Videogames Really Are Linked to Violence

ahoehn writes "Amanda Schaffer has written a refreshingly balanced piece about the connection between video games and violence. Instead of regurgitating the typical reactionary voices in this debate, she looks at what scientific studies suggest about the issue. From the article: 'Pathological acts of course have multiple, complex causes and are terribly hard to predict. And clearly, millions of people play Counter-Strike, Halo, and Doom and never commit crimes. But the subtler question is whether exposure to video-game violence is one risk factor for increased aggression: Is it associated with shifts in attitudes or responses that may predispose kids to act out? A large body of evidence suggests that this may be so ... Given this, it makes sense to be specific about which games may be linked to harmful effects and which to neutral or good ones. Better research is also needed to understand whether some kids are more vulnerable to video-game violence, and how exposure interacts with other risk factors for aggression like poverty, psychological disorders, and a history of abuse.'"

Hmmm.. maybe...

[Thangodin]

...but maybe not. All of these studies are by the same researcher, a guy named Craig Anderson, who has been pushing his conclusion long before he had any data for it. There is a strong confirmation bias at work here. His latest study argues that people who play games like Halo are more aggressive at the end of the school term than people who play something like Myst.

But here's the complication. Myst appeals to casual gamers--people who play games in their spare time. Halo appeals to hardcore gamers, who do it as a hobby. That means they make time for it. Given that the time they make for it may be time taken from their studies, and their work load may be piling up, is this result due to the aggressive influence of gaming, or due to the impact of the stress of having their workload pile up at the end of the term? Too much work, and too little time to do it, will make anyone irritable, impatient, and aggressive. All he has demonstrated here is that the people who play Myst are different from the people who play Halo. Duh! The industry could have told him that years ago.

Recent research into human behaviour finds too main causal factors: genetic predisposition (measured in twin studies), and peer influence (for example, why do children speak with the accent of their peers and not that of their parents.) These probably account for as much as 90% of variance. The remaining 10% includes parent, teachers, life experience, and all media. So how much influence is left for video games? Not a lot.

Re:maybe violent people like violent video games

[bradkittenbrink]

For once, that sentiment was actually expressed in TFA:

Each of these approaches has its flaws. The first kind of correlational study can never prove that video-game playing causes physical aggression. Maybe aggressive people are simply more apt to play violent games in the first place. Meanwhile, the randomized trials, like Anderson and Dill's, which do imply causation, necessarily depend on lab-based measures of aggression, such as whether subjects blast each other with noise. This is a respected measure, but obviously not the same as seeing whether real people hit or shoot each other.

Studies Show Evidence to the Contrary

[FroBugg]

The author of this article fails to reference a recent study that reaches completely different results.

An Institute in Australia studied 120 11-15 year-olds and concluded that violent games did affect children who were already predisposed to violence and aggression, but children who were not violent to begin with were unaffected.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Most-kids-unaf fected-by-violent-games/2007/04/01/1175366055463.h tml [smh.com.au]

Pool linked to Violence

[rmac217]

I remember some findings [wikipedia.org] by a Professor Harold Hill of Gary, Indiana that showed that Pool caused a great deal of trouble in River City, Iowa. If I recall correctly, this was evidenced by the fact that Trouble starts with a capital T which rhymes with P and that stands for Pool.