by Ubaidullah Pandit
We must always remember that we tend to react, reason and respond to things outside the way they are presented to us. Something pleasant will not have the same effect on us as something gruesome.
On January 13, 2021, Lisa Montgomery became the first woman to be executed in the United States since 1953. Among the many macabre and abusive things Lisa was subjected to in her childhood, perhaps none was more horrible than when her mother, in full view of Lisa, crushed the head of a dog with a shovel. This one incident lodged somewhere deep in the psyche of Lisa would also become a factor, howsoever small, in what she would do years later.
Many people don’t seem to understand how exposure to violent and graphic content affects us. When little Ada was mauled to death by a leopard, pictures of her mutilated body were carelessly circulated all over social media. Some people didn’t even realize what impact it might have on others, particularly on her parents.
Degrading Emotions
Each one of us must know that constant exposure to graphic content degrades our emotional response. If it continues over a period of time, desensitization sets into the point of extinction where we might become bereft of empathy. A desensitized person gets so used to the gory sights that they fail to evoke a sense of shock and exhibit the appropriate response. This has been researched and repeatedly attested by psychologists in many studies. For example, one such study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2002. It was found that playing and viewing violent video games has a causal correlation with the increase in aggressive behaviour. In other words, the former leads to the latter.
“…the scientific literature leaves little doubt about the effects of media violence on aggressive behaviour. A cumulative meta-analysis of media violence studies revealed that by 1975 the scientific evidence was sufficient to claim that media violence exposure was positively linked to significant violent behaviours and that even short-term exposure was sufficient to cause increases in aggressive behaviours.”— Anderson and Bushman (2002)
Graphic Is Graphic
This is true not only of violent video games but also of images depicting bloody or gruesome content. It’ll only take a moment’s reflection to realize how we feel when we get an unexpected graphic image or video through Whatsapp. Many a time such content is circulated, it sends shivers down our spine and we immediately realize we should not have seen it. We must understand that the negative impact of such things always seeps into our psyche insidiously.
The case of Lisa Montgomery, which I referred to in the beginning, might not have a direct bearing here, but it’s a constant reminder of how impressionable humans are. On December 16, 2004, Lisa strangled a 23-year old woman who was eight months pregnant and went on to rip the baby out of her womb and run away with it. Among varied and numerous, known and unknown reasons that had made her into this, we can identify the emotional inertness that must have developed in her through constant desensitization to which this horrible act is a testament.
Every human being is a composite creature, carrying an emotional and a rational side. Each needs the other and plays an important role in sustaining humanity in us. We must always remember that we tend to react, reason and respond to things outside the way they are presented to us. Something pleasant will not have the same effect on us as something gruesome. The virtues that define us must not get degraded. They are to be guarded against any such thing that has a corrosive effect upon them. So we must be careful when we come across such content on social media and should in no way attempt to engage with it.
(Ubaidullah Pandit has studied Law and Information Technology. He’s currently doing an MBA. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author’s and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of Kashmir Life.)
