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More Debunking the Relationship Between Video Games and Aggression... With Science!
Zeteni
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Alright... my first time posting here in years. And even then it was a handful of times only. Hopefully I don't get my ass handed to me on this one for missing something.
So, for my philosophy of science class we had to read and write an essay on a research article from a reputable source. Having done this many times, it was easy, and I decided to revisit a subject which I had reviewed before: The possible causal links between violent video game playing and long and short term aggression.
When I had done this back in 2006, I was dismayed when all of the then current psychology journals and experiments supported the theory that playing violent video games leads to violent and criminal behavior. My beloved discipline of psychology was lambasting my child-hood hobby.
But this morning I happened upon a 2008 article that criticizes those very research reports for the non-standardized measures they used to test aggression, as well as their utter lack of accounting for other existing outside factors that could impact the results of the experiments. To further back their claims, the researchers performed two studies, one experimental and one correlational.
The results of the two research experiments contained in the article support what we gamers have known all along: Violent video games don't lead to violent people, violent and abusive child rearing does (but not spanking). Alright... so apparently genetics play a big factor too, as men were consistently much more likely to display trait aggression and engage in violent criminal behavior than women.
I'd go into more detail, but this post may already be a case of TLDR. If people wish for me to share more, I'll gladly give more details as to the two experiments that comprised this research article. If you want to find it yourself, here's the reference citation:
Fergusun, C., Rueda, S., Cruz, A., Fergusun, D., Fritz, S., & Smith, S. (2008). Violent Video Games and Aggression: Causal Relationships or Byproduct of Family Violence and Intrinsic Violence Motivation. Criminal Justice and Behavior. 35, 311-322
It's a great day. Now the science is on OUR side. Or at least a competing belief in academia is beginning to form. I'd also love to share this article with people that could get it more publicity, but perhaps you guys will do that for me.
Or maybe I'm repeating a topic already covered exhaustively and this article is nothing new to you folks.
So, for my philosophy of science class we had to read and write an essay on a research article from a reputable source. Having done this many times, it was easy, and I decided to revisit a subject which I had reviewed before: The possible causal links between violent video game playing and long and short term aggression.
When I had done this back in 2006, I was dismayed when all of the then current psychology journals and experiments supported the theory that playing violent video games leads to violent and criminal behavior. My beloved discipline of psychology was lambasting my child-hood hobby.
But this morning I happened upon a 2008 article that criticizes those very research reports for the non-standardized measures they used to test aggression, as well as their utter lack of accounting for other existing outside factors that could impact the results of the experiments. To further back their claims, the researchers performed two studies, one experimental and one correlational.
The results of the two research experiments contained in the article support what we gamers have known all along: Violent video games don't lead to violent people, violent and abusive child rearing does (but not spanking). Alright... so apparently genetics play a big factor too, as men were consistently much more likely to display trait aggression and engage in violent criminal behavior than women.
I'd go into more detail, but this post may already be a case of TLDR. If people wish for me to share more, I'll gladly give more details as to the two experiments that comprised this research article. If you want to find it yourself, here's the reference citation:
Fergusun, C., Rueda, S., Cruz, A., Fergusun, D., Fritz, S., & Smith, S. (2008). Violent Video Games and Aggression: Causal Relationships or Byproduct of Family Violence and Intrinsic Violence Motivation. Criminal Justice and Behavior. 35, 311-322
It's a great day. Now the science is on OUR side. Or at least a competing belief in academia is beginning to form. I'd also love to share this article with people that could get it more publicity, but perhaps you guys will do that for me.
Or maybe I'm repeating a topic already covered exhaustively and this article is nothing new to you folks.
Zeteni on
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Almost any sane person would agree that there is no causal relationship between video games and real world violence. But violent video games may have a correlation to violent behavior, when combined with other determining factor such as home life, genetics, and any one of a thousand other things.
One of the theories suggested in the article is that while there is no causal relationship between violent video games, or any violent media for that matter, and the increased aggression in individuals, violent media in any form does give innately violent people ideas on the methods with which they carry out their violent tendencies. Had they not consumed a particular violent media to emulate, they would simply have carried out another. :-/
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Right. As I said, any idiot knows that there isn't a causal relationship between video games and aggression. I wasn't even aware that was still a question with anyone other then Jack Thompson. And frankly, I do think that certain video games can give people who are ALREADY aggressive a means in which to act on that aggression. Similar to people who emulate wrestling moves and kill their little brother. Wrestling didn't cause the violence, but it was a vehicle for it.
The only correlation between violent gaming and violent behavior that does exist (according to teh research in the article) is that the top quartile of aggressive individuals tend to seek out violent media over other forms for consumption. AKA, you seek out violence because you are violent yourself.
www.penny-arcade.com
www.itswalky.com
www.stubblecomics.com
Oh yeah, there will always be dumbasses like him causing a ruckus. It's just nice to see that there is a scientific article specifically pointing out how wrong he and like minded folks are. (especially when previous research had been saying that video game playing does lead to increased aggression)
www.penny-arcade.com
www.itswalky.com
www.stubblecomics.com
I'm mostly just jazzed to finally see a contrary article that uses more refined criteria. Previous articles had repeatedly neglected to control and account for outside factors that could provide alternate explanations for the results.
www.penny-arcade.com
www.itswalky.com
www.stubblecomics.com
For what it's worth I'm a freshman in college and my Psych 101 professor has said more than once that studies suggest that violent media makes people violent. Just today, actually, we were going over the Stanford Prison Experiment and she mentioned that people's willingness to fully adopt a role has pretty scary implications when it comes to video games where you play the role of a violent murderer. That seems like kind of a stretch to me, but yeah, there's at least one person who's presumably pretty smart that thinks that violent media makes you violent.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
If violent movies or music didn't do it... fall to video games?
The confirmation bias falls squarely on the "games are violent" crowd in this respect, for their morally oppressive, blind acceptance of the studies that showed violent video games show an immediate and extremely short term increase in aggressive tendencies sometimes, for some people.
And then it went away. It is rare, rare for the activity to influence actual personality, or behavior long term at all. It is a myth.
It's going to be believed to be such for quite a while. A lot of research suggests just that. The article I mentioned is just one that counters that viewpoint. I'm sure there are others as well out there. As the science matures and more research is done, hopefully it'll be found that violent media doesn't make you more violent. Rather, I hope that that's what the data shows in the end as a result of it being true. Unfortunately, it could still be the case that violent media does lead to increased aggression after all, and that the previous research on the subject is validated. (Though I really hope such is not the case, and that this counter article's model is more accurate.)
www.penny-arcade.com
www.itswalky.com
www.stubblecomics.com
So nix on the Diathesis-Stress Model?
That's just weird to me. I mean, she even used a study from a time before video games even existed (unless Pong also makes people violent) as a means of showing that video games cause violence? I mean, there isn't even an invisible line between the two. There's nothing.
Yes, well, this is 2008. And instead of "Judas Priest makes people kill people!" we got "Video games make people violent!"
I'm sure the next big thing will get all the attention, too.
It isn't that there is zero reason to believe video games make people violent. It's that the reasons are bad. Uniformed.
Poor causal relationships, extremely short-term effects, 3 person sampling study in a mental institution...
That's pretty much what I thought. Just so I'm not misrepresenting this, that wasn't her main point, just an aside.
We also talked about violent media a lot with the Bobo doll experiment with kids, and at least that connection makes sense to me. Even then though I can think of a few problems with that conclusion, but I don't know what kind of follow-ups and such have been done.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
The above is an article by a "watchdog" group. Note that all "watchdog group" means is a collection of individuals with not a goddamn ounce of authority or weight. Just a bunch of people who get together to shout from their houses. Even the ones whose intents I agree with have little more importance than a collection of bloggers.
But boy do they think they're important.
Below are a few choice quotes from the article.
Ooo, it sounds bad so it must be so! All this sex and violence. I hope these people never read any Greek plays. Or the Bible.
So almost every child plays these video games regularly? Man, we must have an epidemic of teenagers fucking and killing all over the place.
Yeah. Don't think about it, or present any evidence. Just wake up and believe it. On feeling.
The evidence was pretty conclusive that exposure to violent media leads to increased aggression even after you control for lots of stuff.
I haven't read anything about video games in particular, and I'll read the Fergusun paper when I get a chance. But I don't imagine for a minute that the authors actually argue that exposure to video games can't make a kid more violent. The defense of video games has to be that they have real worth as entertainment and that parents just need to make responsible decisions about when and how they expose their kids to them.
What was your delay? I can quite easily imagine the activation of the sympathetic nervous system and the related hormones leaving the person at least a little twitchy after watching the violent action sequence. I'd suggest either waiting a while of comparing to a group that you have watch Gurren Lagann and another group that you have listen to Palin saying aren't from "real America" in one of her speeches.
They don't normally?
Those really neat, scientific sounding studies that link aggression with video games? Are measuring that extremely ephemeral increase in aggression following playing a violent game.
Nothing long term. Nothing behavioral, nothing permanent. They see the same boost that anyone can get after seeing or doing something adrenaline boosting, and the media, who, admit now, doesn't know jack shit but loves sensationalism picks that shit up as if it were the last piece of chocolate in the world.
'Cause we got troubles, troubles, and that starts with "T" that rhymes with "V" that stands for video games.
But by god do I not ever, ever, declare it to be only video games. That's retarded. It's the whole visual media spectrum, televison, video, games, internet.
All of it would be contributing, equally.
Nobody treats the media seriously in the field of psychology James Keenan. Nobody.
I blame ragtime.
No, there have been longitudinal studies that found that exposure to violent media predicted aggression years later in life even after controlling for the kid's parenting, his SES, his violence before exposure, etc, etc. The media may cover these studies with a sensationalist edge, but that doesn't mean the findings aren't scientifically valid. Trust me, the people running these things aren't idiots. They've thought this through.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
I'm not assuming that these people conducting the studies are idiots. I'm assuming they are extrapolating way too much. Unless people with lab coats are incapable of that.
This isn't precisely the one I've been looking for, but it'll do.
In a word, dumb.
There are a bunch of different ways of measuring it. In shorter studies you either use parents' reports of their kids aggression (either just asking them how aggressive their kid has been acting, or something quantitative like how often they've fought/yelled/punched stuff), or sometimes you actually sit a bunch of observers in a school or around a dinner table and count how often certain kids go around smacking other kids. In longer studies you can use stuff like incarceration rates or self-report questionnaires. There's a lot of different ways of measuring it, and none are perfect, but this set of studies have tried all sorts of measures and they keep finding the effect.
It focuses more on crime, but it looks very closely at the issue, and where I draw a lot of the references to specifics that I talk about now. It spends time looking at those more likely to behave violently after playing games. hint: *very* few
It also spent time talking about girls play violent games, too, but that's not as relevant...
Most? Maybe, but I doubt it.
And yet on the other side I hear just as much the equivalent of "Do you see what they just did? Of course that makes you violent!"
'Cause there's no disconnect between fantasy and reality. OK.
All right, that's fair enough. I was a little confused because I don't necessarily think of "aggressive" behavior as negative, but if they're mostly looking at increased acts of hitting or violence or whathaveyou, then it makes a lot more sense.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
No, what? Huh? Uh-jre-nulin? o_O
No clue. That a soft drink?
Psychologists have been pretty conservative and measured in what they're comfortable extrapolating out of their data. The consensus is that exposure to violent media increases aggression in short-term and long-term measures even after controlling for everything we believe we can control for. What in that sentence do you have a problem with?
On the other hand, looking just at video game releases and the violent crime rate is pretty obviously unsound scientifically.
Briefly?