The study that was conducted in the research article “Comfortably Numb,” contains two studies, to test whether playing a violent video game or watching a violent film would decrease a participant’ willingness to help an injured person. In Study 1, the participants were separated into two groups: the violent video games and the nonviolent video games. After the game, the participants would hear a fight taking place which results in one person being injured. For the violent video games, the participants took longer to help the victim and perceive the scene to be less serious. In Study 2, the participants were moviegoers and were asked to watch either a violent film or a nonviolent one, where they all witness a scene of a young lady who injured …show more content…
With the information provided, researchers predicted the violence in media would make people, “comfortably numb,” in which makes people less willing to provide aid when they witness a person in pain; this is also known as desensitization. The independent variable in both studies is the violent and nonviolent, in either video games or films. Study 2 has an additional independent variables, which is whether the participants witnesses the injured scene before the movie or after. The dependent variable for both studies is emotional and physiological reactions, such as the helping rates, the amount of time it takes for the participants to help the injured person, whether participants reported that the heard the fight, and the severity rating of the fight. In Study 1: the independent variable is operationalized by; having two stimulus material, where participants are dividend into two groups, one group would play a violent video game while the other group would play a nonviolent game. After the game, another stimulus was plotted, which all participants would hear a loud flight outside, resulting in one person being injured. The dependent variable is operationalized by the researchers