Monday, April 17, 2006

Long term and short term behavior


I read an interesting article today (to show you how widely my interests vary!!) on how watching violent media (TV, movies, comic books, video games, music) affects aggressive behaviors. The relevance to Human Factors is interesting.


What they found is that adults are affected more in the short term, presumably because they already have schemas on how to respond to aggressive feelings, which become activated through the media exposure. But kids have long term effects, presumably because the exposure causes the development of new schemas.

Just some speculation, but I wonder how this would work with training or exposure to a new work system or technology interface? It could have some implications for new v refresher training sessions and how to design and deliver them.