Studies Say Video Games Increase Violent Behavior

KyDaran was one of several people who wrote about findings in UniSci regarding two studies released in the April issue of the American Psychological Association's (APA) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The studies show a relationship between violent and aggressive behavior and video game playing. Check out the full journal study for yourself.

Comments

The experts have an opinion, or three

[The G]

Last year, studies said bran was good for you. This year they say it's bad for you.

Vitamin C used to useless, then it was a miracle drug, now it's useless again.

And yes, after a year of studies finding little correlation, there will of course be two that find that video games are killing us all. Along with rays from high-tension lines, cellular phones, caffeine, aspartame, and the fumes from using ALex caulk on your house's siding.

Yawn.

Somebody let me know when the experts have agreed on something for more than five years in a row. I should be nearly finished with Thief II and System Shock 2 by then. Then you can let me know if I'm a raving psycho or not.
--G

No Slashdot, NO!

[zCyl]

The article does NOT say that video games increase violent behavior, in fact, it says precisely the opposite. Allow me to show you why it says the opposite, when one understands entry level psychology statistics methods.

> Playing violent video games often may well cause increases in delinquent behaviors,
> both aggressive and nonaggressive. However, the correlational nature of Study 1
> means that causal statements are risky at best. It could be that the obtained video
> game violence links to aggressive and nonaggressive delinquency are
> wholly due to the fact that highly aggressive individuals are especially
> attracted to violent video games.

This is the single most significant portion of Study #1, it says that people who play violent video games are the same people who are aggressive individuals. This means one of three things, either people play violent video games and become aggressive because of it, people who are aggressive prefer to play violent video games, or a third factor causes both aggressiveness and a tendency to play violent video games.

In order to resolve which of the three it was, they conducted the second study. In Study #2, the hypothesis was the first of the three things I mentioned, that playing violent video games causes aggression. The results of the pilot study conducted for the hypothesis are reported as follows:

> The game type effect as well as all two- and three-way interactions between
> the independent variables were nonsignificant (allps > .05).

The key word here is "nonsignificant". In other words, this means that when they attempted to find an increase in aggression due to playing violent video games, they completely failed. There was no measureable increase in aggression due to playing violent video games.

So in conclusion, no, playing violent video games does NOT increase violent behavior, and studies, such as this one, continue to demostrate such. Only the opposite can be shown, that people who are aggressive are inclined to play violent video games.

Well, Duh!

[Forrest J. Cavalier]

This is obvious. [But I can imagine the whole range of denials from /. quake-rs: No, not me. Can't happen! Ridiculous. Just look at me, I'm not affected...yada yada yada.]

Hello? Anybody home? Our brains are neural networks, which learn by patterning and repetition.

Do the "violent behavior is normal/acceptable/etc" neural pathways get reinforced by playing violent games or by watching cinema/TV violence? Of course they do.

The survival of civilization relies on the OTHER neural pathways overriding the violent ones when its time to make a real life decision. Thankfully this happens most often. Unfortunately, it is happening less often that it used to (road rage is an example.)

Argue all you want that playing violent games is not criminal. (I don't think it is either.) The problem is, the "violent is beneficial" pathways (by nature and evolution) respond FASTER than the "peace" pathways.

Train (a neural network term) those peace pathways as much as you train the ones for immediate attack/flame, and you'll be a fine member of a civilization.

Obvious to any thinking person.

Video Game/ Violence Correlation

[liquid-groove]

I know this probably weon't make some people happy, but I see this with my own son. When he rents a new shoot 'em up game he seems to be much more aggressive after a few hours of game play.

Knowing this however, it becomes _my_ responsibility as a parent to monitor his game usage and teach him how to appropriately channel his aggression.

Using video games as a substitute for family interaction can lead to problems. Socialization is a learned skill and sitting in front of a video console 4 hours a night takes away from the opportunities to learn this skill.

Does that mean that all of us (myself included) who like to play video games are going to turn into gun crazed lunatics? No, and some groups will try to oversimplify these findings to say that. But there does need to be a balance and it is responisibility of parents to make sure that balance is there.

Look at this study for what it is...

[El Volio]

There's no statement that this proves anything. The authors are well aware that the first experiment only demonstrated correlation, and as we all know by now, correlation != causation. In fact, it could even be hypothesized that naturally aggressive individuals are more likely to want to play violent games.

And the second experiment is just that -- an attempt to start to establish firmer ground for the "video game hypothesis". This was a pretty responsible approach, I believe. The scientific method bears out the truth in time, and in this case, the researchers were clearly trying to find the truth.

Before people overreact, let's remember that there's nothing wrong with having the hypothesis that there is a causal link between real-life and video game violence. For many people, that's actually a "common sense" conclusion. So when someone wants to apply the scientific method to verify the validity of that conclusion, even those who oppose it should applaud the honest and valuable effort.

I agree

[Snoobs]

I am really really really violent. If someone talks to me when I am at my computer trying to get work done, I will punch them. If I am at the water fountain getting a drink and someone tells me to hurry up, I will kick them.

I learned this behavior from playing video games. It all started with Shinobi, the ninja game from sega. I started pretending to be a ninja and then when street fighter II came out I started fighting like blanka. You couldn't have imagined it when I would dress up in my yellow fur and beat the crap out of people.

This is my life style and I have video games to thank for it. I now know 20 different styles of martial arts, learned from playing video games. You would believe how high I can jump!

False Statements and other sources

[ronfar]

Harris and Klebold enjoyed playing the bloody, shoot-'em-up video game Doom, a game licensed by the U.S. military to train soldiers to effectively kill from the APA Journal article

This is a false statement, if I am to believe that the Wired Article, then Doom is used by the military to teach teamwork:

Barnett looks like he's explained this one before. "Marine Doom, as you saw, is not just a twitch game. The way you get through a Marine Doom scenario and survive is through teamwork and listening to your fire team leader and doing what you're supposed to...."

"It's about repetitive decision making," Snyder swiftly interjects. Snyder's habitual deference - even off-duty, he calls his friends sir - doesn't always extend to allowing Barnett to finish his sentences. "We're trying to get these things ingrained by doing them over and over, with variations. A real firefight is not a good time to explore new ideas."

"You also saw how everyone was absorbed," Barnett adds. "That's another part of it. Kids who join the marines today grew up with TV, videogames, and computers. So we thought, how can we educate them, how can we engage them and make them want to learn? This is perfect."

Like all the media, starting with Grossman, this report has taken a military experiment in teaching teamwork and turned it into a sinister government program to destroy the morals of young soldiers. Since the researchers involved in the project started with this bias, I think we can safely conclude that they are looking at this from a perspective of "violent video games are evil, how can we prove it?"

The psychological profession long ago decided that the road to power and political relevance was to reject the Aristotilean idea of catharsis and instead follow the Platonic idea that "the poets should be banned from the Republic because they get the people all stirred up." Otherwise, they won't get invited to testify on Capitol Hill or TV talk shows.

There are some counter articles out there today that everyone should also read:

Lawmakers are uneducated about video game industry, panelist says

Illinois attorney general urges end to sales of violent video games to minors

And, most importantly: Federal judge dismisses lawsuit against movie, video game makers

I think the big question that everyone needs to ask themselves is who better serves American interests, jurists, or psychologists? I agree with R. A. Heinlein (who used to get guff from amateur psychologist when he was writing his juvenile novels, Red Planet, and others) that the psychological profession is full of charlatans and quacks. Of course, with the current low regard the First Amendment and the entire Constitution is held in in this country, I don't expect my opinions to hold much weight.

Analyse

[retep]

The first study just found a link between violent games and violent behavoir. However a link doesn't mean that violent games cause violent behavoir. It's quite common for people to confuse these two. Just because something is associated with something else doesn't mean that that something caused something else. Floods and rain are linked, but you wouldn't say that floods caused rain!

The second study looks at very short term effects that lasted a matter of minutes. No-one has done any proper studies to look at this. IE you get a two groups of kids, encourage one group to play violent games, watch violent TV etc. while do nothing with the other group. Then as they grow up watch their behavoir. Unfortunatly these sort of studies cost huge amounts of money and take a very long time to complete. But they are the gold standard.

Now what would happen if such a study was done and showed a definit cause and effect between violent games and TV and violent behavoir? Well I'll put it this way, good luck keeping Doom legal!

Missing the point

[tjwhaynes]

"One study reveals that young men who are habitually aggressive may be especially vulnerable to the aggression-enhancing effects of repeated exposure to violent games," said psychologists Craig A. Anderson, Ph.D., and Karen E. Dill, Ph.D. "The other study reveals that even a brief exposure to violent video games can temporarily increase aggressive behavior in all types of participants."

I look at this report and I worry. Not because of the details of the report in particular, but because aggressive behaviour is difficult to pin down and is not necessarily a bad thing. The first report seems to me to say that aggressive people may be stimulated by aggressive situations. That doesn't strike me as being an illogical statement - it is merely stating the obvious. The second study is more interesting. If I play an immersive video game, yes, my heart rate goes up. In a tricky situation when I'm pinned down by sniper fire or there is a helicopter whirring overhead, I'm tense, edgy. If I get into an open fire-fight with half a dozen other human players or computer-controlled players, I may get aggressive and noisy. So yes, video games do have an effect, probably far more effective then TV because the interaction between what you see and can do is so much more complete.

But is this limited to computer games, or does it extend to other activities? I would argue that any competitive activity will lead to increased aggression over my normal, fairly passive self. If I play rugby, there is no way I'm going to survive on the playing field unless I get going. If I'm not pumped when I get the ball, I'm going to get flattened by someone who wants it more than I do. If I'm being chased by some back row player who is technically faster than me on paper, then that extra adrenaline is going to be needed if I'm going to make it to the line. If I'm going to tackle some 6ft6 tight-head prop forward who weighs 260 lbs, I'd better be aggressive!

Any involving competitive activity will require an increased level of adrenaline, alertness and aggression. And it's not necessarily a bad thing - these are our survival instincts being used in a modern arena, whether it's rugby, Quake or even some individual sport like badminton. Aggression can help us out when our other resources are low. The only time aggression becomes a problem is when it is taken from the field of play/battle/sport whatever and spills over into our daily lives. And I really don't feel that this report works through this last point.

Cheers,

Toby Haynes