Regressions and Advances (Was: Re: Walzer on the Left)

Miles Jackson cqmv at pdx.edu
Mon Mar 18 08:57:42 PST 2002


On Sun, 17 Mar 2002, [iso-8859-1] Cian wrote:


> --- Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote: >
> >
> > And in studies where people are exposed to films
> > with depictions of
> > violence against men, they tend to have more
> > aggressive reactions to
> > men afterwards.
>
> Yeah, but is this long term, or short term? The study
> quoted is interesting, but it all it shows is a short
> term correlation (and with no sense whether this was
> specifically aimed at woman).
>

I teach research methods, so I have to pick nits here. It's not correlational research. If you do a study and find that rapists are more likely to consume violent porn, that's correlational. These studies are experiments. Men are randomly assigned to the experimental conditions, and the randomization equalizes each conditions' prior characteristics. The only significant way in which the groups differ is due to film exposure.

Yes, practically, these are pretty short term studies. But they do show a real causal effect. It's not just a correlation.

Miles



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