Violent movies may make you more likely to cheat!

Love watching movies with violent content? You may be more likely to lie, cheat or steal, according to a new study which found that exposure to violence could make people less ethical.
The study found that exposure to human violence is strongly linked to an increase in cheating for monetary gain.
"Research shows that violent media increases aggressive behaviour towards others, but what we're showing here is that it goes beyond that," said study coauthor Josh Gubler, a professor at Brigham Young University (BYU) in US.
Gubler and coauthor David Wood, a professor at the Marriott School of Management at BYU, carried out three experiments with roughly 1,000 participants for the study.

In the first experiment, participants were paid to review sentences and edit those with mistakes. Half of the participants were given sentences with violent language.
Subjects were told they would be paid whether or not they were correct, providing an incentive to mark all sentences "correct" to earn money quicker.

Those who reviewed violent sentences were 24 per cent more likely to cheat.
In another experiment, participants were hired to watch and evaluate movie clips. They were told they needed to watch the entirety of all the clips to be paid.
One clip consisted of 10 minutes of a blue screen with a monotone voice over. The researchers found those who viewed violent movie clips were more likely to lie about watching all the videos.

Surprisingly, while both male and female test subjects responded to violently worded media (experiment 1), only the men's ethics were negatively influenced by violent videos.
"We have whole industries that glorify violence - in video games, in media, in Hollywood - and then, on the opposite side, we have a significant body of research showing very serious effects to this," Wood said.
A previous study found that subjects who played violent video games for only 20 minutes took five times longer to help a person in need.
The study also found that people who had just seen a violent film took 26 per cent longer to help an injured woman.

Another study showed the majority of media researchers, not to mention parents and pediatricians, see the link between violent media and increased aggression, researchers said.
Wood believes the society needs to have a "really serious gut check" and ask why we tolerate and glorify violence.
He and Gubler said their study is the latest to show that violent media has more negative impacts than most people imagine.
The study was published in the Journal of Business Ethics.