Professor Brad Bushman spends his time researching and teaching about the negative effects of violence in the media. Bushman, also the Margaret Hall and Robert Randal Rinehart Chair of Mass Communication, said his “ultimate goal in life is to do research that helps make the world a more peaceful place.”
Bushman has published over 200 peer-reviewed journal articles, which have been cited over 35,000 times. His research has been published in top scientific journals, and he has been featured extensively in media outlets such as the BBC, the New York Times and NPR. Bushman’s expertise in this area also led to him testifying before the U.S. Congress on the topic of youth violence on behalf of former President Barack Obama’s Executive Actions on Gun Control committee following the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012.
Currently, he is working on a follow-up study that explores whether teaching kids about gun safety can reduce dangerous behavior. Bushman said this study is especially important to him because nearly 50 kids are shot everyday in the U.S. with guns.
Bushman also just finished working on a project with PhD student Sophie Kjaervik on a meta analysis on narcissism and aggression where they looked at every study on this topic to determine trends in data. He hopes to publish these findings soon.
Bushman started his career as a quality engineer at the American electronics company Bourns, but he took a course in media aggression during his undergraduate years at Weber State University.
“It changed my life,” he said.
Bushman said the studies he is most proud of involve the effects of children’s exposure to gun violence in the media. He collaborated on two projects involving this topic during his time so far at The Ohio State University.
The first project answered the question, “Has children's exposure to gun violence in movies affected their interest in guns in real life?” Bushman and his colleagues randomly assigned children participants to watch a 20-minute clip from a movie either with or without guns. Participants were then placed in a room where a gun was hidden to play while parents and researchers observed their behavior to see if they told the research assistant about the gun they found. This study discovered that children who see movie characters with guns are more likely to use guns themselves.
The second study dealt with exposure to violence through video games. This project also discovered that exposure to this media increased dangerous behavior around firearms and other behaviors.
“Children who see movie characters smoking cigarettes are more likely to smoke,” Bushman said, implying that children who see guns used dangerously are more likely to do so themselves
Bushman’s academic professional career started at Iowa State University as a social psychologist. He then went on to work at the University of Michigan in the School of Communication studying violent media. He joined Ohio State as the Margaret Hall and Robert Randal Rinehart Chair of Mass Communication in 2010.
Article by Student Margaux Miller.
