> relationship whatsoever between TV and actual violence, yet the
> correlation exists?

Researchers have conducted experiments that support this hypothesis. Appreciate the distinction between a correlational study and an experiment here!


>
> By the nature of such studies this is irresolvable, at this point you
> can only fall back on common-sense and that on any complex problem will
> be misleading. Could not the relationship assumed by the study be
> reduced to a simple and rather stupid common-wisdom - "monkey see,
> monkey do".
>

What's wrong with simplicity? A simple explanation might be useful and appropriate! Complexity is not valuable in and of itself. If a simple explanation accounts for the data, why complicate things? (O's razor).

Miles



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