Abstract

There has been a growing body of literature demonstrating that media violence may be harmful to viewers of violent media. It has been shown that contextual factors (e.g., perpetrator types and motivation for violence) may have a greater influence than quantitative factors (e.g., violence frequency and level of violence) on the viewers. The present study set out to examine whether and to what extent the contextual factors, such as background music and film protagonist, may affect the viewers’ evaluation of characters and film in the violent media. In this study, participants first read a scenario where either a perpetrator or victim of violence was a protagonist, watched a violent film about the perpetrator and victim, in which either a mood-congruent or mood-incongruent background music was inserted, and then completed surveys about the two characters and film. Our results showed first that a level of criticism to the perpetrator was higher in the victim scenario condition than in the perpetrator scenario condition while a level of criticism to the victim was higher in the perpetrator than in the victim condition. Second, a level of perceived violence in the film was rated higher for the mood-congruent background music than for the mood-incongruent music. Finally, the level of perceived violence was rated higher in the victim condition than in the perpetrator condition when the background music was mood-congruent, whereas a level of interest in the film was higher in the perpetrator than victim condition when the background music was mood-incongruent. Taken together, this study has shown that the contextual factors of violent film can influence how viewers perceive the violence in the film.