Professor, ECA Dispute Video Game Aggression Study

Earlier this week, we discussed research which linked aggression in children with video games. The Entertainment Consumer Association responded with a statement criticizing the research, as did Christopher Ferguson, a professor at Texas A&M. PCWorld sat down with Ferguson for a more in-depth discussion of the flaws with the study. In addition to bringing up the correlation vs. causation fallacy, he notes: "Even if you took it at face value, which I don't, video game violence overlaps somewhere between, based on their own statistics, a half a percent to two percent, with a variance in aggression. If you woke up tomorrow and you were half a percent more aggressive than you were today, would you notice that? It's just not much of an effect. If the author said look, there's a little effect here, maybe video games increase aggression a tiny bit, but it's not going to make anyone into a serial murderer, yeah, alright, we may argue a little bit over the methodology, though I'd still say they should've controlled for other stuff. "

Comments

Isn't it obvious?

[Aphoxema]

Of course violent video games cause violence. I played GTA the other day, then I went out and stole a car, then I ran some people over, then I did some missions, got a rocket launcher and blew some stuff up, then I had 4 stars above my head and I knew I had some problems. The police came and killed me even though I totally loaded up an armor and life and all the weapons.

Fortunately I came back to life and appeared in front of the hospital, yet my sins felt strangely unforgiven.