PAYNE FUND STUDIES
Violence in Movies (1929-1932)

Purpose: To measure the effect of motion pictures on children while focusing on five areas:

1. Information
2. Attitudes
3. Emotions
4. Health
5. Conduct

Titles of Studies

• Getting ideas from the movies
• Motion pictures and the social attitudes of children
• The social conduct and attitudes of movie fans
• Emotional responses of children to the motion picture situation
• Motion pictures and standards of morality
• Children's sleep
• Movies and conduct
• The content of motion pictures
• Children's attendance at motion pictures
• Movies, delinquency, and crime
• Boys, movies, and city streets
• How to appreciate motion pictures

Specific Results

1. Movie Content: Three different kind of movies - crime, sex and love.
2. Effects on Feeling: Kids had an emotional response when shown sexual or scary movies.
3. Effects on Health: Kids who watched movies were restless when sleeping.
4. Effect on Conduct: Movies have a profound effect upon fantasy life.
5. Attitudes: First exposure plays a crucial role & Persistence of attitude.

General Results

1. A single exposure to a film may produce a measurable change in attitude.
2. The content of most current pictures is not appropriate for children - contrary to moral standards of the day.
3. Film effects are complicated and only one of the many influences that effect children.
4. Studies of movies' influences on delinquency suggested that there might be a link.

Three general principles:

1. No picture shall be produced which will lower the moral standards of those who see it.
2. Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented.
3. Laws, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.

Code divided into 12 categories of wrongdoing, including such directives as:

• Murder
• Sex
• Obscenity
• Costumes