An altercation can be a shoving match, and it can be a fist fight. An open altercation is going to have some kind of external suppression to keep things from escalating. It's impossible to really know the full effect of violent entertainment on people. There's so many factors. And that's why, you know, i can't take a political stanza as to whether or not violence immediate is good or bad. I don't know if it stops people from being violent, or if it promotes violence. All i can really say is that i hear the mechanisms.
Stuntman and action designer Eric Jacobus joins EconTalk host Russ Roberts for a no-holds-barred discussion of the biological basis for violence and how to avoid the worst of it, the value of violence as spectator sport, and the vast superiority of duels to feuds--Alexander Hamilton notwithstanding.