No strong link seen between violent video games and aggression

Lynn, Andrea. "No Strong Link Seen Between Violent Video Games and Aggression." News Bureau. 9 Aug. 2005. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 23 Jan. 2007 .

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Results from the first long-term study of online videogame playing may be surprising.Contrary to popular opinion and most previous research, the new study found that players’ “robust exposure” to a highly violent online game did not cause any substantial real-world aggression.After an average playtime of 56 hours over the course of a month with “Asheron’s Call 2,” a popular MMRPG, or “massively multi-layer online role-playing game,” researchers found “no strong effects associated with aggression caused by this violent game,” said Dmitri Williams, the lead author of the study.Players were not statistically different from the non-playing control group in their beliefs on aggression after playing the game than they were before playing, Williams said. Nor was game play a predictor of aggressive behaviors. Compared with the control group, the players neither increased their argumentative behaviors after game play nor were significantly more likely to argue with their friends and partners.“I’m not saying some games don’t lead to aggression, but I am saying the data are not there yet,” Williams said. “Until we have more long-term studies, I don’t think we should make strong predictions about long-term effects, especially given this finding.”Williams, a professor of speech communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is an expert on the effects of online video-game play. He conducted the study with Marko Skoric, a lecturer at the School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.Their findings appear in the June issue of Communication Monographs in an article titled “Internet Fantasy Violence: A Test of Aggression in an Online Game.”According to Williams, researchers have suspected a strong linkage between games and aggression “but, with the exception of relatively short-term effects on young adults and children, they have yet to demonstrate this link.”Williams and Skoric undertook the first longitudinal study of a game to see whether they could determine a link. Because most video game research has been conducted in the laboratory or by observation in the field – methods “not representing the social context of game play” – they had their participants play the game in normal environments, like home. The results of the new study, Williams said, support the contention of those who suggest that some violent games do not necessarily lead to increased real-world aggression.But he and Skoric concede that other types of games and contexts might have negative impacts.“This game featured fantasy violence, while others featuring outer space or even everyday urban violence may yield different outcomes.”Williams and Skoric also concede that because their study didn’t concentrate solely on younger teenagers, “we cannot say that teenagers might not experience different effects.” Still, and interestingly, older players in their study were “perhaps more strongly influenced by game play and argued with friends more than their younger counterparts.”The new study involved two groups of participants: players – a “treatment” group of 75 people who had no prior MMRPG play and who played AC2 for the first time; and a control group of 138, who did not play. The participants were solicited through online message boards and ranged in age from 14 to 68, the average age being 27.7 years. Self-reported questionnaires were completed pre- and post-test online and included a range of demographic, behavioral and personality variables. Aggression-related beliefs were measured with L.R. Huesmann’s Normative Beliefs in Aggression (NOBAGS) scale. Aggressive social interactions were measured with two behavioral questions: in the past month, did the participant have a serious argument with a friend, and in the same time period, did they have a serious argument with a spouse, boyfriend or girlfriend.Because of the study’s design, only moderate or large effects caused by exposure to the game were capable of being detected.Today, more than 60 percent of Americans play some form of interactive game on a regular basis, while 32 percent of the game-playing population is now over 35 years of age.Fears about the games’ social and health impacts have risen with these numbers, Williams said, with politicians, pundits and media outlets fanning some of the flames.Games are becoming increasingly violent, as shown by content analyses, Williams said. One reason is that “the first generation of game players has aged and its tastes and expectations have been more likely to include mature fair.”Still, the extent of knowledge about what games do to or for people is limited, and there is “even less understanding about the range of content.”“If the content, context, and play length have some bearing on the effects, policy-makers should seek a greater understanding of the games they are debating. It may be that both the attackers and defenders of the industry’s products are operating without enough information, and are instead both arguing for blanket approaches to what is likely a more complicated phenomenon.”Nor do researchers know much about the positive effects of gaming, Williams said.“Based on my research, some of the potential gains are in meeting a lot of new people and crossing social boundaries. That’s important in a society where we are increasingly insulated from one another.”Some game researchers believe that video-gaming leads to substantial gains in learning teamwork, managing groups and most important, Williams said, problem solving.“How often can someone direct and coordinate a group of eight or 40 real people to accomplish a complex task, as they do in these role-playing games? That’s a real skill. “Games are about solving problems, and it should tell us something that kids race home from school where they are often bored to get on games and solve problems. Clearly we need to capture that lightning in a bottle.”

There is no strong conection between violent video games and aggression. The experiment they did proves this. The experiments showed no different behavior and were normal. As technology gets better the games are getting more violent but the rates of violent crimes is still dropping compared to even when pong was out.

If theres so many experiments that prove taht there is no link then why do people still believe there is?

Why does the government censor the content of video games?

Are Violent Video Games Really Harmful?

Mintle, Linda S. "Are Violent Video Games Really Harmful?" Science Ministries. Apr. 2000. 23 Jan. 2007 .

Dr Linda Helps - Question: My mom and dad don’t want me to play violent video games. My friends say they are really fun and only entertainment. It seems everyone plays these games, and they aren’t shooting people at school. What’s the big deal?Dr. Linda: The big deal is that violent video games can lead to aggression. Recent studies support the idea that violent video games increase aggression and delinquency--two things you, your parents and friends should care about. Here’s what recent studies tell us about violent video games:· They aren’t just entertainment. If you play violent video games, you can think and act more aggressively. If you are male, you may even see the world as hostile after playing these games. · Violent video games can teach you violent ways to think.· Violent video games allow you to practice being violent.· If you practice violence in games, you can access this information for real-life situations.· The more knowledgeable you become about violence, the more it may affect your personality (not in a good way!).· There is a relationship between playing violent games and delinquent behavior. The more violent video games played, the more delinquent behavior occurred.· There is a relationship between playing a lot of video games (any games) and poor grades. More time playing games led to poor academic achievement. So the big deal is that we don’t know how much those games affect kids in terms of violence and shooting people. We do know that you are affected, and one effect is increased aggression. So why play these games? Let me also reassure you that not everyone is playing these games. Some parents have enough sense to know that putting violent images in the head of anyone is not a good idea. We think a lot of stuff doesn’t bother us when in truth it does. Listen to your parents. They aren’t trying to make your life miserable. They’re on to the potential dangers of these games. They probably want to do everything they can to prevent you from doing things that will hurt you. Sounds like you have great parents!Conclusions based on research published in April 2000 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, “Video games and aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behavior in the laboratory and in life”.

In my true opinion I think that all video games cuase some sort of aggression. But they are also a safe place where a player can vent out his anger and do not do something crazy like what he did in the game in real life. Everytime Dr. Mintle suggested that violent video games and violent behavior was connected she used the word "can" which suggests that it is not proven in any way. Therefore this article is not a good source.

In the poeple who do commit violent crimes and blame it on video games are they from similar backgrounds?

How often do these people play the violent video games?

Violent video games do not cause aggression

Haines, Lester. "Violent Video Games Do Not Cause Aggression." The Register. 15 Aug. 2005. 23 Jan. 2007 .

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has weighed into the ongoing polemic regarding a possible link between violent video games and "real-world aggression".
The Uni says the findings of the first long-term study into exposure to video games and subsequent stroppy behaviour may be "surprising", given that they show "robust exposure to a highly violent online game" did not cause any substantial increase in said aggression.

The findings will indeed suprise attorney Jack Thompson who has vowed to prove the link between Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and the 2003 murder of two police officers and a civilian police worker in Fayette, Alabama.
As we recently reported, after being arrested for the triple homicide, 20-year-old perpetrator Devin Moore was alleged to have said: "Life is a videogame. Everybody has to die some time." Moore is known to have spent many hours playing GTA:VC, dubbed a "murder simulator" by Thompson.
Thompson declared: "Moore rehearsed, hour after hour, the cop-killing scenarios in that hyper-violent video game. The makers, distributors, and retailers of that murder simulator equipped Moore to kill as surely as if they had handed him the gun to do it. Blood is on the hands of men in certain corporate board rooms from Japan to New York."
While the eventual outcome of Thompson's campaign in uncertain, the Illinois findings will do little to further his cause. Report lead author Dmitri Williams said researchers found "no strong effects associated with aggression caused by this violent game", referring to Asheron's Call 2 (AC2) which guinea pigs played an average 56 hours over the course of a month.
Williams explained: "Players were not statistically different from the non-playing control group in their beliefs on aggression after playing the game than they were before playing." He added: "Nor was game play a predictor of aggressive behaviors. Compared with the control group, the players neither increased their argumentative behaviors after game play nor were significantly more likely to argue with their friends and partners."
Williams did, however, warn: "I'm not saying some games don't lead to aggression, but I am saying the data are not there yet. Until we have more long-term studies, I don't think we should make strong predictions about long-term effects, especially given this finding."
In fact, the issue is rather more complicated than critics and defenders of video games might suggest. Williams noted: "This game featured fantasy violence, while others featuring outer space or even everyday urban violence may yield different outcomes."
Williams admitted that because the test didn't centre solely on younger teenagers, he could not say that "teenagers might not experience different effects", while noting that "older players in their study were "perhaps more strongly influenced by game play and argued with friends more than their younger counterparts".
Williams summarised: "If the content, context, and play length have some bearing on the effects, policy-makers should seek a greater understanding of the games they are debating. It may be that both the attackers and defenders of the industry's products are operating without enough information, and are instead both arguing for blanket approaches to what is likely a more complicated phenomenon."
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's findings appear in the June issue of Communication Monographs in an piece entitled "Internet Fantasy Violence: A Test of Aggression in an Online Game". ®

This source shows that some people are affected by the violence in video games but the vast majority is not. Every test they ran on people and video game violence has come up with no traces of violent behavior. A very few number of people commit these few sad violent acts and blame it on a video game. The game couldve had some small effect but couldve not triggered the whole idea in his head to appear.

Is the behavior of the tested people different at all after playing the video games?

Will it ever be completely proven if violent video games do cause or dont cause violent behavior?

Violent Video Games - Psychologists Help ProtectChildren from Harmful Effects

Gentile, D. A., and D. A. Walsh. "Violent Video Games - Psychologists Help Protect." American Psychological Association. 2001. 23 Jan. 2007 <http://www.psychologymatters.org/videogames.html>.

Psychological research confirms that violent video games can increase children's aggression, but that parents moderate the negative effects.
Findings
Fifty years' of research on violent television and movies has shown that there are several negative effects of watching such fare (see http://www.psychologymatters.org/mediaviolence.html). Because video games are a newer medium, there is less research on them than there is on TV and movies. However, studies by psychologists such as Douglas Gentile, PhD, and Craig Anderson, PhD, indicate it is likely that violent video games may have even stronger effects on children's aggression because (1) the games are highly engaging and interactive, (2) the games reward violent behavior, and because (3) children repeat these behaviors over and over as they play (Gentile & Anderson, 2003). Psychologists know that each of these help learning - active involvement improves learning, rewards increase learning, and repeating something over and over increases learning.
Drs. Anderson and Gentile's research shows that children are spending increasing amounts of time playing video games - 13 hours per week for boys, on average, and 5 hours per week for girls (Anderson, Gentile, &amp;amp; Buckley, under review; Gentile, Lynch, Linder, & Walsh, 2004). A 2001 content analyses by the research organization Children Now shows that a majority of video games include violence, about half of which would result in serious injuries or death in the 'real' world. Children often say their favorite video games are violent. What is the result of all this video game mayhem?
Dr. Anderson and colleagues have shown that playing a lot of violent video games is related to having more aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (Anderson & Bushman, 2001). Furthermore, playing violent games is also related to children being less willing to be caring and helpful towards their peers. Importantly, research has shown that these effects happen just as much for non-aggressive children as they do for children who already have aggressive tendencies (Anderson et al., under review; Gentile et al., 2004).
Parents have an important role to play. Psychologists have found that when parents limit the amount of time as well as the types of games their children play, children are less likely to show aggressive behaviors (Anderson et al., under review; Gentile et al., 2004). Other research suggests that active parental involvement in children's media usage-including discussing the inappropriateness of violent solutions to real life conflicts, reducing time spent on violent media, and generating alternative nonviolent solutions to problems-all can reduce the impact of media violence on children and youth (Anderson et al., 2003).

This article is not accurate, in some violent video games you do get rewarded for voilent acts. But many including the Grand Theft Auto series when you do something illegal in the game your "wanted" level goes up and police cars and even helecopters start chasing you. This teaches the player of the game that whatever he did was illegal.

Why is it that violent movies and other violent forms of media do not get attacted for its content?

What are the actual negative effects that violence in video games can have on ur brain?

Caution: Children at Play the Truth About Youth and Violent Video Games

Ferris, Duke. "Caution: Children At Play the Truth About Youth and Violent Video Games." Net Revolution. 19 Oct. 2005. 23 Jan. 2007. <http://www.gamerevolution.com/features/violence_and_videogames>.

Thanks to the current media frenzy and barrage of lawsuits surrounding violent video games, I can't tell people what I do for a living without getting a lecture on the current plague of youth violence and the scourge that is Grand Theft Auto. I decided it was time for a rebuttal more effective than shrugging and saying, "Well, I think you're wrong."
So I sat down to write this article, and started doing some research. What I discovered startled me. I'm not sure I have the ability to write a totally serious piece - it is not in my nature to be serious, nor the nature of GR - but the issues are very serious indeed and the evidence is very real.
I am even going to use charts. With words on 'em. We spare no expense.
First off, I have absolute proof that video games are not the cause of this epidemic of youth violence in America. No, really, I do. Ready?
There is no epidemic of youth violence in America.
The whole concept is a lie manufactured, distributed and perpetuated by the media. Kids are not killing each other more frequently than they used to. In fact, it turns out the opposite is true.
Check out that ugly graph on the right. It doesn't take a genius to conclude that violent crime is at the lowest it has been in a good thirty years. For effect, I've also marked the release of the Playstation console, the first Grand Theft Auto game, the PS2 console, and the infamous GTA 3. Wow, look at those surges in violence!
Believe it or not, I got that graph - and all the others in this piece - directly from the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Statistics. All I added was the video game timeline. This isn't some privately-funded poll or crazy game journalist defense mechanism - this is the actual, most recent government data on crime as used by the FBI. The fact that they all max out at 2003 is irritating, but this debate has raged much longer than the past few months.
Please understand that I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I don't think that there are any aliens at Area 51. I know that AIDS was not created in a secret government lab, I believe that men really landed on the moon, and I am 100% certain that Sasquatch shot JFK with the help of the Loch Ness monster. But something clearly isn't right here. The government and the media just can't go around making this stuff up, right?
Something must be missing. That first graph is the overall violent crime rate, and were talking about youth violence here. So I found the data sorted by age, and it turns out that through 2002, youth homicide actually dropped across the board, the only increase being among adults. If I may quote directly from the D.O.J. report, "Recently, the offending rates for 14-17 year-olds reached the lowest levels ever recorded."
The lowest levels ever recorded. In other words, the Playstation era has, in fact, produced the most non-violent kids ever. But I thought video games were training children to kill? I'm sure I read something like that here and here and here and here and here and here.
To be fair, there have been about 300 studies on the effects of violent media, about 30 of which have been about video games. Most have found little to no connection, although some studies found a small, casual correlation between aggressive people and violent media.
Even if true, this does not necessarily mean violent media has created aggressive people. It is more likely that aggressive people are attracted to violent media. Blaming violent media would be like going to the opera, noticing that most people there are rich, and concluding that opera makes people rich. (Classical opera, by the way, is chock full of lust, incest, murder, suicide, and revenge.)
In an analysis of the risk factors of youth violence by the Surgeon General of the United States of America, violent media is categorized as 'Small Effect Size.' In fact, there are 27 risk factors rated higher than exposure to violent media, like socioeconomic status, academic failure, poor parent-child relations, weak social ties, and being male. Quick! Ban all the males!
So is the media and the government flat out lying to us? Yes, and they have been doing so for years. As touched on in the rabble-rousing films of Michael Moore, fear sells. It's how you turn terrible tragedies like Columbine and the WTC Attack into election votes and must-see TV.
The media in particular loves to bash video games, making sure to point out any time there's an Xbox within 50 yards of a crime. This is because games are the new competition - every hour you spend interacting with a game is one hour less spent drooling in front of their fear-mongering programming.
And it's working. Sparked by Columbine, mainstream media routinely paints a picture of gamers as odd shut-ins dangerously close to the precipice of violent behavior, and almost unerringly misconstrue the games themselves without taking the time to fact check, as is the case in the very first sentence of this CBS News report. Points for killing cops in GTA? Do games still have points?
Gaming is also a new medium, one that has recently become wildly successful. Young people play them and old folks don't understand, so they must be bad. Don't forget that in the 1950's, rock and roll was linked to youth violence in the same way. The hedonistic, tribal rhythms were going to turn America's youth into a bunch of violent maniacs. Rock and roll was banned and censored all over the country. A bill was even put before Congress in 1955 to ban rock and roll altogether.
Something exactly like what is happening now. Sorry guys, I don't care what people say, rock and roll is here to stay.
Let me be perfectly clear: Grand Theft Auto is a best-selling adult game that should not be played by 12 year-olds. That's why it's rated "M" and you have to be 17 to buy it. However, most games are not like GTA. In 2004, 54% of games were rated "E" for Everyone, 33% were rated "T" for Teen, and only 12% were rated "M" for Mature. The vast majority of the best-selling titles every year are not rated "M." Compare that to the 55% of movies rated "R" and only 8% rated "G." The ESRB might not get it right all the time, but who does? (Sources: the ESRB and the NPD Group).
And after all, there's no problem with R-rated movies or mature rap lyrics or violent video games, because there is no problem with youth violence. The most disgusting thing to me is that some truly horrible high-school tragedies are being exploited by the media, and somehow, I'm part of the problem.
The truth is that these are the most non-violent kids we have ever had, and they all own Playstations. The government is so desperate to find some youth crime to crack down on that they're strip-searching kids for 10 bucks while locking up 11 year-old girls for throwing rocks and eating french fries. The most peaceful generation of Americans in recorded history is being shoved through metal detectors, having their civil rights violated on a daily basis, are the victims of unreasonable search and seizure, and are treated with constant suspicion.
All because of a media lie. If nothing else can incite them to violence, maybe that will.

This source shows statistical proof that violent video games do not create violent children. The graphs could not be shown but if you go to the site of the souce all of the graphs are shown. The graphs basically all show a BIG decrease in the number of homocides, violent crimes, and non fatal firearm related crimes. This proof directly shows video game violence does not affect the minds of children to make their behavior violent.

Why does the government blame video games for the corruption of teens?

Even when the graphs show this huge decrease in violence why is it that video games are getting the blame?

Does Playing Violent Video Games Cause Aggressive Behavior?

Goldstein, Jeffrey. "Does Playing Violent Video Games Cause Aggressive Behavior?" 27 Oct. 2001. University of Chicago. 23 Jan. 2007 .

Playing by the Rules
Cultural Policy Center, University of Chicago

27 October 2001

Jeffrey Goldstein, Ph.D.
University of Utrecht, The Netherlands



Some social psychologists argue that playing violent video games causes aggressive behavior, among other things (desensitization to violence, disinhibition of violence, belief in a ‘scary world,’ acquisition of cognitive schemas supportive of aggression). Three types of evidence are said to converge in support of this conclusion: correlational studies, field studies (which are typically correlational in nature), and laboratory experiments.
Correlational studies can tell us nothing about whether violent video games cause aggression. Even if we accept that there is a correlation between amount of time spent playing (violent) video games and aggressive behavior, there is no reason to think that games are the cause of aggression (Anderson & Dill, 2000; Colwell & Payne, 2000; Roe & Muijs, 1998). Furthermore, some correlational studies find no significant relationship with aggression (e.g., Sacher, 1993; van Schie & Wiegman, 1997).
One purpose of laboratory experiments is to study immediate effects of prior ‘causes.’ The focus of this paper is on the quality of experimental evidence used to support the argument that
PLAYING (2) VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES CAUSES
(3) AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR
In the typical laboratory experiment, university students are randomly assigned to play a violent video game or a nonviolent video game. The length of play varies from 4 minutes to 75 minutes. Following play, some measure of aggression is administered. We will examine each component of this situation, asking whether subjects have PLAYED a video game, whether the video game can be regarded as VIOLENT, and whether AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR has been measured..
PLAYING violent video games?

Play is a voluntary, self-directed activity (Garvey, 1991), an experience that probably cannot be captured in a laboratory experiment. Jib Fowles (1999), discussing television violence, contrasts the experience of the experimental laboratory versus watching television at home.
"At home, everything is known; here, everything is unknown, demanding attentiveness. At home, the lights are low, the child may be prone and comfortable, and viewing is nonchalant; here, the room is overlighted, the child is seated upright, and the viewing is concentrated. Most signally, at home television viewing is an entirely voluntary activity: The child is in front of the set because the child has elected to do so and in most instances has elected the content… In the behavioral laboratory, the child is compelled to watch and, worse, compelled to watch material not of the child’s choosing and probably not of the child’s liking… Furthermore, what the child views in a typical laboratory experiment will bear little resemblance to what the child views at home. The footage will comprise only a segment of a program and will feature only aggressive actions" (Fowles, 1999, p. 26).
Regarding video games, the duration of play is too short, typically 5-15 mins., for anything like the play experience to be duplicated (Calvert & Tan, 1994; Silvern, Lang & Williamson, 1987). The pleasant ‘flow’ state described by Csikszentmihalyi (1990) becomes unattainable.
In laboratory experiments, no one plays. Being required to play a violent video game on demand is no one’s idea of an entertainment experience. It is like being forced to listen to someone else’s favorite music; it sounds like noise.
Almost no studies of violent video games have considered how and why people play them, or why people play at all. Experimental research does not recognize the fact that video game players freely engage in play, and are always free to stop. They enter an imaginary world with a playful frame of mind, something entirely missing from laboratory studies of violent video games. One of the pleasures of play is this very suspension of reality. Laboratory experiments cannot tell us what the effects of playing video games are, because there is no sense in which participants in these studies "play."

2. Playing VIOLENT video games?
There is much confusion about the definition of "violence" and terms like "media violence" and "violent video games." Psychologists define violence and aggression as "the intentional injury of another person." However, there is neither intent to injure nor a living victim in a video game.
An article by Dill and Dill (1998) serves to illustrate these semantic problems. They argue that players must "act aggressively" and are then reinforced for this "aggression."
"In violent video games, aggression is often the main goal, and killing adversaries means winning the game and reaping the benefits. While in real life, murder is a crime, in a violent video game, murder is the most reinforced behavior…. The violent video game player is an active aggressor and the players’ behavioral repertoire is expanded to include new and varied aggressive alternatives."
"…If violent videogame play indeed depicts victims as deserving attacks, and if these video games tend to portray other humans as ‘targets,’ then reduced empathy is likely to be a consequence of violent videogame play, thus putting the player at risk for becoming a more violent individual."
What is called "video game violence" is simulated aggression, different from the real thing in countless ways (Goldstein, 1999). Video games cannot "reinforce" aggressive behavior since players do not engage in any aggressive behavior in the first place. Besides, what is it that is "positively reinforced" in video games, which inevitably result in the defeat of the player’s character?
The same features that inhibit an opera audience from rushing the stage to prevent murder are present in video games. There are physical cues to the unreality of a game’s "violence," including the willing suspension of disbelief, the knowledge that you have control over events, and can pause at will or stop playing altogether. In video games, there are sound effects, scorekeeping, a joystick or keypad in your hand, and often playmates commenting on your performance, which simply involves streaming pixels at imaginary creatures on a two-dimensional screen.
When there are few cues to their unreality, bloody images lose their appeal (McCauley 1998). In one study, boys who played video games with violent themes showed the same positive facial expressions, quality of peer interaction, and enjoyment as those who played "neutral" games (Holmes & Pellegrini, 1999). Similarly, violence, if it is to be entertaining, must fulfill certain requirements: it must have a moral story, in which good triumphs over evil, and it must carry cues to its unreality -- music, sound effects, a fantasy story-line, cartoon-like characters. People are highly selective in the violence they seek or tolerate (McCauley, 1998; Zillmann, 1998).
Writing about Saturday morning television cartoons, Burke and Burke (1999) say,
"For us, there has been no greater irritant while researching this book than our repeated encounters with the views of experts…, who argue with great confidence that young children simply cannot understand the fictional rules of conflict in cartoons. Our contemporaries have insisted repeatedly that as children, they clearly understood that the ‘violence’ involved when Bugs blows up Yosemite Sam or Wile E. Coyote’s latest Acme device launches him off a cliff takes place within a fictional universe with its own very particular rules. Such violence had little or no relationship with what we understood as violence in our own lives" (pp. 206- 207).

3. … causes AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR
Reviews of video game research are as variable in their conclusions as the individual studies that comprise them. The same research is said to support different conclusions. For instance, Ask (1999), Funk (1993, 1995), Provenzo (1991), and Anderson & Bushman (2001) conclude that there is a causal connection between violent video games and aggressive behavior. Others think the data insufficient to support this connection (Cumberbatch, Maguire & Woods, 1993; Durkin, 1995; Griffiths, 1999; Wiegman, van Schie & Modde, 1997). Sacher (1993), reviewing mostly German research, found 5 experiments and 2 correlational studies linking violent video games to aggressive behavior, and 12 experiments and 7 correlational studies finding no such linkage.
In his overview of video game research, Barrie Gunter (1998, p. 109) concludes, "Even with experimental studies, there are problems of validity that derive from the fact that they do not measure ‘real aggression’ but rather simulated or pretend aggression."
According to British psychologist Mark Griffiths (1999) "the majority of studies on very young children tend to show that children become more aggressive after playing or watching a violent video game, but these were all based on the observation of free play."
Two recent meta-analyses (Anderson & Bushman, 2001; Sherry, 2001) report small effect sizes (r = .19 and .15, respectively). In the Sherry meta-analysis, playing time emerged as a negative predictor of effect size. That is, the more one played video games, the weaker the relation to aggressive behavior!
Meta-analysis is about the quantity, not the quality, of data. The conclusions of meta-analyses cannot be more valid than the studies that comprise them. Here are some of the studies in these samples.

A. Inconsistent results
It is difficult to know what to make of complex and inconsistent results both between and within video game studies. For example, Kirsh (1998) had boys and girls aged 8.5 to 11 years old play either a "very violent" video game (Mortal Kombat II) or an "action-oriented, non-violent video game" (NBA Jam). Immediately following video game play, children interpreted a series of ambiguous stories in which a same-sex peer caused a negative event to happen, but where the intent of the peer was unclear, for example, a child is hit in the back with a ball. After each story, children were asked six questions about the harmdoer’s intent and emotional state, and potential retaliation and punishment. Responses were coded in terms of amount of "negative and violent content."
According to Kirsh, children exposed to the violent video game "responded more negatively" to the ambiguous provocation stories than children exposed to the relatively non-violent NBA Jam on three of the six questions. But there was no significant difference between those who played Mortal Kombat or NBA Jam in whether they regarded the other’s behavior as intentional or accidental.
Kirsh expected that children playing the violent video game would retaliate more and expect more punishment than children playing the non-violent video game. This hypothesis was partially supported. When asked, "What would you do next?" children playing the violent video game responded "significantly more negatively" than children playing the non-violent video game. However, the question about prospective punishment for the harmdoer, "Do you think the kid should be punished a lot, a little, or not at all?" was not significant. There was no difference between those who played Mortal Kombat II and those who played NBA Jam in whether they viewed the other’s behavior as accidental or intentional. What is one to make of these results? Do they justify confidence in any conclusion whatsoever about the effects of video games?
In a study by Anderson and Ford (1986), university students who played a "highly aggressive" video game (Zaxxon) were not more hostile than a group that played a less aggressive game (Centipede) for 20 minutes. In studies by Ballard & Lineberger (1999), Scott (1995), and Winkel et al. (1987), the level of aggressive content in video games had no effect on subjects’ aggressive behavior.
Scott (1995) measured the aggressiveness of university students with the Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. No signficant differences in aggressiveness were found between students after playing a nonaggressive, a moderately or a highly aggressive video game. Scott concludes that there is a "general lack of support for the commonly held view that playing aggressive computer games causes an individual to feel more aggressive."
In a study of elementary school children, Graybill, Strawniak, Hunter and O’Leary (1987) found no effects of video games on aggressive behavior, which was measured by pushing buttons that could reward or punish another child.
Cooper and Mackie (1986) randomly assigned 84 boys and girls, 10-11 yrs old, to play or to observe a violent video game (Missile Command), a non-violent video game (Pac Man), or a pen-and-paper game for 8 mins. They were then observed during a free play period, where they could choose from a variety of toys, including an aggressive toy (a spring-release fist that fires darts), an active toy (basketball), a skill game (pinball), and a quiet toy (building logs). Children were then given an opportunity to punish or reward another child by suggesting how much punishment or reward the child should receive for various actions.
Children who played or observed the aggressive video game spent more time playing with the aggressive toy than did other children. This was particularly so for girls. Boys’ play with the aggressive toy was not affected by the video game played. Cooper and Mackie also found that children who played the violent video game were more active afterwards, changing often from one activity to another. Although video games clearly influenced the children’s post-game play, the video games had no effect on interpersonal aggression. Children who played Missile Command did not differ from those who played Pac Man in how much punishment or reward they administered.
Mark Griffiths (1997) reviewed the extant literature on video games and aggression. Here is a summary table of studies from his paper (see Table 1).

B. Aggressive play and aggressive behavior
Studies of violent video games do not always distinguish aggressive play from aggressive behavior (for example, Schutte et al., 1988; Silvern & Williamson, 1987). Observations of children on the playground may confuse mock aggression (pretending to engage in martial arts) with real aggression (attempting to hurt someone). Confusing aggressive play with aggressive behavior can lead to faulty conclusions. What appears to an observer to be aggressive behavior may instead be aggressive play, where there is no intent to injure anyone. In the rare study that measures both aggressive play and aggressive behavior (e.g., Cooper & Mackie, 1986), violent video games affect the former and not the latter.

C. Measures of aggression?
It is not possible to observe real aggression in the laboratory, so researchers must improvise indirect measures and indicators of potential aggression. Here are some of the dependent variables used in video game research:
Hitting a bobo doll (Schutte, Malouff, Post-Gordon & Rodasta, 1988)
Coding children’s interpretations of ambiguous stories (for example, a child is hit in the back with a ball). Responses were coded for the amount of "negative and violent content" (Kirsh, 1998)
Listing aggressive thoughts and feelings (Calvert & Tan, 1994)
Administering blasts of white noise to an unseen person, in the ‘teacher-learner’ paradigm, in which errors on a ‘learning task’ are ‘punished.’ (Anderson & Dill, 2000; Wiegman, van Schie & Modde, 1997).
Withholding money from another. Winkel, Novak & Hopson (1987) tested 8th grade students in a situation in which they played teacher and were to deduct money for errors made by another student. This served as a measure of aggression.
‘Killing’ characters in a video game (Anderson & Morrow, 1995; Ask, 1999; Ask, Autoustinos, & Winefield, 2000).
Time elapsed to recognize aggressive words. In their experiment, Anderson and Dill (2000) required university students to play a violent video game for 15 minutes on 3 separate occasions, preceded and followed by cognitive (word recognition test), affective, or behavioral (white noise) measures of aggression. The only significant findings among these many dependent measures were with the word recognition test, which they take to represent "aggressive thinking." The speed with which aggression-related words are identified is said to reflect this. The validity of this measure of cognitive schemas is dubious. Word recognition is typically used to reflect perceptual or semantic salience (Grainger & Dijkstra, 1996), a phenomena that has no necessary connection to aggressive behavior.
Can anyone reasonably draw a conclusion about the effects of violent video games from studies with such variable, inconsistent, ambiguous results? I can’t.
In a description of its funding priorities regarding the media, The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation notes,
"…Research which exposes children to short clips of violence and observes their behavior immediately afterwards does not have the potential fully to contribute to our understanding of such a complex cultural product…." (http://www.hfg.org/)

What’s missing from video game research?

A. Players in control

The role of volition or choice is absent from discussions of entertainment media. What is the effect of voluntary (as opposed to enforced) exposure? Also missing from research is any acknowledgment that videogame players freely enter into play, and are always free to leave. Except in laboratory experiments, video games are undertaken in a playful frame of mind.

B. Video games are social

It is surprising that social psychological research on video games so rarely considers the social life of gamers. A Danish study of 5- to 17-year olds (Sorensen & Jessen, 2000) concluded that "Children’s fascination with violent computer games cannot be understood without considering these [social] aspects. The violent elements fascinate some children, but this fascination should not be mistaken for a fascination with violence in the real world. On the contrary, all children in the investigation repudiated real-life violence. The violent elements in computer games are attractive as spectacular effects, but also because they prompt excitement and thrill. Computer games are, thus, in line with genres known from the film industry: action movies, animation, thrillers and horror movies. Computer games have inherited the content of violence from a cultural tradition within fiction…Generally, these effects contain an element of exaggeration, which is fully recognized by children. In relation to this, the act of playing violent computer games can be seen as a parallel to the violent and ‘rough’ play traditionally found among boys" (p. 120).
Sorensen and Jessen note that the interactive nature of computer games "is usually described as a problem in relation to violent computer games – the fact that the player himself must conduct violent deeds – actually makes children aware that their actions take place in a fictitious universe. For children, computer games are in fact ‘games’ with their own rules. From an early age, they are aware that these rules do not apply outside the realm of the game, with the exception that children can include elements and rules from the games in their play" (p. 121).
Young people bring their entertainment choices and experiences to bear on their intense concerns with questions of identity, belonging and independence. Nearly all their public behavior – the clothes they wear, the music they listen to, the rings in their noses, and the games they play – has a social purpose. Until researchers look, not at isolated individuals forced to play a video game for a few minutes as part of an experiment, but at game players as members of social groups, we are unlikely to come to terms with violent, or any other, entertainment.
Much criticism of youth culture reflects the belief that there are vulnerable groups who will be affected by the media in ways that go against their grain, a "magic bullet" that will turn good kids bad. I take the position that people are extremely selective in what media they use and attend to, and that the effects the media have on them are pretty much the effects that the user is seeking.
In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., a number of video game publishers and entertainment producers have scaled back or modified violent products. One way to greatly reduce violence in entertainment media is for consumers to reject it. The growing distaste for real violence may turn millions away from mock violence as a form of entertainment.

C. Video games as entertainment

Of course video games affect people. That’s why people play them. Imagine selecting a piece of music to listen to. How do you make your selection? You will choose soothing music if you want to be soothed, and upbeat music if you want to be stimulated. You might listen to a new group or CD because your friends are talking about it.
Youngsters are willing to expose themselves to unpleasant media images because the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs. Players, like researchers, have overriding reasons for engaging with violent themes.
Recent research has begun to consider how and why people play (violent) video games (Goldstein, 1995; 1998; Grodal, 2000; Sherry, et al., 2001; Sorensen & Jessen, 2000). Although these approaches may offer new insights into video games, they are still not likely to tell us whether violent video games cause real-life aggression.
Not all questions can be answered using social psychological methods. To quote
John Dewey (of this august institution), "An idea has no greater metaphysical stature than, say, a fork. When your fork proves inadequate to the task of eating soup, it makes little sense to argue about whether there is something inherent in the nature of forks or something inherent in the nature of soup that accounts for the failure. You just reach for a spoon."

This source shows Goldstein's research and how it was inconsistent that not all children who played mortal kombat became hostile. Because the results were inconsistent it cannot be judged that violence in video games is a direct cause of violent behavior in young children.

What part of the brain controls aggression? and How do violent video games stuimulate this part of the brain?

Reality Bytes: Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked

Jenkins, Henry. "Reality Bytes: Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked." 2003. <http://www.pbs.org/kcts/videogamerevolution/impact/myths.html>.

Reality Bytes: Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked

Henry Jenkins
MIT Professor

A large gap exists between the public's perception of video games and what the research actually shows. The following is an attempt to separate fact from fiction.

1. The availability of video games has led to an epidemic of youth violence.

According to federal crime statistics, the rate of juvenile violent crime in the United States is at a 30-year low. Researchers find that people serving time for violent crimes typically consume less media before committing their crimes than the average person in the general population. It's true that young offenders who have committed school shootings in America have also been game players. But young people in general are more likely to be gamers — 90 percent of boys and 40 percent of girls play. The overwhelming majority of kids who play do NOT commit antisocial acts. According to a 2001 U.S. Surgeon General's report, the strongest risk factors for school shootings centered on mental stability and the quality of home life, not media exposure. The moral panic over violent video games is doubly harmful. It has led adult authorities to be more suspicious and hostile to many kids who already feel cut off from the system. It also misdirects energy away from eliminating the actual causes of youth violence and allows problems to continue to fester.
2. Scientific evidence links violent game play with youth aggression.

Claims like this are based on the work of researchers who represent one relatively narrow school of research, "media effects." This research includes some 300 studies of media violence. But most of those studies are inconclusive and many have been criticized on methodological grounds. In these studies, media images are removed from any narrative context. Subjects are asked to engage with content that they would not normally consume and may not understand. Finally, the laboratory context is radically different from the environments where games would normally be played. Most studies found a correlation, not a causal relationship, which means the research could simply show that aggressive people like aggressive entertainment. That's why the vague term "links" is used here. If there is a consensus emerging around this research, it is that violent video games may be one risk factor - when coupled with other more immediate, real-world influences — which can contribute to anti-social behavior. But no research has found that video games are a primary factor or that violent video game play could turn an otherwise normal person into a killer.
3. Children are the primary market for video games.

While most American kids do play video games, the center of the video game market has shifted older as the first generation of gamers continues to play into adulthood. Already 62 percent of the console market and 66 percent of the PC market is age 18 or older. The game industry caters to adult tastes. Meanwhile, a sizable number of parents ignore game ratings because they assume that games are for kids. One quarter of children ages 11 to 16 identify an M-Rated (Mature Content) game as among their favorites. Clearly, more should be done to restrict advertising and marketing that targets young consumers with mature content, and to educate parents about the media choices they are facing. But parents need to share some of the responsibility for making decisions about what is appropriate for their children. The news on this front is not all bad. The Federal Trade Commission has found that 83 percent of game purchases for underage consumers are made by parents or by parents and children together.
4. Almost no girls play computer games.

Historically, the video game market has been predominantly male. However, the percentage of women playing games has steadily increased over the past decade. Women now slightly outnumber men playing Web-based games. Spurred by the belief that games were an important gateway into other kinds of digital literacy, efforts were made in the mid-90s to build games that appealed to girls. More recent games such as The Sims were huge crossover successes that attracted many women who had never played games before. Given the historic imbalance in the game market (and among people working inside the game industry), the presence of sexist stereotyping in games is hardly surprising. Yet it's also important to note that female game characters are often portrayed as powerful and independent. In his book Killing Monsters, Gerard Jones argues that young girls often build upon these representations of strong women warriors as a means of building up their self confidence in confronting challenges in their everyday lives.
5. Because games are used to train soldiers to kill, they have the same impact on the kids who play them.

Former military psychologist and moral reformer David Grossman argues that because the military uses games in training (including, he claims, training soldiers to shoot and kill), the generation of young people who play such games are similarly being brutalized and conditioned to be aggressive in their everyday social interactions.
Grossman's model only works if:


we remove training and education from a meaningful cultural context.
we assume learners have no conscious goals and that they show no resistance to what they are being taught.
we assume that they unwittingly apply what they learn in a fantasy environment to real world spaces.

The military uses games as part of a specific curriculum, with clearly defined goals, in a context where students actively want to learn and have a need for the information being transmitted. There are consequences for not mastering those skills. That being said, a growing body of research does suggest that games can enhance learning. In his recent book, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, James Gee describes game players as active problem solvers who do not see mistakes as errors, but as opportunities for improvement. Players search for newer, better solutions to problems and challenges, he says. And they are encouraged to constantly form and test hypotheses. This research points to a fundamentally different model of how and what players learn from games.
6. Video games are not a meaningful form of expression.

On April 19, 2002, U.S. District Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh Sr. ruled that video games do not convey ideas and thus enjoy no constitutional protection. As evidence, Saint Louis County presented the judge with videotaped excerpts from four games, all within a narrow range of genres, and all the subject of previous controversy. Overturning a similar decision in Indianapolis, Federal Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner noted: "Violence has always been and remains a central interest of humankind and a recurrent, even obsessive theme of culture both high and low. It engages the interest of children from an early age, as anyone familiar with the classic fairy tales collected by Grimm, Andersen, and Perrault are aware." Posner adds, "To shield children right up to the age of 18 from exposure to violent descriptions and images would not only be quixotic, but deforming; it would leave them unequipped to cope with the world as we know it." Many early games were little more than shooting galleries where players were encouraged to blast everything that moved. Many current games are designed to be ethical testing grounds. They allow players to navigate an expansive and open-ended world, make their own choices and witness their consequences. The Sims designer Will Wright argues that games are perhaps the only medium that allows us to experience guilt over the actions of fictional characters. In a movie, one can always pull back and condemn the character or the artist when they cross certain social boundaries. But in playing a game, we choose what happens to the characters. In the right circumstances, we can be encouraged to examine our own values by seeing how we behave within virtual space.
7. Video game play is socially isolating.

Much video game play is social. Almost 60 percent of frequent gamers play with friends. Thirty-three percent play with siblings and 25 percent play with spouses or parents. Even games designed for single players are often played socially, with one person giving advice to another holding a joystick. A growing number of games are designed for multiple players — for either cooperative play in the same space or online play with distributed players. Sociologist Talmadge Wright has logged many hours observing online communities interact with and react to violent video games, concluding that meta-gaming (conversation about game content) provides a context for thinking about rules and rule-breaking. In this way there are really two games taking place simultaneously: one, the explicit conflict and combat on the screen; the other, the implicit cooperation and comradeship between the players. Two players may be fighting to death on screen and growing closer as friends off screen. Social expectations are reaffirmed through the social contract governing play, even as they are symbolically cast aside within the transgressive fantasies represented onscreen.
8. Video game play is desensitizing.

Classic studies of play behavior among primates suggest that apes make basic distinctions between play fighting and actual combat. In some circumstances, they seem to take pleasure wrestling and tousling with each other. In others, they might rip each other apart in mortal combat. Game designer and play theorist Eric Zimmerman describes the ways we understand play as distinctive from reality as entering the "magic circle." The same action — say, sweeping a floor — may take on different meanings in play (as in playing house) than in reality (housework). Play allows kids to express feelings and impulses that have to be carefully held in check in their real-world interactions. Media reformers argue that playing violent video games can cause a lack of empathy for real-world victims. Yet, a child who responds to a video game the same way he or she responds to a real-world tragedy could be showing symptoms of being severely emotionally disturbed. Here's where the media effects research, which often uses punching rubber dolls as a marker of real-world aggression, becomes problematic. The kid who is punching a toy designed for this purpose is still within the "magic circle" of play and understands her actions on those terms. Such research shows us only that violent play leads to more violent play.

Henry Jenkins is the director of comparative studies at MIT.

This article takes all the myths about video games and proves them wrong. Many of the myths have to do with violent video games. Also the myth about how video games are used to train soldiers is untrue. Soldiers use video games to learn the tactical knowledge they need to know during missions.

Where do these myths about video games originate?

Why do people believe these myths?